"Meddlesome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... temper, or you would wonder no more. I tried it when I came to Croydon, and we kept on until about two months ago, when we had to part. I don't want to say a word against my own sister, but she was always meddlesome and hard to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in your nice frock. Do let the furniture alone, child. Ring for Bridget, if any thing wants cleaning. You're a real Meddlesome Matty, Bertha." ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Wodgate had advantages of its own, and of a kind which touch the fancy of the lawless. It was land without an owner; no one claimed any manorial right over it; they could build cottages without paying rent. It was a district recognized by no parish; so there were no tithes, and no meddlesome supervision. It abounded in fuel which cost nothing, for though the veins were not worth working as a source of mining profit, the soil of Wodgate was similar in its superficial character to that of the country ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... inclined to evade the small complications of existence. This trait of his character was composed of a little indolence, some disdain, and a shrinking from contests with certain forms of vulgarity—like a man who would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid a toad. His intercourse with the meddlesome journalist was that merely outward intimacy without sympathy some young men get drawn into easily. It had amused him rather to keep that "friend" in the dark about the fate of his assistant. Renouard had never needed other company than his own, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... seven-and-a-half dollars. In his rage at the price he exclaimed: "As a public man I have given twenty of the best years of my life to bringing about a friendly understanding between capital and labor. I have succeeded, and may God have mercy on my meddlesome soul!" ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... safe and vacant room in your establishment where I could bestow this meddlesome priest for a ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... should be the last place in which to indulge in idle talk. Such indulgence is against all the idealism of student life. Idle or meddlesome talk never helps any one, either the one who talks or the one who is discussed. If you have anything to say about other people, and if going to them will help you, the only friendly thing to do—it is not an easy thing—is to speak to the people concerned. ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... Pardoner he was "meddlesome as a fly." Now he lights upon a dane's skin hung in a church. Again, upon a magic-lantern. Yet again upon a traitor's head, and the prospect of London in the distance. He will drink four pints of Epsom water. He will learn to whistle like ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... to find some corner of those rocky wilds where no human being had ever set foot and to be the first person to behold it. What boy has not felt that Columbus had several centuries' advantage of him: that Balboa was a meddlesome old chap who might better have stayed in Spain and left American oceans to American boys to discover? Oh! the unutterable regret of youthful hearts that the Golden Fleece and the Holy Grail and other high adventures passed ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... to arrest us as rogues and vagabonds," Kosinski explained to me as we made our way towards a neighbouring coffee-shop for breakfast. "A pretty fix that would have been just now! We had scarcely settled down for a quiet sleep on the box when the meddlesome fool came up and asked our names and addresses, what we had there, what we were doing at that hour, and threatened to take us in charge unless we moved on. When I explained that we were simply waiting for our train he laughed, and said that was a likely tale! If you had not ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... their country upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. From these descended the late General Joubert, Commander-in-Chief of the Transvaal forces at the opening of hostilities. The administration of the colony by the Dutch East India Company being both arbitrary and meddlesome, some of the more independent spirits withdrew from the coast and moved inland, behind the difficult {p.005} mountain ranges that separate the narrow strip of sea-coast from the ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... in the woodland] But whilst Sir Kay and his court thus rested themselves, Sir Dagonet must needs be gadding, for he was of a very restless, meddlesome disposition. So, being at that time clad only in half armor, he wandered hither and thither through the forest as his fancy led him. For somewhiles he would whistle and somewhiles he would gape, and otherwhiles he would cut a caper or two. So, as chance would have it, he came by and by to that ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... replied, with a laugh, "if you really want to know, I understand that every eighth of a mile is marked with a single small white rag; each quarter has a blue one; while the mile shows a plain red one. I hope some meddlesome fellow doesn't go to changing the signals on Brad, and make him think he's doing a record stunt. But I believe he's got some other secret sign of his own to depend ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... but—why, you know she couldn't go there. And if you put her anywhere where a lady ought to be, in New Orleans, she would be—well, don't you see she would be about as far away as if she were in Milwaukee? Richling, I don't know how it looks to you for me to be so meddlesome, and I believe you think I'm making a very poor argument; but you see this is only one point ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... meditative, his look cast down and angry. Pelletier, very buoyant, simple, curious, looking at everything. Torcy, three times more starched than usual, seemed to look at everything by stealth. Effiat, meddlesome, piqued, outraged, ready to boil over, fuming at everybody, his look haggard, as it passed precipitously, and by fits and starts, from side to side. Those on my side I could not well examine; I saw them ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... thoroughly despise their mayors (up their sleeves). A mayor is here today and gone tomorrow, whereas a permanent official is permanent. A mayor knows nothing about anything except his chain and the rules of debate, and he is, further, a tedious and meddlesome person—in the opinion of ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... as though I were undergoing an examination poorly prepared, and I think I must have answered very stupidly. I was out of sorts, too, for often what looks like sympathy is mere inquisitiveness, and theirs impressed me as the more meddlesome, since I have a long while yet to wait for the happy event. Some time in the summer, early in July, I think. You must come then, or better still, so soon as I am at all able to get about, I'll take a vacation and set out for Hohen-Cremmen to see ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... police force paid not the slightest attention to these open, flagrant, shameless violations of the city ordinances and the state bird laws. In those days I never but once heard of a policeman on his own initiative arresting a birdshooter, even on Sunday; but whenever meddlesome special wardens from the Zoological Park have pointedly called upon the local police force for help, it has always been given with cheerful alacrity. In the fall of 1912 an appeal to the Police Commissioner resulted in a general order to stop all hunting and shooting in the Borough of the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... resolution of a full-lipped yet firm mouth. "Sir!" said he, turning to the young King with a look in which the bonhomie of an indulgent Mentor was blended with genuine respect, "it will, no doubt, seem to your Majesty both meet and proper that we should not leave a meddlesome parson to let you know that our faithful hearts have been sorely exercised by that which is newly come to us out of France. Not to stay on sundry general advertisements and rumours that have reached us—and which seemed to glance at a very exalted personage—I ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... territory, was not yet controlled by the Dutch government. In the year 1897 a numerous band of Madangs had migrated into the extreme head of the Baram from the corresponding and closely adjoining part of the Rejang, largely owing to the pressure put upon them by the ever roving and meddlesome Sea Dayaks. Neither these Madangs nor the Kenyahs of the Batang Kayan had entered into friendly relations with the Sarawak government, and they had preserved a hostile attitude towards the Baram tribes. The Resident therefore determined to visit the Madangs, and to invite Kenyah chiefs from ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Robert remembered his father and their days of privation, and he did not forget that all they had, they owed to that father. He witnessed his mother's smiles and blushes with some anxiety. One day, as he was going an errand to Neck of Land, he was accosted by a meddlesome fellow named William ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... not approve of her going out or of her having company. The Larches was too far away, and as for Mr. and Mrs. Talcott, they were meddlesome people, whom he had never liked; besides, Mrs. Talcott was delicate, and the night threatened storm. Let her go to bed like a good girl, and think nothing about the money, which he would take care to put away in a very ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... word of it!" Dolly stood up and angrily grasped the bell-handle. "It's not true. It's a meddlesome lie. They are jealous. People are always like that—it makes them furious to see another person prosper. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... and was my duty, to settle all other strikes, so after the peace of Portsmouth there were other persons—not only Americans, by the way,—who thought it my duty forthwith to make myself a kind of international Meddlesome Mattie and interfere for peace and justice promiscuously over the world. Others, with a delightful non-sequitur, jumped to the conclusion that inasmuch as I had helped to bring about a beneficent and necessary peace I must of necessity have changed my mind about war being ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Mrs. Robbem. "She's always been treated kindly, and she wouldn't have thought of taking such a step, if she hadn't been put up to it by meddlesome Abolitionists, who are always interfering ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... fawvour to see sic a halesome clan—frae auchteen or thereawa' doon tu the wee toddlin' lassie was the varra aipple o' the e'e to a' the e'en aboot the place! But that's naither here nor yet there! A' gaed on as a' should gang on whaur the servan's are no ower gran' for their ain wark, nor ower meddlesome wi' the wark o' their neebours; naething was negleckit, nor onything girned aboot; but a' was peace an' hermony, as quo' the auld sang about out bonny Kilmeny—that is, till ae nicht.—You see I'm tellin' ye as it cam' to ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... or typhlitis ends in an abscess, and the pus sac is ruptured by meddlesome, unskilled treatment, scientific or otherwise, causing the pus to burrow toward the groin, surgery is the only treatment; there is no hope of recovery in such a case without establishing thorough drainage, and this means skilled surgical treatment. It will positively be a miracle if such ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... has to hide everything when one has little meddlesome good-for-nothings like you.... But come, out with it, confess that you took it.... I would rather it was that.... I sha'n't tell ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... mention of my name every eye turned towards me, and I felt, rather than saw, the disfavour of the looks. No doubt they resented a storekeeper's intrusion into well-bred company, and some were there who had publicly cursed me for a meddlesome upstart. But I was not looking their way, but at the girl who sat on my host's right hand, and in whose dark eyes I thought I saw a ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The greatest poet has less a marked style and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way not the richest curtains. What ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... there, and everywhere," and she waved her pretty hands up and down; "he is the useful one to have for a friend!" Which sentiment the Piache much approved, as became his occupation; and once told Brimblecombe pretty sharply, that he was a meddlesome fellow for telling the Indians that the Good Spirit cared for them; "for," quoth he, "if they begin to ask the Good Spirit for what they want, who will bring me cassava and coca for keeping the bad spirit quiet?" This argument, however forcible the devil's priests ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... ready to do things for other people. The word is now restricted to its bad sense of meddlesome. Cf. Shakespeare, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... all this. She pressed on, and they gave way for her a little as she approached the table. Three constables stood around it to guard the dead body from the touch of meddlesome hands. On seeing Lady Vincent with the air of one having authority, the constable that guarded the head of the table guessed at her rank, and officiously turned down the white sheet that covered the dead body, and revealed the horrible object ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Tanacharisson, Jeskakake, White Thunder, and the Hunter going with Washington. The latter understood very well that their object was to have an opportunity to win them over to the French. But Washington insisted upon their going with him, and rebuked Captain Joncaire for his meddlesome disposition. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... civil war now raging in America appears to me almost a phenomenon in political history. No such forbearance has been shown during the political history of the last two centuries. It is the single case in which the English Government and public, generally so meddlesome, have displayed most prudent and commendable forbearance in spite of great temptations to the contrary.' Lord John had opinions, and the courage of them; but at the same time he showed himself fully alive to the fact that no greater calamity ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... unhappily said that wholly justified his caustic denunciation, "is a mere excuse for establishing a medical tyranny. And we have enough of this kind of tyranny already ... the world does not want the eugenist to set it straight.... Eugenics is simply the meddlesome interference of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... brought up an ill report of your Lord, persuading others that He was a taskmaster. They also brought up an evil report of the good land, saying it was not half so good as some pretend it was. They also began to vilify His servants, and to count the very best of them meddlesome, troublesome, busybodies. Further, they could call the bread of God husks; the comforts of His children, fancies; the travel and labour of pilgrims, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Cumberland. The Acadian peasants, on the beautiful shores of the Bay of Fundy, Canadian historians tell us, "were a simple, virtuous, and prosperous community," though other writers give them less favorable character, speaking of them as turbulent, aggressive, and meddlesome. With remarkable industry they had reclaimed from the sea by dikes many thousand of fertile acres, which produced abundant crops of grain and orchard fruits; and on the sea meadows at one time grazed as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... sorry to hear about it," said Mr. Blackthorne, "but I don't see that anything can be done. You see, one does not like to interfere in these sort of things. It seems officious rather, and meddlesome." ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... Johnstone as he left the room, and in a few moments returned with a check-book. "There's your thousand pounds. Now listen. Not a word to old General Willoughby. He is a meddlesome old sot. I shall slip away quietly. To deceive the Delhi scandal-mongers you must call here every day in my absence. Mademoiselle Delande will receive you. My daughter, of course, sees no one in my absence. And you can inform Delhi secretly, guardedly, that Madame Berthe ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Katharine, his eldest daughter. He gets it, and gives it to the "poor damsel," who is languishing, as he says, and who dies the next month,—all the sooner, I have little doubt, for this uncertain and violent drug, with which the meddlesome pedant tormented her in that spirit of well-meant but restless quackery, which could touch nothing without making mischief, not even a quotation, and yet proved at length the means of bringing a great blessing to our community, as we shall see ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the value of standard realistic stories. In these readers was found the very moral story of the boy who won the day because of his forethought in providing an extra piece of whipcord. There was also "Meddlesome Matty," and the honest office-boy, the heroic lad of Holland, and the story of the newly liberated prisoner who bought a cage full of captive birds and set them free. These and many others still persist in memory, and point with ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... of the troops from Winchester, to strengthen Fort Cumberland, which was now to become headquarters; thus weakening the most important points and places, to concentrate a force where it was not wanted, and would be out of the way in most cases of alarm. By these meddlesome moves, made by Governor Dinwiddie from a distance, without knowing any thing of the game, all previous arrangements were reversed, every thing was thrown into confusion, and enormous losses and expenses ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... 'prentice. I remember how I used to sit and watch him at his work. It would be grand, I thought, to be able to do as he did, and handle edge-tools without cutting my fingers, and getting my ears pulled for a meddlesome minx! He used to give me his mallet to keep and his nails to hold; and didn't I fly when he called for them! and wasn't I proud to be ordered about with them! And then, you know, there is the tall cabinet yonder; that it was that proved him the first ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... kill the old feud. They cannot help respecting each other after such an encounter as that. I'll try and get hold of young Darley, and then of Mark; and perhaps I may be able to—Bah! you weak-minded, meddlesome old driveller!" he cried impetuously. "You would muddle, and spoil all, when perhaps a Higher Hand is at work, as it always is, to make everything tend ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... was burned with overpowering force into my mind that houses and furniture, scrubbed floors, white curtains, bright tins and brasses, were the great, awful, permanent facts of existence; and that men and women, and particularly children, were the meddlesome intruders upon this divine order, every trace of whose intermeddling must be scrubbed out and obliterated in the quickest way possible. It seemed evident to me that houses would be far more perfect if nobody lived in ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sleeping next, and taxing me for ivery snore a give. They've been after t' winders, and after t' vittle, and after t' very saut to 't; it's dearer by hauf an' more nor it were when a were a boy: they're a meddlesome set o' folks, law-makers is, an' a'll niver believe King George has ought t' do wi' 't. But mark my words; I were wed wi' brass buttons, and brass buttons a'll wear to my death, an' if they moither me about it, a'll wear brass buttons i' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... I know? Because Chaldea was hiding under the studio window this afternoon and overheard all that passed between you and Garvington and that meddlesome Lambert. She knew that I was in danger and came at once to London to tell me since I had given her my address. I lost no time, but motored down here and dropped her at the camp. Now I've come to get you out of ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... peep at other folks, and pry into people's affairs? I can't imagine where you get your meddlesome ways from. There aint none in my family. Next time I catch you at it, I'll spank you good." Then, after a pause, "Well what else did ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... and he went home puzzled and fighting-mad. If, then, the Blue-grass people had handled with the firebrand corporate aggrandizement of toll-gate owners who were neighbors and friends, how would they treat meddlesome interference from strangers? Already one courteous emissary in one county had fled the people's wrath on a swift thoroughbred, and Burnham smiled sadly to himself ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... "You meddlesome bacon!" cackled the ungrateful bird; "if you don't take that orb directly back, I 'll sit on you till I hatch ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... consequence, and even rumors rising on the subject, Voltaire wrote once: "Give me a yard of ribbon, Sire [your ORDER OF MERIT, Sire], to silence those vile rumors!" Which Friedrich, on such free-and-easy terms, had silently declined. "A meddlesome, forward kind of fellow; always getting into scrapes and brabbles!" thinks Friedrich. But is really anxious, now that the chance offers again, to have such a Levite for his Priest, the evident pink of Human Intellect; and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... seriously in hand at bedtime, and argued the whole transaction with him, representing the dreadful consequences of meddling with people's private papers under trust. Here was poor Lucy taken away from home, and papa made very angry with Ulick, because Maurice had been meddlesome and mischievous; and though he had not been beaten for it, he would find it a worse punishment not to be trusted another time, nor allowed to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and sixty persons had cause to rejoice with them. So be it! There were plans evolved already as to national fetes and wholesale pardons when that impudent and meddlesome Englishman at last got ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... nearest shop, sweating with fear lest she should follow him. Endued with riches and fortified by assurance, Mrs. Folliot was the presiding spirit in many movements of charity and benevolence; there were people in Wrychester who were unkind enough to say—behind her back—that she was as meddlesome as she was most undoubtedly autocratic, but, as one of her staunchest clerical defenders once pointed out, these grumblers were what might be contemptuously dismissed as five-shilling subscribers. Mrs. Folliot, in her way, was undoubtedly a power—and for reasons of his own Pemberton ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... one to believe in an unnatural god who apparently must be ever ready to answer anybody's prayerful cry and act as a general servant to humanity by distributing good things to those who beg for them; a sort of meddlesome god who enters into all the petty quarrels of hunan beings and generally settles them ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... he was a poet—one of those who write for ages yet unborn. Besides, his poems could be bought (of the publisher only; the railway bookstall men did not understand them) beautifully bound; really beautifully bound in white kid, with green ribbon—a very thin volume and very thin poetry. Meddlesome persons have been known to state that Cyril Squyrt's father kept a prosperous hot-sausage-and-mashed-potato shop in Leeds. But one must not always ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the brig Herald and to Captain Beardsley's expressed wish that the act might lead to an open rupture between the United States and England, and he was glad to learn that there was to be no trouble on that score. But England could not long keep her meddlesome fingers out of our pie. She did all she dared to aid the Confederacy, and when the war was ended, had the fun of handing over a good many millions of dollars to pay for the American vessels that British built and British armed steamers had destroyed ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... servant as is possible to his sainted person. I left him an hour ago after we had left Deeping, for I came on here to see if you could receive him, not according to his rank, but as a plain guest, with the name of Thomas Williams; for there are those about who might be meddlesome, and His Majesty can only tarry for two or three days, waiting for a message from the Scots generals, to be brought by a trusty hand. I had feared that His Majesty would have overtaken me, for my horse cast a shoe, and came limping along for a mile or more, till at the smithy yonder ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... wearisome than the long line of alliances, triple and quadruple, the endless negotiations, the interminable congresses, the innumerable treaties, which make up the history of Europe during the earlier half of the eighteenth century; nor is it easy to follow with patience the meddlesome activity of English diplomacy during that period, its protests and interventions, its subsidies and guarantees, its intrigues and finessings, its bluster and its lies. But wearisome as it all is, it succeeded in ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... head of a cherub, who know what trouble is. You see where the shoe pinches, but your whole soul relucts from pointing out the tender place. You see why things go wrong, and how they might be set right; but you have a mortal dread of being thought meddlesome and impertinent, or cold and cruel, or restless and arrogant, if you attempt to demolish the wrong or rebel against the custom. When you draw your bow at an abuse, people think you are trying to bring down religion and propriety and humanity. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... which could not get free. The noise seemed to come from the roots, and people fancied it groaned least when the weather was wet, and made most noise in dry weather. This went on for nearly two years, until at last a meddlesome gentleman took an opportunity to bore a hole in the trunk. The result was that the elm ceased to groan. It was then decided to take the tree up by the roots and examine it; but nothing has ever been discovered to account ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... for some years longer, hardly affords many more events. It was not without troubles. At times came friendly support; at others, opposition from the authorities—the committee at home were sometimes ignorantly meddlesome, sometimes sordid in their fits of economy; insufficiently tested fellow-labourers came out and failed; promising converts fell away; the climate was one steady unrelaxing foe, which took victims out of every family: but all these things were as the dust of the highway, trials common ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of the court then proceeded, and when his evidence was taken, Tilly Troffater mounted the stand, with an affected hesitancy, and a genuine restlessness of his little earthen eyes; eager to indulge his meddlesome humor, anxious for revenge upon, he little cared whom, and yet awed to a look of shuffling shame, by the commanding mien of the justice. Clambering to his place, he was ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... Beaumarchais. Franklin was content to leave these affairs to him, and did not at the time even know their real nature. But with Arthur Lee it was different. Of all characters in American history Lee is almost the hardest to endure. He was patriotic, and in a way honest, but meddlesome, suspicious, vain, and quarrelsome to an incredible degree. He immediately made up his mind that Deane was peculating, and never ceased writing accusatory letters until Congress recalled the unfortunate envoy. All this time he was also acting toward Franklin ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... connected with the disposition of the public lands were clearly exposed by one Robert Gourlay, a somewhat meddlesome Scotchman, who had addressed a circular, soon after his arrival in Canada, to a number of townships with regard to the causes which retarded improvement and the best means of developing the resources of the province. An answer from Sandwich virtually set ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... to please a fanatical clergy, delivered hundreds of his subjects to the stake, was more blameable than Pilate, for he represented a more absolute power than that of the Romans at Jerusalem. When the civil power becomes persecuting or meddlesome at the solicitation of the priesthood, it proves its weakness. But let the government that is without sin in this respect throw the first stone at Pilate. The "secular arm," behind which clerical cruelty shelters itself, is not the culprit. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... me if I seem to you impertinent, meddlesome. I know quite well that this is no business of mine, but—but I know Mrs. Carstairs, and I know she has been made bitterly unhappy by this wretched misunderstanding. And I am sure, as sure as I am that you and I sit here to-day, that she never wrote one word of all those ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... out, Franck. Just for a minute." It struck me that perhaps I was a meddlesome fool. Wilks, of all of Grantline's men, was, I knew, most in his commander's trust. The signal could have been some part of this night's ordinary ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... Testament, that there are doubtless some few changes for the better, so obvious and so demanded beforehand by all educated opinion that to have neglected them would at once have stamped the revisers as blockheads and dunces; but that the set-off in the way of petty and meddlesome changes for the worse, neglect of really desirable improvements, bad English, failure in the very matter of pure scholarship just where it was least to be expected, and general departure from the terms of the Commission assigned to them (notably ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... have you made for fastening your boat?" asked Uncle Gerald. "To guard against its being tampered with by meddlesome persons, as well as to prevent its drifting away, you ought to secure it to a stake near the bank by means of ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... all be turned out, I know," complained the Barn Swallow, "and after we have as good as owned Orchard Farm these three years, it is too bad. Those meddlesome House People have put two new pieces of glass in the hayloft window, and how shall I ever get ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... affairs. In truth, Mehevi seemed to be the president of a club of hearty fellows, who kept 'Bachelor's Hall' in fine style at the Ti. I had no doubt but that they regarded children as odious incumbrances; and their ideas of domestic felicity were sufficiently shown in the fact, that they allowed no meddlesome housekeepers to turn topsy-turvy those snug little arrangements they had made in their comfortable dwelling. I strongly suspected however, that some of these jolly bachelors were carrying on love intrigues with the maidens of the tribe; although they did not appear publicly to acknowledge them. I ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... beg—that you will not think me meddlesome or impertinent. I have the matter very much at heart. It seems to lie in my path. I must see it. Surely you perceive some way of averting the disaster ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... I always opened this window, but I kept my venetian blinds half-closed, so that I might look out without having my idleness seen, and reported by a meddlesome neighbor. Morning and evening I glanced to the end of the quiet street that stretched its sunny length between the white country houses and lost itself among the old trees growing beyond the ramparts. I could see from there the occasional passers-by, all well known to me, the neighborhood ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... on her tossed bed, the sickness of disappointment heavy over her. An hour ago wealth was in her hand, ease was before her, and the future was secure. Now all was torn down and scattered by an old yellow paper which prying, curious, meddlesome old Sol Greening had found. She bent her head upon her hand; tears trickled ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... good, frank boy," said Aunt Madge, kissing his forehead. "And he won't toss his head,—just this way,—like a young lord of creation, when meddlesome aunties ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... sure I thought I was acting for the best," gave, considering her agitation, a tolerably accurate account of the whole interview. Her interlocutor saw plainly that she had acted from a sincere conscientiousness, and not from a meddlesome, mischievous interference; so he only thanked her for her kind interest, and suggested that he had now arrived at an age when it would, perhaps, be well for him to conduct matters, particularly of so delicate a nature, solely according to his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... of the captain-general was aroused. He consulted his legal adviser and factotum, a shrewd, meddlesome Escribano or notary, who rejoiced in an opportunity of perplexing the old potentate of the Alhambra, and involving him in a maze of legal subtilities. He advised the captain-general to insist upon the right of examining every convoy passing through the gates of his city, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... "Confound that meddlesome Yankee! what was he prowling around there for?" interrupted Mr. Scott, angrily. "He has no business prying into Harold Scott Mainwaring's affairs, and I'll have him understand it; let him attend to his own duties, and I think, from all reports, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... has left a deeper impression on Northern memories than the shock of disappointment at Bull Run. Public men of weight had been pressing for an advance in November, and when the Joint Committee of Congress, an arbitrary and meddlesome, but able and perhaps on the whole useful body, was set up in December, it brought its full influence to bear on the President. Lincoln was already anxious enough; he wished to rouse McClellan himself to activity, while he screened him against excessive impatience or interference with his ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... their lordships of the upper-house know that voice, when after a long sleepy debate it aroused them from ambrosial slumbers, with biting sarcasm, and most disagreeably told truths. And most heartily did a certain proportion of their lordships curse the owner of that voice, for a talented, eloquent, meddlesome innovator. But on all his great estates he was adored by the labourers and town's-folk, though hated by the farmers and country 'squires; for he was the earliest and fiercest of the reform and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... morning, that before night you will meet with some meddlesome, ungrateful and abusive fellow, with some envious or unsociable churl. Remember that their perversity proceeds from ignorance of good and evil; and that since it has fallen to my share to understand the natural beauty of a good action and the deformity of an ill one; since I am satisfied that the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... person of substance he stopped that sort of nonsense. His wife, too, was a sensible person, the daughter of an old Pittsburgh family as solid and well-rooted as the McKanns. She would never have bothered him about this concert had not the meddlesome Mrs. Post arrived to pay her a visit. Mrs. Post was an old school friend of Mrs. McKann, and because she lived in Cincinnati she was always keeping up with the world and talking about things in which no one else was interested, music among them. She was an aggressive lady, with weighty ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... of the subjective plane, and also to every floating thought on the physical plane; they are obsessed by ideas from within and without and their actions bear witness to this statement. Some very meddlesome women, and those who are the terror of a quiet community, are nearly always those who are in the control of the slower psychic forces and unable to conciously direct their ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... "I am a meddlesome old woman!" said Mrs. Tree. "You wish I would leave you alone, James Stedman, and so I will. Old women ought to be strangled; there's some place where they do it, Cap'n Tree told me about it once; I suppose it's because they talk too much. She said she shouldn't ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... have never left, if these meddlesome abolitionists hadn't put it in their heads; but, darling, don't bother your brain about such matters. See what I have bought you this morning," said he, handing her a necklace of the purest pearls; ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... is in us that combats desire—urged him to close his ears to the voices, he cursed it for a meddlesome thing. Since Life had thrown down the gauntlet, he would take it up! If he had to travel the chambers of disgrace and discouragement, he would go on to the halls of sensual abandonment. Life had torn aside the curtain—it was for him to ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... the Temple was not actuated by patriotism, but solely by greed. Obviously there was a rich reward waiting for him in Vienna the day that he brought Louis XVII safely into Austrian territory; that reward he would miss if a meddlesome Englishman interfered in this affair. Whether in this wrangle he risked the life of the child-King or not mattered to him not at all. It was de Batz who was to get the reward, and whose welfare and prosperity mattered more than the most ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... experienced. The roughness of the trail, the absence of cultivated fields, the entire exemption from the restraints of civilization, were perfectly delightful after a dreary residence of nearly a year in Germany. Here, at least, there were no passport bureaus, no meddlesome police, no conceited and disagreeable habitues of public places with fierce dogs running at their heels, no Verbotener Wegs staring one in the face at every turn. Here all ways possible to be traveled were open to the public; here was plenty of fresh ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... What if that man should take umbrage at some fancied slight to his honour or disregard of his affections and suddenly "amok"? The wise adviser would be the first victim, no doubt, and death would be his reward. And underlying the horror of this situation there was the danger of those meddlesome fools, the white men. A vision of comfortless exile in far-off Madura rose up before Babalatchi. Wouldn't that be worse than death itself? And there was that half-white woman with threatening eyes. How could he tell what an incomprehensible ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... story," said the doctor with a smile. "I once had a half-grown eagle in a cage in my yard. The door was left open one day, and a meddlesome rooster hopped in to pick a fight. The eagle had been sick a week and seemed an easy mark. I watched. The rooster jumped and wheeled and spurred and picked pieces out of his topknot. The young eagle didn't ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... out, "spend this with your fellows" (by instinct he knew it was part of his role to be lavish), "and tell them to drink to that meddlesome blackleg." ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... shore Thor was still filled with rage at the meddlesome giant, because he had lost him the serpent, but he quietly picked up the boat and carried it home, Hymer taking the whales. Once more under his own roof, the giant's courage returned, and he challenged Thor ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... There is work to be done among those unhappy men that may be my purgation. The authorities shall hear me yet—though inquiry was stifled at Port Arthur. By the way, a Pharaoh had arisen who knows not Joseph. It is evident that the meddlesome parson, who complained of men being flogged to death, is forgotten, as the men are! How many ghosts must haunt the dismal loneliness of that prison shore! Poor Burgess is gone the way of all flesh. I wonder if his spirit revisits the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... evils of the world in skyey dreams of good. How many good men, prosperous and contented, looked around and saw naught but good, while millions of their fellowmen were bartered and sold like cattle! No doubt, there were comfortable optimists who thought Wilberforce a meddlesome fanatic when he was working with might and main to free the slaves. I distrust the rash optimism in this country that cries, "Hurrah, we're all right! This is the greatest nation on earth," when there are grievances that call loudly for redress. That is false optimism. Optimism ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... a little sermon now, because I've found out your one fault. It isn't very big yet, but, if you don't nip it in the bud, it will be like Meddlesome Matty's,— ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... letting would do nobody any harm, neither would there be much of that, for they scorned to use any weapon sharper than their fists or a good thick rung: the women and children would take stones of course. Nobody would be killed, but every meddlesome authority taught to let Scaurnose and fishers alone. Peter objected that their enemies could easily starve them out. Dubs rejoined that, if they took care to keep the sea door open, their friends at Portlossie would not let them starve. Grosert said he made no doubt the factor would ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... Morris Townsend; and on receiving this news the girl started with a sense of pain. She felt angry for the moment; it was almost the first time she had ever felt angry. It seemed to her that her aunt was meddlesome; and from this came a vague apprehension ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... walk in the fields, bird-nesting and botanizing, and had like to have been taken up as a poacher in Hilly Wood, by a meddlesome, conceited gamekeeper belonging to Sir John Trollope. He swore that he had seen me in the act, more than once, of shooting game, when I never shot even so much as a sparrow in my life. What terrifying rascals these woodkeepers ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... is born in a day. A baby is always six months old before he is twenty-one. Our fathers, who first reasoned that God made all men equal, said: "You sha'n't hang a man until you have asked him if he consents to the law." Some meddlesome fanatic, engaged in setting up type, conceived the idea, that he need not pay his tax till he was represented before the law: then why should woman do so? Now, I ask, what possible reason is there that woman, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... at the club may chaff me all you choose. I'm going to marry her and that's all there is to it. I'm my own master, do you understand? I have no family—no inquisitive, meddlesome relatives, thank God! If this marriage is going to cost me what friends I have—all right—let them keep away! Such friends are not worth having, anyway. My mind is made up and you know me. Once I make up my mind, nothing can alter it." Determinedly ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... weigh what you did, put it by with a generous gesture, Give the minds of the student your measure, impress them Forever that all of this sacrifice, service was noble, But done with mixed motives, the fruits of your meddlesome nature, Your hatred of churches and priests. Six lines are the record Of all of these years of hard plowing in quack-grass, while batting At poisonous flies and stepping on ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... happy one; and during the twelve years following the murder of Buckingham (1592-1628), in whose hands he had been a mere tool, Charles gradually came to yield himself up to her unwise influence—not wholly indeed, but more than to that of Stafford even, or Laud. Little meddlesome Laud, made archbishop in 1633, proceeded to war against the dominant Puritanism, to preach passive obedience, and uphold the divine right of kings; while great Stafford, from championing the Petition of Right (1628), passed over to the king's service, and entered on that policy of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... The turnip was empty, the Fairies asleep. The gardener on passing his turnip bed saw, 'Midst the flourishing green a queer looking flaw: "Why, how can this be? I'm sure yester-e'en, That turnip, as any, was thrifty and green. There may be a grub at its root, or perhaps, A bug at its top, they are meddlesome chaps; I'll wait until morning, the heat of the sun May have proven too much for a delicate one." In the meantime the Fairies waked up by his words, Laughed and chuckled together as happy as birds. "Before he comes round, we'll have ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... for being meddlesome,' continued Percy, 'I thought I saw a way of being even with that scoundrel. Your papers had got into my pocket, and, as I had nothing else to do, I looked them over after parting with you, and saw a way out of the difficulty. I was coming in the morning to return them and propound my plan, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... explored the recesses of North America. France in the age of De Monts and Champlain possessed adequate resources, if only her effort had been concentrated on America, or if the Huguenots had not been prevented from founding colonies, or if the crown had been less meddlesome, or if the quest of beaver skins farther north had not diverted attention from Chesapeake Bay and Manhattan Island. The best chance the French ever had to effect a foothold in the middle portion of the Atlantic coast came to them in 1604, when, before any rivals ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... trouble for Mary. She felt, however, that the two great questions, the marriage of herself to Louis, and Brandon to any other person, were, as she called it, "settled"; and was almost content to endure this as a mere putting off of her desires—a meddlesome and impertinent interference of the Fates, who would soon learn with whom they were dealing, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... "He's a meddlesome, impertinent young scamp!" says Aunt Tillie, growin' red under the layers of rice powder. "Haven't I a right to marry without consulting him, ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... openly that under his ministry, men might cabal with impunity, for he was not a dangerous enemy." If the cabalists had been living in that confidence, they were most wofully deceived. Richelieu was neither meddlesome nor cruel, but he was stern and pitiless towards the sufferings as well as the supplications of those who sought to thwart his policy. At this period, he wished to bring about a marriage between the Duke of Anjou, then eighteen years old, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... have dangers, From meddlesome strangers, Who spy on our business and are not content To take a smooth answer, Except with a handspike ... And they say they are murdered by poor ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... the right royal results of the admirable but somewhat unyouthful qualities they adored in the young Queen. They have no right to sneer because a place of honor is given in Her Majesty's household to that meddlesome, old-fashioned German country cousin, Economy; for did not they all rejoice in the early years of the reign to hear of this same dame being introduced by those clever managers, Prince Albert and Baron Stockmar, into the royal palaces, wherein she ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Perhaps he was only a curious, meddlesome person. I have frequently been bothered by such individuals. They want to see all the working parts of an automobile or motor-boat, and they don't care what damage ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... the members of which had acquired the unreasonable habit of thinking and speaking for themselves during the preceding reign, he determined at once to put a stop to such grievous abominations. Scarcely, therefore, had he entered upon his authority, than he turned out of office all the meddlesome spirits of the factious cabinet of William the Testy; in place of whom he chose unto himself counselors from those fat, somniferous, respectable burghers who had flourished and slumbered under the easy ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... occurred a singular contact of minds. It was very well for me to spin sonorous generalities, but I had never till now dreamed of being so vulgar as to translate them into practice. I had always detested the meddlesome alarmist, who veils ignorance under noisiness, and for ever wails his chant of lugubrious pessimism. To be thrown with Davies was to receive a shock of enlightenment; for here, at least, was a specimen of the breed who exacted respect. It ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... rest of us, Christopher Quarles had his weaknesses. Whenever he failed to elucidate a mystery he was always able to show that the fault was not his, but somebody else's; either too long a time had elapsed before he was consulted, or some meddlesome fool had touched things and confused the evidence, or even that something supernatural had been at work. Once, at least, according to the professor, I had played the part of meddlesome fool, and one of my weaknesses being a short temper, it had required all Zena's ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... "I would not by my good-will be meddlesome in matters that concern me not, but it seemeth me all is scarce well with you. If so be that I can serve you any way, I trust you will ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... active from inability to keep quiet; their activity may be without purpose, or out of all proportion to the purpose contemplated. The officious are undesirably active in the affairs of others. Compare ALERT; ALIVE; MEDDLESOME. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... about him, his cheeks certainly would have burned. Indeed, I am afraid that they would have blistered. Such excitement! Everybody had a different idea, and nobody would listen to anybody else. Old Mr. Mink lost his temper and called Grandpa Otter a meddlesome know-nothing. It looked very much as if the convention was going to break up in a sad quarrel. Then Mr. Coon climbed up on the Big Rock and with ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... shoes in your hand and wade," gritted the Cap'n. "I ain't stoppin' you." He still scorned to explain to the meddlesome landsman. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Force, a meddlesome French commissary, i. 82; energy and activity of, i. 132; escape of, from prison at ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... cried Bixiou, "thou hast set thy finger on the weak spot. Meddlesome taxation has lost us more victories here in France than the vexatious chances of war. I once spent seven years in the hulks of a government department, chained with bourgeois to my bench. There was a clerk in the office, a man with a head on his shoulders; he had set his mind ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... to the new-fangled power of electricity which Dr. Franklin had just discovered and was making so much talk about, and was so recklessly tinkering with in Philadelphia at that very time. The doctor had strongly disapproved of Franklin's reprehensible and meddlesome boldness, but he felt that it was best, nevertheless, to write and obtain the philosopher's advice as to the feasibility, advisability, and the best convenience of having one of the new lightning-rods rigged upon his medical back, and running thence up through his wig, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... forward that they could not shake off their unwelcome escort. The calves had been tended occasionally in the dusk by a man with a lantern, and they hailed this one as a beacon of hope. Finally even Judith, desperately impatient to be gone, agreed that they would have to turn back and put the meddlesome creatures into their pasture and lay up the fence before they ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving |
