"Petulant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interpretation of those remains. Milton had neither made these acquisitions, nor aimed at them. He even expresses himself, in his vehement way, with contempt of them. "Hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk," "marginal stuffings," "horse-loads of citations and fathers," are some of his petulant outbursts against the learning that had been played upon his position by his adversaries. He says expressly that he had "not read the Councils, save here and there" (Smectymnuus). His own practice had been "industrious and select reading." He chose to make himself ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... repaired when Eric entered the breakfast room with a petulant sort of face and flung himself into a chair. "My! what a head I have on me this morning," he groaned. "Soda water would be worth all the coffee in the world, Mae; I'll take it black, if you please. How cosy you two look. I always take too much of every thing at a party, ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... opened the door; there was a loud rustling of silks along the corridor; and Jenny appeared in all her glory. She was no longer the fresh and pretty minx whom Hector had known —the provoking large-eyed Parisian demoiselle, with haughty head and petulant grace. A single year had withered her, as a too hot summer does the roses, and had destroyed her fragile beauty beyond recall. She was not twenty, and still it was hard to discern that she had been charming, and was ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... private dining room of the Syrtis Major Club, near the western edge of Mars City, slapping his fist into his hand. His face usually was engaging and boyish, the wave of his dark hair setting it off handsomely, but now it was flushed like that of a petulant child and the lock of hair hung down over his forehead. Maya, the only other person in the room, sat quietly and watched ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... playing. He took particular care not to approach her, but he found a place on the opposite side of the room, from which he could watch her unobserved. She was still standing and apparently she was losing her money. Once, with a little petulant frown, she turned away and moved a few yards lower down the room. The first time she staked in her new position, she won, and a smile which it seemed to him was the most brilliant he had ever seen, parted her ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "I'd like to, just for the sake of doing something. Do you know, Bea,"—knitting the arched brows with a petulant air,—"Sometimes I think I'll do something dreadful; perfectly dreadful, you know, so as to have things different for a little bit. It's horrible to live right along, just so, without ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... the picture gallery, where the portrait of the lady in the 'vi'let velvet,' Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt, had often caught his eye and charmed his fancy when the setting sun had illumined its rich colouring and had given life to the face, half-petulant, half-sweet, which pouted forth from the old canvas like a rose with light on its petals. Now all these pleasant rambles were finished. The mistress of Abbot's Manor would certainly object to a wandering parson in her house and grounds. Probably she was a very imperious, disagreeable young ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... petulant exclamation which was rising to her lips. She was conscious of a curious desire to win her queer young ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... excrescences, and mutilations, that students carry with them out of the lecture-room, if once the teeming intellect which nourishes theirs has been scared from its propriety by any misshapen fantasy. Even an impatient or petulant expression, which to a philosopher would be a mere index of the low state of amiability of the speaker at the moment of its utterance, may pass into the young mind as an element of its future constitution, to injure its temper or corrupt ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... nought and continued gazing, while only the little smile, tilting the corners of her lips, betrayed that she had heard the petulant speech. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... respect to such a baffler, and too much weight to his fancies; to raise the man too high in his courage and conceit; to make his pretences seem worthy the considering and canvassing. Briefly, perverse obstinacy is more easily quelled, petulant impudence is sooner dashed, sophistical captiousness is more safely eluded, sceptical wantonness is more surely confounded in this than in the simple way ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... his statement to Aeschines and Plutarch. Aeschines by no means bears him out; and Plutarch directly contradicts him. "Not long after," says Mr Mitford, "he took blows publicly in the theater" (I preserve the orthography, if it can be so called, of this historian) "from a petulant youth of rank, named Meidias." Here are two disgraceful mistakes. In the first place, it was long after; eight years at the very least, probably much more. In the next place the petulant youth, of whom Mr ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... clear, a little petulant perhaps, but still very sweet. She is quite small—a little girl—and clad in deep mourning. There is something pathetic about the dense black surrounding such a radiant face, and such a childish figure. Her eyes are fixed on the professor, ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... "You are petulant to-day, Eustace," she said; "or you would not accuse me so wrongfully; nay, you have been very, I must say it, very disagreeable of late, and followed your own selfish amusements, leaving me to wander ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... Napoleon, in a petulant voice; "YOUR illumination is magnificent; as to the inhabitants of Dresden, it seems to me, they are the children of the sun that we saw at the theatre—their lights have gone out." And the emperor, coldly bowing to the king, and offering his arm ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... boots—extracting from his bosom his father's portrait and expressing filial sentiments to it. One was less likely to accuse Corinne of peevishness when one beheld the delineation of family worship in the Edgermond household from which she fled. And the faithful eyes remonstrated with the petulant brain for scoffing at excessive sentiment, when they saw how everybody was always at somebody else's feet, or supporting somebody else in a fainting condition, or resting his or her burning brow on a hand, the elbow of which rested, in its turn, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... he, patting my shoulder as I had been a petulant child. "Never miscall Adam that is your friend, for if you have wasted yourself in a vanity, so have I, for here you see me full of honours, Martin, a justice, a member o' Parliament, a power at Court with great lords eager for my friendship ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... 'neath her frown the errant earth in winter seems Prostrate to lie, and petulant of mood; Restrained in icy fetters all the babbling streams, Like naughty babes who're learning ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... flowers, and sing with the birds, to swim in the pool with yonder newt, and lie down to dry in the long meadow grass among the poppies. Because I might not do this and other things as fond and foolish, I was petulant and peevish, like a spoilt child. I look to you, gentlemen, to help me to be a man, and play a man's part ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... me, for a moment, but his mind, I could see, was intent on the page along which Whinnie's stubbled finger was crawling like a plowshare beside each furrow of text. He was in the South Pacific, a thousand miles away from me. In my own house Struthers was putting a petulant-voiced Poppsy to bed, and Gershom, up in his room, was making extraordinary smells at his chemistry experiments. Susie I found curled comfortably up in front of the fire, idling over my first volume of ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... except perhaps a contemptuous look such as is so often the essence of eloquence. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, as a petulant child locked in a room for disobedience might treat a pillow, he seized me by an arm and jerked me from the bed. It was fortunate that the bones of my ankles and feet, not yet thoroughly knitted, were not again injured. And this was the performance of the very man who had locked my hands in the muff, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... me and my people without any manifest dolour, which is a great thing to say for so long a period in this world, we had our own trials and tribulations in the one of which I have now to make mention. Mungo Argyle, the exciseman, waxing rich, grew proud and petulant, and would have ruled the country side with a rod of iron. Nothing less would serve him than a fine horse to ride on, and a world of other conveniences and luxuries, as if he had been on an equality with gentlemen. And he bought a grand gun, which was called a fowling-piece; and he had two pointer ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain. It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the coarse material of his enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous puerile desire for a land of harps and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... perhaps deliberately, that Stanway had still before him the peril of financial embarrassment, that he was mortgaging the house, and that his colloquies with David Dain continued to be frequent and obviously disconcerting. When she saw him nervous, petulant, preoccupied, she attributed his condition solely to his thought of the one danger which she had secretly removed. She had a strange determined impulse to be happy ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... forty years old when he wrote this letter. By some people that is not considered a very great age; but he doubtless felt himself immensely older, as he was infinitely wiser, than his petulant ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... irritated by this petulant insult, resumed with some gentleness, "Stay, I was forgetting that I made you my ambassador to Madame Marie, at Ghent. Yes, gentlemen," added the king turning to the Flemings, "this man hath been an ambassador. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... ideal state; but no torment could be greater than loneliness with thoughts that wound. Jenny's thoughts wounded her. The mood of complacency was gone: that of shame and discontent was upon her. Distress was uppermost in her mind—not the petulant wriggling of a spoilt child, but the sober consciousness of pain in herself and in others. In vain did Jenny give little gasps of annoyance, intended by her humour to disperse the clouds. The gasps and exclamations were unavailing. She was ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... own limited comprehension of it; and that St. James uses no meaningless phrase, but is stating a logical and scientific truth, when he speaks of "The perfect Law of Liberty" (Jas. i, 25). What we have to do is, to follow this up, not by petulant self-assertion, but by quietly considering the why and wherefore of the whole thing. In doing so we can fortify ourselves with another maxim, that "Principle is not limited by Precedent." When we spread the wings of thought and speculate ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... supposed, and diverging from the point of direction of his own party with every step. Time and again had Devers, still fuming with nervous tension and mingled wrath and pain,—hungry and savage, too, it must be borne in mind,—given vent to some petulant expression because of the non-arrival of the young officer whom he saw fit to hold responsible for the loss of his men; and when at last Mr. Davies neared them, riding diagonally towards the troop from the low divide to the east, Devers did not change the direction of his little column so as ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... head nurse; and it was well that she had an energetic spirit, and so sweet a temper, that she was ready to sympathise with all Emily's petulant complaints, and even to find fault with herself for not being in two places at once. Two of the maids were ill, and the whole care of Emily and Jane devolved upon her, with only the ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lovelace: I have said too much. Impatience begins to break in upon me. If you can excuse me to the ladies, it will be better for my mind's sake, and for your credit's sake, that I do not see them. Call me to them over-nice, petulant, prudish—what you please call me to them. Nobody but Miss Howe, to whom, next to the Almighty, and my own mother, I wish to stand acquitted of wilful error, shall know the whole of what has passed. Be happy, as you may!—Deserve to be happy, and happy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... go, then!" cried Mrs. Maynard, in petulant disappointment, letting her wraps fall ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... broad edging of tents and waggons, which showed how suddenly its population had outgrown it. The Royal Standard still fluttered from the tower of St. Mary Magdalene, while close by its beautiful brother-turret of St. James bore aloft the blue flag of Monmouth. As I gazed the quick petulant roll of a drum rose up on the still morning air, with the clear ringing call of the bugles summoning the troops from their slumbers. Beyond the town, and on either side of it, stretched a glorious view of the Somersetshire downs, rolling away to ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the heart of Adele, and her tongue is loosened to a little petulant, fiery roulade against the severities of the life around her, which it would have greatly pained poor Rose to listen to in any speech of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... that, as works of young men, they contained, and even nailed to the Academy gates, a kind of Lutheran challenge to the then accepted teachers in all European schools of Art: perhaps a little too shrill and petulant in the tone of it, but yet curiously resolute and steady in its triple Fraternity, as of William of Burglen with his Melchthal and Stauffacher, in the Grutli meadow, not wholly to be scorned by even the knightliest powers of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Ward being torn from him, he was sent to Sheffield to stand his trial as Charles Peace. The leap from the train is already recorded; and at his last appearance in the dock he rolled upon the floor, a petulant and broken man. When once the last doom was pronounced, he forgot both fiddle and crowbar; he surrendered himself to those exercises of piety from which he had never wavered. The foolish have denounced him for a hypocrite, not knowing that the artist may have a ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... thick darkness and stumbling on and on, with a dull light glowing about his head and fading away directly, then more darkness and stumbling on, and once more a dull yellow glow, and this fading away, with the darkness increasing. Then a slight struggle, and a few petulant remonstrances. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... had imitated Gila Dare's petulant childish accent to perfection. At another time the three young men would have shouted over it. Now they looked ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... and this time the crowd gaped in good earnest. An indescribable emotion possessed for an instant the face of the young man in evening clothes. Then he fell back upon his first manner, half-petulant, half-mocking. "Six dollars I am bid," he announced, briskly, and looked straight ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... protests, and petulant warnings against her cousin by marriage, who she said was punctual at church, and learned, and knew statistics, but was "not for Conrad, no, no, no!" Lady Caroline lapsed into an attitude of fixed hostility; and shortly after the crash came, and her predictions were realized, vented her wrath ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Isobel was petulant, and perhaps a little frightened. She had not yet reached that stage of confidence familiar to all who cross the open seas. The first period of a gale is terrifying. Later there comes an indifference born of supreme trust in the ship. The steady onward ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... restless and feverish. He at once remembered what had passed. Bull's words haunted him; he could not forget them; they burnt within him like the flame of a moral fever. He was moody and petulant, and for a time could hardly conceal his aversion to Bull. Ah Eric! moodiness and petulance cannot save you, but prayerfulness would; one word, Eric, at the throne of grace—one prayer before you go down among the boys, that God in his mercy would wash away, in the blood of his dear Son, your ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... but she turned her head away with a petulant gesture of repulsion; and lest her eyes might feel the call of his she covered them with her hands. Her hopelessness, her loathing of him enclosed her like ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... reminding him of the numerous matters that would have to be settled up between them, especially Dan's responsibility in the new adventure, the transport of grain from Moab to Jerusalem. Dan's curiosity was not to be diverted, and seeing him give way to his rage like a petulant child, Joseph decided that he must tell him, and he began with a disparagement of his story, the truth of which he did not vouch for. At Capernaum they were all telling how some two or three weeks ago Jesus heard God speaking within him, and, naming those he wished ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... it seemed that her companion would take her at her word, so puzzled and troubled was his countenance, and he moved slightly, as about to obey the petulant behest; ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... emotions she had experienced, or the scenes in which she had played no feeble part, one sought in vain. Gaiety covered the melancholy, almost sombre depths in her character. And it was the gaiety of her French mother—petulant, reckless, irresistible, giddy, uncertain. As a child, dressed up in ribbons and lace, with flowers in her hair, she had been the chief amusement and plaything of Madame Duboc—to be held on her lap, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... with the oddest of commentaries on his father's mien and mind. He would never, the family sighingly recognized, be nearly as handsome as Mr. Leath; but his rather charmingly unbalanced face, with its brooding forehead and petulant boyish smile, suggested to Anna what his father's countenance might have been could one have pictured its neat features disordered by a rattling breeze. She even pushed the analogy farther, and descried in her step-son's mind a quaintly-twisted reflection of her husband's. With his ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... sat in the silence of despair, and the Colonel had been silent also—for what could he say?—but suddenly all four started in their saddles, and Sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. In the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then after an interval, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... statute laws may honestly inform a just prince how far his prerogative extends, so I may be allowed to tell your lordship, who by an undisputed title are the king of poets, what an extent of power you have, and how lawfully you may exercise it over the petulant scribblers of this age. As Lord Chamberlain, I know, you are absolute by your office in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of the stage. You can banish from thence scurrility and profaneness, and restrain the licentious insolence of poets and their actors in all things ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... door of an inner chamber, and crosses the stage with a quick petulant step, to ring a bell in the saloon: no answer is immediately given, and he repeats the ring ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... confidentially" to state his attitude toward Davis thus "While I do not and never have regarded him as a great man or statesman on a large scale, or a man of any marked genius, yet I have regarded him as a man of good intentions, weak and vacillating, timid, petulant, peevish, obstinate, but not firm. Am now beginning to doubt his good intentions.... His whole policy on the organization and discipline of the army is perfectly consistent with the hypothesis that he is aiming ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... undertake so many great labours. There are others, of little and narrow minds, either always despairing of everything, or else malcontent, envious, ill-tempered, churlish, calumnious, and morose; others devoted to amatory pleasures, others petulant, others audacious, wanton, intemperate, or idle, never continuing in the same opinion; on which account there is never any interruption to the annoyances to which ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... half believable—that there were things which walked about softly at night—things which did not want to be dead. He himself had picked them out from among the pictures in the gallery—pretty, light, petulant women; adventurous-eyed, full-blooded, eager men. His theory was that they hated their stone coffins, and fought their way back through the grey mists to try to talk and make love and to be seen of warm things which were alive. But ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... steadfast eyes the Prioress searched the pretty, flushed face, swollen with weeping, and now gathering a look of petulant defiance, thinly veiled ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Whatever the value of these views, they can scarcely have found favour among those who rallied to the Second Empire and who imagined that the Goncourts were a pair of firebrands: whereas, in fact, they were petulant, impulsive men of talent, smarting ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... bitter pique which the Baron had stirred up within me I transferred to the Baroness. The entire business seemed to me like a foul mystification; and I would now show that I was possessed of alarmingly good common-sense and also of extraordinary sagacity. Like a petulant child, I shunned the Baroness and escaped Adelheid when she pursued me, and found a place where I wished, right at the bottom end of the table between the two officers, with whom I began to carouse ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... as if there was going to be trouble between the two boys, for Thorny was naturally masterful, and illness had left him weak and nervous, so he was often both domineering and petulant. Ben had been taught instant obedience to those older than himself, and if Thorny had been a man Ben would have made no complaint; but it was hard to be "ordered round" by a boy, and an unreasonable one ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... (like mine,) should not be placed with an amiable one, (like the doctor's.) If misery loves company, so does anger; and a petulant man should have an associate who ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... those submissive words, the dutiful wife preceded him down a few stairs to a little basement front room, half kitchen, half parlour, where a girl of about nineteen, with an exceedingly pretty figure and face, but with an impatient and petulant expression both in her face and in her shoulders (which in her sex and at her age are very expressive of discontent), sat playing draughts with a younger girl, who was the youngest of the House of Wilfer. Not to encumber this page by telling off the Wilfers in detail and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... restless and forlorn. They hearkened yet to every call of the wind, who cared for them no longer but only played freakishly with them and broke their rest. I felt sorry for the leaves as I watched them in that dull, weird twilight, and angry—in a petulant fashion that almost made me laugh—with the wind that would not leave them in peace. Why should they—and I—be vexed with these transient breaths of desire for a life ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Goodwin, usually so accurate, stumbles unaccountably in this matter—which has been so strangely misleading to other competent men—and makes the sadly perverted statement that, "In June, John Turner was sent, and he soon returned with a petulant (sic) letter from Cushman, which, however, announced that the ship MAYFLOWER had been selected and in two weeks would probably leave London for Southampton." He adds, with inexcusable carelessness in the presence of the words "sixty last" (which his dictionary would have told ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... stood watching for the one which took him nearest to his door, that he made the slight reflection with which this story opens. "Could I make a horse-car the hero of my story?" he asked himself, with a petulant tone, as he thought how dismally dull he was. The jingling car came up, and he jumped upon the rear platform, wedged his way through the men and boys who crowded the steps and platform, and so pushed into the interior. He found half a dozen men in various ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... her head in a petulant silence; and a madrigal by the college choir checked any further remarks from Mr. Pryce. After the madrigal came a general move for refreshments, which were set out in the college library and in the garden. The Lord Chancellor must needs offer his arm to his host's sister, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... something so irresistible in this persistent devotion, that no one had the heart to oust her from her post. She slept on the floor, without uttering a complaint; bore jokes somewhat of the rudest; fared scantily, though her basket was daily filled with luxuries for her boy; and tended that petulant personage with a never-failing patience beautiful ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... doubt, at her daughter's defeat. All this seemed hard to endure uncomplainingly; but she was strong and proud, and before quitting her sylvan retreat she resolved to submit quietly and with a good grace to the new position of affairs, though brought about by such unworthy means. She would make no petulant complaints nor be sullen, nor drop any spiteful or scornful words to spoil her mother's satisfaction; nor would she make any overt attempts to supplant her mother in the girl's confidence, or to win even a share of her affection. She would hide her own pain, and faithfully perform the dry, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... speech safe. If he spoke at this moment he must speak in violent passion and bitter denunciation, and so with his hands tautly clutched at his back he held his counsel and paced the floor. Old Tom Burton's unaccustomed hours in the confinement of convalescence had left him petulant. The courtesy of the stranger's argument was lost upon him. All he saw was that it was argument, and he was in a condition to be ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... so," said Mark angrily, as he realised more fully their position; and a sense of confusion made him petulant. "Let's act and find our way. Now, then, which way does ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... louder. This is Mr. Williams. Speak up. I can't understand you." The voice was petulant and so distinct that even Shirley could hear it, as he knelt by the side of the phonograph. Again Van Cleft insisted on his deafness. There was the suggestion of a break in the voice which brought to Shirley's eyes the sparkle of a presentiment of success. At last Van Cleft admitted ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... and keep it will, Though my one lord, Torel of Istria, Live, or——" "Sweet, comfort thee! San Pietro speed! I shall come home: if not, and worthy knees Bend for this hand, whereof none worthy lives, Least he who lays his last kiss thus upon it, Look thee, I free it——" "Nay!" she said, "but I, A petulant slave that hugs her golden chain, Give that gift back, and with it this poor ring: Set it upon thy sword-hand, and in fight Be merciful and win, thinking of me." Then she, with pretty action, drawing on Her ruby, buckled over it his glove— The great steel ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... desperately to burn against the overwhelming odds of rain and wind which came down the chimneys. Mrs. Goddard never remembered to have been so uncomfortable during the two previous winters she had spent in Billingsfield, and even Nellie grew impatient and petulant. The only bright spot in those long days seemed to be made by the regular visits of Mr. Juxon, by the equally regular bi-weekly appearance of the Ambroses when they came to tea, and by the little dinners at the vicarage. The weather had grown so wet and the roads so ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... of the wild slopes and hollow ravines a gesture of impatience escaped Eustacia. She vented petulant words every now and then, but there were sighs between her words, and sudden listenings between her sighs. Descending from her perch she again sauntered off towards Rainbarrow, though this time she did not ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... one glance and dropped my eyes. She and I could not bear each other's looks yet. Meantime Marah stood erect in the center of the hall, her face pale, her lips set, her eyes fixed upon vacancy. Not a word passed our three mouths. At last a petulant murmur broke the dreadful silence, and Marah, tossing her head in disdain, turned away before our eyes and began to ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... being a closer resemblance to him than to Alfonso, or Giovanni Tornabuoni. Mantegna's portrait of Gonzaga, though made later, shows a rather different type, less displeasing than the bronze. In the bust we have what is probably the portrait of a coarse and clumsy person; he is petulant in the mouth, weak in the chin, gross in the thick and heavy jaw. The bronze is extremely rough, and shows no signs of the nervous and individual touches which we find in Donatello's terra-cotta. Both the busts are unfinished; in the absence of chasing and hammering ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... these quotations, if they fail of giving a fair representation of the poet, serve at least to characterise the critic,) could have won upon her only by a seeming air of profundity, by their utter contempt of perspicuous language, and a petulant disregard of even that rhythm, or regulated harmony, which has been supposed to distinguish verse from prose. For very manifest reasons, however, these are not the occasions on which we prefer to test the critical powers of Mrs Margaret Fuller. It is more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... be understood that Colonel Desmit passed a most uneasy night after Nimbus had left his house. He had been summoned before the Bureau! He had expected it. Hardly had he given way to his petulant anger when he recognized the folly of his course. The demeanor of the colored man had been so "sassy" and aggravating, however, that no one could have resisted his wrath, he was sure. Indeed, now that he came to look back at it, he wondered that ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... in his profession than in others. To be humane, generous, and candid is a very high degree of merit in any case, but those qualities deserve still greater praise when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Mrs Gertrude and Mrs Anne shall not be in brown kersey," said Mrs Louvaine, in her usual petulant tone. "And if Aubrey don him not in satin and velvet, my name is ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... thoroughly understands. The preacher taught me Latin, Greek, and history: two persons, however, occupied themselves with my religious education—the preacher and my old Rosalie. She is a good soul. How often have I teased her, been petulant, and almost angry with her! She thought so much of me, she was both mother and sister to me, and instructed me in religion as well as the preacher, although she is a Catholic. Since my father's childhood she has been a sort of governante in the ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... back about five that night. Here was Miss Lydia, cool and negligent on the porch, like she'd never had a care in the world; fresh dressed in something white and blue, with her niftiest hammock stockings, and tinkling the ukulele in a bored and petulant manner. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... in a petulant non sequitur, "is that YOU, my own twin-brother, never lets on about her comin' yer, permiskus like, when I ain't yer, and you and her gallivantin' and promanadin', and ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... example, any tribe or nation among them?—The spacious waste is destitute of the appearance of domestic industry, or respectable character; it exhibits only a tissue of indolence, hypocritical grimace, petulant and assuming manners, and all the consequences of idleness and corrupted morals. To succeed in this beneficent undertaking, and to expunge the inveterate nature of the African, his prejudices, and inherent customs, progressive approaches upon his present condition are ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... the manner of a petulant child. "I'll annoy them. I tell you I am not going to stand for a lot of people's coming here, sneaking and prying around to see what they can see. If anybody wants to enjoy a place like this let him work for ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... of keen cowboy eyes fastened intently upon her pretty, petulant face; and Madeline divined, if Helen did not, that the desired consummation was not ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... village not far from Honfleur, in that rich pastoral part of Lower Normandy called the Pays d'Auge. Annette was the pride and delight of her parents, and was brought up with the fondest indulgence. She was gay, tender, petulant, and susceptible. All her feelings were quick and ardent; and having never experienced contradiction or restraint, she was little practised in self-control: nothing but the native goodness of her heart kept her ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... thereof without being subject to this or any other, for he is a bold man. He asks aid, and it will be sent in due time. In the meanwhile steps are being taken to mollify him so that he will come to reason and not become petulant, on account of the inconveniences which might arise therefrom to the service of your Majesty, and the peace and welfare of this state. Since there is doubt as to what will happen, it will be even more desirable than when Estevan Rodriguez was living that your Majesty now give definite ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... attacked with singular malice and pertinacity. The attack began early in his life, and is still carried on with undiminished vigour, though he has now been more than a century and a quarter in his grave. He is indeed as fair a mark as factious animosity and petulant wit could desire. The faults of his understanding and temper lie on the surface, and cannot be missed. They were not the faults which are ordinarily considered as belonging to his country. Alone among the many Scotchmen who have raised themselves to distinction and prosperity ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... preparation room, and Penny sighed, as much as to say: "What a pity little boys are so petulant and quarrelsome." But the victory was his, as it always was, and he could think of other things. There was a clock on the wall behind him, but, too comfortable to turn his head, he ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... delight in mischief, excited in the mind of the convalescent almost as much surprise as the other's princely deportment. For hours together he would lie watching those two wonderfully contrasted beings. Petulant and malicious as Cudjo appeared, he was completely under the control of his noble companion, who would often stand looking down at his tricks and deformity, with composedly folded arms and an air of patient indulgence and compassion beautiful ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... of joys. The alluring sea, This morning clear and placid, may, ere night, Toss like a petulant child, and when the light Of a new morning dawns sweep grand and free A mighty power. If fierce, or mild, or bright, With every tide flows in a ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... the finale of the Symphony in C minor, the beginning of the Eighth Symphony in F major, or even a bright bit out of the Rienzi Overture. Peps, our little dog, on the other hand, was a highly sensitive and nervous creature. My friends used to call him 'Peps the petulant,' and there were times when we could not speak to him even in the friendliest way without bringing on paroxysms of howls and sobs. These two pets of course helped very much to increase the mutual understanding between myself and ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... light, though menial. When his mistress went out to walk, he must carry her spaniel in his arms. He must stand behind her at dinner, wielding a fly-brush of peacock's feathers. He must run errands, and be equally ready to serve her whims and satisfy her wants. She was not harsh, but very petulant; and had Paul been hasty or high-tempered, his lot might have been a bitter one. On the contrary, he was quiet, docile, and bashful, and he pleased her marvellously. If he sometimes wept for the happy past, or felt a child's strong yearning for something to love, he hid ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... in mercy to the boasted intelligence of this age, the historian, when writing the history of these times, will ascribe the attempt of the President to enforce the Lecompton resolution upon an unwilling people to the fading intellect, the petulant passion and the trembling dotage of an old man on the ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... remarked Zoe, in a half-petulant tone, glancing toward them as she spoke, and apparently addressing Violet, as she was the only other person on the veranda at ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... very scarce in Banbridge this morning," remarked Charlotte, in a sweet, slightly petulant voice. She was both angry and ashamed that she had been forced to apply to Anderson to cash the check. "I have been everywhere, and nobody had as much as twenty-five ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Loveliness whose very elements perhaps appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which through' the poem, or through the music, we attain to but ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... hammock and watching the car out of sight down the long vista of the village street. "He hasn't given me one real good look yet. I suppose if I were a patient he would favour me with an all-seeing gaze out of those Irish-Scotch barbarian eyes of his, but as it is"—her voice was slightly petulant—"I believe I shall have to do as Arthur has: make up some symptoms and go over ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... petulant," she said, looking down, "and you are generally right; but don't you think in this case you are looking too far ahead, and attributing motives to Lord de Burgh of which he may be ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... as Miss Miniver. Miss Miniver looked out on the world through large emotional blue eyes that were further magnified by the glasses she wore, and her nose was pinched and pink, and her mouth was whimsically petulant. Her glasses moved quickly as her glance travelled from face to face. She seemed bursting with the desire to talk, and watching for her opportunity. On her lapel was an ivory button, bearing the words "Votes for Women." Ann Veronica sat at the foot of the sufferer's bed, while Teddy ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... right," said Wait, with eagerness. "Been sick... better... turn-to now." He sighed.—"Howly Mother!" exclaimed Belfast with a heave of the shoulders, "stand up, Jimmy."—"Keep away from me then," said Wait, giving Belfast a petulant push, and reeling fetched against the doorpost. His cheekbones glistened as though they had been varnished. He snatched off his night-cap, wiped his perspiring face with it, flung it on the deck. "I am coming out," ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... these things, as things which didn't concern her particularly. Less and less each day she had grown to care whether Peter found his cousin Lucy a kindred spirit or not. She could work herself up into a fit of petulant jealousy about it at times; but it didn't touch her inmost being; it was a very ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... in fair disguise tempting some hermit of the desert, the thought, "What is Aurora doing? If Aurora knew I was ill, she would come." And the imagination of her coming would shed a feverish gladness all along those petulant, ill-treated, starved nerves. "What have I to do with Aurora, or Aurora with me?" he would ask, furiously, the incongruity of what had happened to him calling forth sometimes a desperate laugh. But Nature laughs at man's ideas of congruity; remembering that, he could only ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... them repeatedly; but he denies the accusation, and she rather believes his denial than the assertion of her best friends. Knowing Hannah as you do, Lucy, you cannot but remember the petulant self-will, the scorn of contradiction and opposition, which used half to vex and half to amuse us in the charming spoilt child. We little dreamt how dangerous that fault, almost diverting in trifles, might become ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Every eye was fixed on those clogs; even the little eyes of Mr Peake quitted the button of his waistcoat and burned like diamond points on those clogs. Florence herself chiefly gazed on those clogs, but occasionally her nonchalant petulant gaze would wander up and down her bare arms and across her bosom. At intervals, with her ringed fingers she would lift the short skirt—a nothing, an imperceptibility, half an inch, with glance downcast; and the effect was profound, recondite, inexplicable. Her style was not ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Button-Bright, and took care not to step on the mound. He went on, whistling merrily, until a petulant voice cried: ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the Ambassador alluded to the other member of the States-General who opposed the decree was still more diverting. It was "Grotius, the Pensioner of Rotterdam, a young petulant brain, not unknown to your ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... there was a general rush from Richards kennel, accompanied with every canine tone from the howl of the wolf-dog to the petulant bark of the terrier. The master received their boisterous salutations with a variety of imitations from his own throat, when the dogs, probably from shame of being outdone, ceased their out- cry. One stately, powerful mastiff, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... girl. Either because his formulated thought was now completely knocked out of his mind by his own emphasis in defending it, or because he detected something of portent in her expression, his manner suddenly changed, and with a petulant glance at his writing he laid down his pen and sank back in his chair to listen. " Well, what is it, my ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... prone to rare, occasional displays of temper. Saxham's white saint had proved her descent from Eve by stamping her slender foot at her hulking Doctor; had, after a sudden outburst of passionate, unreasonable upbraiding, risen from the dinner-table and run out of the room, to hide a petulant, remorseful shower of tears. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... taking a stand far above any I have ever been able to reach in their admiration. I cannot conceive that other old men feel differently. Of course, I cannot demonstrate what I say; but I was young once, and I am sure I was never ungenerously thrust back." The man who thus counseled petulant youth with the experienced calmness of age was thirty-nine years old. A state of society where one could at that age call himself or be called by others an old man, is proved by that fact alone to be one of wearing hardships and early decay of the vital powers. The survivors of the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the true one is a surmise that has no place here. I offer you merely this little story of two strollers; and for proof of its truth I can show you only the dark patch above the cast-iron of the stage-entrance door of Keetor's old vaudeville theatre made there by the petulant push of gloved hands too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb-latch—and where I last saw Cherry whisking through like a swallow into her nest, on time to the minute, as usual, to dress for ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... protection was not tremendous, but as the history of half a century has shown, it was adequate and sufficient, and Lord Derby at once resigned. He did not take his defeat well. 'Strange to say,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to his wife, 'Lord Derby has been making a most petulant and intemperate speech in the House of Lords on his resignation; such that Newcastle was obliged to rise after him and contradict the charge of combination; while nothing could be better in temper, feeling, and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... probably weep when the hour of parting comes. Then Sikou-San with Doctor Y——; and lastly the midshipman Z—— with the tiny Madame Touki-San, no taller than a boot: thirteen years old at the outside and already a regular woman, full of her own importance, a petulant little gossip. In my childhood, I was sometimes taken to the Learned Animals Theater, and I remember a certain Madame de Pompadour, a principal role, filled by a gayly dressed-up old monkey; Touki-San reminds me ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti |
