"Squeamish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that we were to start off next morning by the 7.10 train, and half an hour before that time saw me standing before the Columbus statue in the Piazza Acquaverdi. Weems was such a mighty squeamish little creature about the proprieties that I thought an old dunnage-sack would scandalize him, and so had purchased a drab portmanteau for my kit at the cost of half my remaining capital. I intended to have no more breezes with him if it could ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... expecting the police. At once the suggestion was made that they should go and look at the suicide. The idea met with approval: our ladies had never seen a suicide. I remember one of them said aloud on the occasion, "Everything's so boring, one can't be squeamish over one's amusements, as long as they're interesting." Only a few of them remained outside. The others went in a body into the dirty corridor, and amongst the others I saw, to my amazement, Lizaveta ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... dismay. But Mrs. Thaddeus was thoroughly of her husband's mind. What he had been, as she knew from his letters, and what she found him now, passed through her mind in a flash. She was modest enough, but not squeamish; and the honest face of "Cobbler" Horn was one which no woman, under the circumstances, need have hesitated to kiss. So, in a moment, to the amusement of the crowd, to the huge delight of the grateful Thaddeus, and to the confusion ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... There is an unwritten code in force in this respect, every paragraph of which is made and provided to cover the individual needs of such impecunious officers. The matter is well understood throughout the land, and is looked upon as an established institution, something in which squeamish scruples are not allowed to interfere with concrete requirements. No German maiden consciously feels the shame of being thus made purely an object of barter and sale. She is to the manner bred. But of course good, fat dowries are often taken by officers, together with brides, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... just enough sting in the ash-plant's kiss, when it catches you on the softer parts of your thigh, your funny bone, or your wrist, to keep you wide awake, and remind you of the good old rule of "grin and bear it;" but the ash-plant leaves no marks which are likely to offend the eyes of squeamish clients or ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... human intelligence, they could and must be solved. In spite of their belief in mysterious powers which control the destinies of men and nations, they did not think it decent to abandon public affairs to Providence; nor did they avert their gaze from them as too mundane for the squeamish intellectual to handle and turn them over to the tender mercies of the ignorant and less scrupulous demagogue or doctrinaire. Their public affairs were no more interesting than ours: they were indeed considerably less interesting—unless we are prepared to argue that the election of generals to ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... own happiness. If they receive a pleasure more exquisite than ours from a flower, a glimpse of the sea, a gracious action, they are correspondingly quick to feel dissonances, imperfections, slights. Like Lamb, they are "rather squeamish about their women and children." Like Keats, they are "snuffed out by an article." Keener pleasures, keener pains, this is the law of their life; but it is applicable to all persons of the so-called artistic temperament. It is one of the penalties ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... dear little prude I had no idea that you would take it so seriously but Aunt Emma was so disappointed and spoke of the rejected suitor in such glowing terms, and said that you had sacrificed a splendid opportunity because of some squeamish notions on the subject of temperance, and so of course, my dear cousin, it was just like me to let my curiosity overstep the bounds of prudence, and inquire why you ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... us an' left. He's not far," said Dale, as he stooped to lift the head of the deer. "Warm! Neck broken. See the lion's teeth an' claw marks.... It's a doe. Look here. Don't be squeamish, girls. This is only an hourly incident of everyday life in the forest. See where the lion has rolled the skin down as neat as I could do it, an' he'd just begun to bite in ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... liking for the young man's intimacy in the office of Joseph Calvin and less liking for the scandal of that intimacy which arose when the rich litigants in the Judge's court crowded into Calvin's office for counsel. The Doctor wondered if he was squeamish about certain matters, merely because it was his own son-in-law who was the subject of the disquieting gossip connected with Calvin's practice in Van Dorn's court. Then there was the other matter. The Doctor could notice that the town was having ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... coal-tickets, you know, and grocery-tickets; and—and—we have to help to give great big Christmas dinners. We are all day long getting up entertainments for those dull sort of people. I often think they are not a bit grateful, and after being at a school like this I really feel quite squeamish ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... taking over the criminal end of the business. I never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in lower ten, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding. I never ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... then destroy this trash ere we go, so that they get it not. If thy heart is bent upon saving this treasure, then thy hand must first put thy friends into their long sleep. Nay, peace! There is no alternative. The man who mates with me shall be a man indeed; no petty, squeamish lover whose weak heart sickens at removing ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... no business with a conscience, sir. Conscience makes a man squeamish o' doing right for fear his wife's second cousin ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... squeamish for a day or two after leaving Melbourne," I replied, "but I soon got over it, and it was not very bad even while it lasted. I ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... of these two people is pointed out respectfully to the attention of persons commencing the world. Praise everybody, I say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it dark if I were you. Kishineff is a back number, and we don't take much stock in the new massacres. Still, we're a bit squeamish—— ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... out we came to Deradda, where eighty men were at work. Next came Shellogah and the squeamish bit of bog. A number of men were busy on the line, and right in front of us was a gap in the rails, the platelayers laying the steel for dear life while the engine came up. We slackened speed, but made no stop, and the last rail was finally bolted ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... multitude of gulpins even in the most elevated classes of society. He visited princes, dukes, the sons of ancient senators, and it was on them or the ladies of their circle that he made the experiments of his misapplied talents. The females, particularly, however squeamish they were, were never sufficiently so to prevent themselves from being plundered by him. For several months the police were on the look out for this seducing young man, who, changing his dress and abode incessantly, escaped from their clutch at the moment when they thought ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... the law were not to be shy or squeamish in case there were any that had the plague or leprosy, scab or blotches; but must look on them, go to them, and offer for them (Lev 13), all which is to signify, that Jesus Christ should not refuse to take notice of the several infirmities of the poorest people, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... had been a member of Daly's famous New York company, and afterward a "star" under his direction. She was a woman who could not be taught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was not squeamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty—I think she was lame—I seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand was disproportionately young and slight, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... melodious bass. He was the monarch of the Prado in winter: in summer of the Chaumiere and Mont Parnasse. Not a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment showed a more amiable laisser-aller in the dance—that peculiar dance at which gendarmes think proper to blush, and which squeamish society has banished from her salons. In a word, Harmodius was the prince of mauvais sujets, a youth with all the accomplishments of Goettingen and Jena, and all the eminent graces ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... George knew of this gold before he saw the King, he would be sure to tell him of it, and the King might claim it, for George would never explain that it was a gift from father to son; whereas if the King had once pardoned him, he would not be so squeamish as to open up the whole thing again with a postscript to his confession. But of this she ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... for by loan-sharks, clairvoyants, medical quacks, and the votaries of vice. The New York "Herald" has recently stopped printing its vicious personals. It also refuses fortune-tellers the hospitality of its columns, though it is not so squeamish in regard to loan-agencies and patent medicines. How many papers still publish the advertisement of Mrs. Laudanum's soothing syrup for babies? When you remember that the proprietary medicine concerns have been accustomed to spend forty million dollars ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... Hon. — by name. The only explanation of his conduct one can arrive at is, to believe that his weak mind was fast confined by the trammels of that absurd, but often too convenient, theory of international non-interference,—the most dangerous kind of red-tape that ever tethered the squeamish conscience of an ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... of Harvard, Md. Their lot had been that of ordinary slaves in the country, on farms, &c. The motive which prompted them to escape was the fact that their master had "threatened to sell" them. He had a right to do so; but Hetty was a little squeamish on this point and took great umbrage at her "kind master." In this "disobedient" state of mind, she determined, if hard struggling would enable her, to defeat the threats of Mr. Daniel Coolby, that ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... charge of a cross-grained, superannuated sergeant and his wife; of whom the one was partially deaf and the other totally. Also the regulars had marched out but three days before, and the apartments—the dormitories especially—were not in a condition to propitiate the squeamish. Also No. 17 Company of the Royal Artillery had included a notable proportion of absent-minded gunners who, in the words of a latter-day bard, had left a lot of little things behind them. Lieutenant Clogg, on being introduced to his ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... squeamish glance out of the corner of one eye at the moving ground beneath them, and then, realizing that they were on their way back to the Mirabelle, swallowed and ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... well as men of the robe or the sword; or why, if honour and money are good for one profession, they should not be good for another. No man in other callings thinks himself degraded by receiving a reward from his Government; nor, surely, need the literary man be more squeamish about pensions, and ribbons, and titles, than the ambassador, or general, or judge. Every European state but ours rewards its men of letters. The American Government gives them their full share of its small patronage; and if ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... got a man who wasn't squeamish about the job! And I'd always been preparing to do it myself. It was my job—just the ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... not squeamish, nor did he entertain slavish thoughts of how people would feel over a disregarded custom. He liked simplicity, and moreover he felt the need of exercise now that his work kept him inactive most of the time. He was at an age when men take on ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... Sabbath days only, but daily, he was at his post. The multitudes of visitors from all parts to the great city supplied a constant stream of listeners, for Ephesus was a centre for the whole country. We may learn from Paul to concentrate work in important centres, not to be squeamish about where we stand to preach the Gospel, and not to be afraid of making ourselves conspicuous. Paul's message hallows the school of Tyrannus; and the school of Tyrannus, where men have been accustomed to go for widely different teaching, is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... men, however, were courteous enough to attend to their unwilling guests and see they were served as well as conditions would permit The food was plentiful and of good quality, but although none of Uncle John's party was squeamish or a stickler for form, all more or less revolted from the utter disregard of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... moral as Lady Portsea, who has all the world at her balls, and as refined as Mrs. Bull, who breaks the king's English, and has half-a-dozen dukes at her table," Pen answered, rather sulkily. "Why should you and I be more squeamish than the rest of the world? Why are we to visit the sins of her fathers on this harmless, kind creature? She never did any thing but kindness to you or any mortal soul. As far as she knows she does her best. She does not set up to be more than she is. She gives you the best dinners ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was impossible. Hal had made up his mind that he would trifle with his opponent no longer. He realized fully that his own life depended upon his getting the upper hand and that it was no time to be squeamish. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... barbarism; and I am not sure that some of my English friends do not feel reluctant to side with the subjects of the Czar against the countrymen of Harnack and Eucken. One would like to know, however, since when did the Germans take up this attitude? They were not so squeamish during the "war of emancipation," which gave birth to modern Germany. At that time the people of Eastern Prussia were anxiously waiting for the appearance of Cossacks as heralds of the Russian hosts who were to emancipate them from the yoke of Napoleon. Did the Prussians ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Cadogan and I have already bespoken places at the Braziers, and I hope Parson Digby will come time enough to be of the party. I presume we shall have your honour's company, if your stomach is not too squeamish for a single serving." ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... the fancy of the Honourable Miss Languish, and which were echoed from the mouth and mind of Miss Squeamish were those of 'high romance,' as it is termed. Young, handsome, virtuous, and valiant heroes going through more wonderful adventures than our poor Mosette in her nine lives, and poor Neddy Bray in his, I ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... England in a sailing vessel in 1851 and was five weeks on the voyage. My sister did not leave her bunk all the way over and I was squeamish myself, but I see the sailors drinking seawater every morning, so I joined them and was never sick a minute after. We brought our own food with us and it was cooked for us very well and brought to us hot. We did not ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... though very much the beau, was very little of the gentleman. To a hump-backed lady who declared that she had "come straight from London," Nash replied, "Then you must have picked up a d—d crook by. the way." But polite society was not squeamish, and took him at his own valuation. His assemblies became the rage, his social despotism was eagerly acquiesced in, and the improvements he demanded were ungrudgingly supplied. The social labours of Nash were admirably seconded by the work of two architects ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... Florine; why should I not profit by her fancy, when the greatest nobles buy a night with such women with their richest treasures? When ambassadors set foot in these depths, they fling aside all thought of yesterday or to-morrow. I should be a fool to be more squeamish than princes, especially as I love no one ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... German friend does. Or if you are a prize-fighter, you ought to be a human bulldog. There's no such thing as a gentlemanly pugilist, any more than there can be a virtuous burglar. And if you're a South American Dictator, you can't afford to be squeamish about throwing your enemies into jail or shooting them for treason. The way to dictate is to dictate,—not to hide indoors all day while your wife ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... ribbon, white, yeller, pink, and brown—dappled all over her face, but her nose, which has a red spot on it—lifts up a pair of lack-lustre peepers that look glazed like the round dull ground-glass lights let into the deck, suddenly wakes up squeamish, and says, 'Please, Sir, help me down; I feel so ill.' Well, you take her up in your arms, and for the first time in your life hold her head from you, for fear she will reward you in a way that ain't no matter, and she ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a woman, squeamish," Pierre said in a rough voice. "She would come with us, thinking she could pick up a trinket or two; but, ma foi, it is hot down there, and she turned sick. So we ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... is no affectation in it. He does not talk of himself for lack of something to write about, but because some circumstance that has happened to himself is the best possible illustration of the subject, and he is not the man to shrink from giving the best possible illustration of the subject from a squeamish delicacy. He likes both himself and his subject too well. He does not put himself before it, and say, 'Admire me first,' but places us in the same situation with himself, and makes us see all that he does. There is no blindman's-buff, no ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... mouth, and the rapidly rising wind cut the tops off the short seas and sent them flying over the bridge in constant showers of spray. Moreover, the perpetual pitching and rolling soon gave our friend a squeamish and altogether nasty sensation in the region of his waistcoat, and in ten minutes, by which time the water had found its way through his oilskins and was trickling merrily down the back of ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... which he flings his wood-blocks at all who side against her. Canning, Castlereagh, Bexley, Sidmouth, he is at them, one and all; and as for the Prince, up to what a whipping-post of ridicule did he tie that unfortunate old man! And do not let squeamish Tories cry out about disloyalty; if the crown does wrong, the crown must be corrected by the nation, out of respect, of course, for the crown. In those days, and by those people who so bitterly attacked ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the King's associates. Clarendon lamented what he had seen, as a sad lapse from dignity, a grievous fall from the ideals that he had hoped for. What followed was nothing but a carnival of mad obscenity. Samuel Pepys was no squeamish critic; but even he was moved to some earnestness of indignation at the foul orgies in which Charles and his new associates indulged, in shameless publicity. As was natural, such advisers were no careful guardians of Parliamentary or popular liberty. What ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... which caused some good-natured discussion nine years ago, between the contributor and the editor. Perhaps I was squeamish not to have been, willing to print this matter at that time. Some persons, no doubt, will adopt that opinion, but as both President and author have long ago met on the other side of criticism and magazines, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Gorgon's passion had completely got the better of her reason. Her Ladyship was naturally cold, and artificially extremely squeamish; and when this great red-faced enemy of hers looked tenderly at her through his red little eyes, and squeezed her hand and attempted to renew old acquaintance, she felt such an intolerable disgust at his triumph, at his familiarity, and at the remembrance of her own former ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... true enough," replied Grind; "but the mischief is, your men of nicer honour are too squeamish for the kind of work in which we employed him. This is the defect in all such operations. Men ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... line, in conformity with good sense and good taste, should be actually drawn. I confess a leaning to the American school, but how far I am influenced by education it would not be easy for me to say myself. Foreigners affirm that we are squeamish, and that we wound delicacy oftener by the awkward attempts to protect it, than if we had more simplicity. There may be some truth in this, for though cherishing the notions of my youth, I never belonged to the ultra ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... interests don't demand the sacrifice of a man's life!" retorted Jefferson. "I know modern business methods are none too squeamish, but I should think you'd draw ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... affections as tender and simple as ever dwelt in the bosom of any man; and if, in the heyday of his spirits and the prodigal outpouring of his jovial good humor, he could give a hand to many "a lad and lass" whom the squeamish world would turn its back on (indeed, there was a virtue in his benevolence, but we dare not express our sympathies now for poor Doll Tearsheet and honest Mistress Quickly)—if he led a sad riotous life, and mixed with many a bad woman in his time, his heart was pure, and he knew a good one when ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... most important of them all, the shifting of the action back into the age of expiring feudalism, was made reluctantly. Schiller felt, and had reason to feel, that the modernity of his drama was its very life-blood;[32] for the squeamish Dalberg, however, the robbers in the age of Frederick the Great were a painful anachronism. So they were put back three centuries and costumed in the style of the 'Ritterstueck'. Other less dubious changes were also made. Thus the long soliloquies of Franz and the ribald ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... into a law. Though nothing could be more ridiculously fanatic and impertinent than a declaration of such a scruple against a practice so laudable and necesssary, in a country where that day of the week is generally spent in merry-making, riot, and debauchery, the house paid so much regard to the squeamish consciences of those puritanical petitioners, that Monday was pitched upon for the day of exercise to the militia, though on such working days they might be much more profitably employed, both for themselves and their country; and that no religious pretence should be left ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... six great chopping bastards,[67] each as lusty as an infant Hercules, this delicate creature blushes at the sight of his new bridegroom, assumes a virgin delicacy; or, to use a more fit, as well as a more poetic comparison, the person so squeamish, so timid, so trembling lest the winds of heaven should visit too roughly, is expanded to broad sunshine, exposed like the sow of imperial augury, lying in the mud with all the prodigies of her fertility about her, as ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... court.... Nor can we in the second place find among the foregoing records proof of the necessity of the transfer to the Registrar General of the judicial powers.... As a matter of fact, witnesses do not seem to have been at all squeamish in divulging repulsive details in open Court, nor, on the other hand, do the magistrates ever seem to have shown too exacting a disposition as to the nature or amount of the evidence they required to sustain ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... answered Martha. "Take no heed of her, the child has suffered much, she is weak and squeamish. Now I, although I believe that my death lies before me, I say, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Dibbleton is only a sneaking mode of pronouncing Devilton; as, I admit, I have heard the old people laughingly term the Neck. This belongs to the "Gaul darn ye" school, and it is not to my taste. I say the ignorant and vulgar, for this is just the class to be squeamish on such subjects. I have been told—though I cannot say that I have heard it myself—but I am told, there have been people from the eastward among us of late years, who affect to call "Hell-Gate," "Hurl-Gate," or "Whirl-Gate," ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... they arose. When he presents you with a bouquet, you notice that the flowers have been plucked up by the roots, and to the roots a portion of the soil still adheres. On his daily life his Essays grew like lichens upon rocks. If a thing is useful to him, he is not squeamish as to where he picks it up. In his eye there is nothing common or unclean; and he accepts a favour as willingly from a beggar as from a prince. When it serves his purpose, he quotes a tavern catch, or the smart saying of a kitchen wench, with as much relish as the fine ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... all niceness; and was no longer squeamish as to the sort of food I might swallow. In fact, I could have eaten anything that was eatable. And now for the ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... another three full Moons beguil'd, But that his forward Spouse has prov'd with Child, And now begins the drugery of Life, Lo! the vast Comforts of a Breeding Wife, Now she's grown Squeamish, such ado is kept, She e'en as peevish as an Ape new whipt, She pukes and whines, do's nothing but complain, And vows she'll never know the like again; But 'tis as Children promise to be good, Only remember'd while they feel the Rod. And now the look'd for time approaches nigh, And you've ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... free and easy and nobody took offense at anything said or done. In fact if one were squeamish about such things Sanguinetti's was no place for him or her. One found one's self talking and laughing with the people about as if they were old friends. It made no difference how you were dressed, nor how dignified ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... Beaman's book is not like war correspondence. It can be commended to those who were not there, but who wish to hear a true word or two. Mr. Beaman as a good-natured man remembers how squeamish we are, and being also shy and dainty indicates some matters but briefly. I wish, for one thing, that when describing the doings of his cavalry squadron after the disaster on the Fifth Army front—the author enables you to feel how slender was the line of resolute men which ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... consequence of this! While she was, and constantly professed to be, an unmarried mother; she was fit society for the squeamish and the formal. The moment she acknowledged herself a wife, and that by a marriage perhaps unexceptionable, the case was altered. Mary and myself, ignorant as we were of these elevated refinements, supposed that our marriage would place ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... word for squeamish, but the East Anglian name Creasey, Cressy, is usually for the local Kersey (Suffolk). The only solution of Pratt is that it is Anglo-Sax. praett, cunning, adopted early as a personal name, while Storr, of Scandinavian ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... I give you my apples, fellows, seeing that you were too lazy to climb and get them for yourselves? None of you ever gave me anything when I was hungry, after the sack of Caen, in which my master, being squeamish, would take no part. Therefore I went to bed supperless, because, as I remember you said, I had not earned it. Still, as I don't want to fight the French with a bellyache, go scramble ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... the life aboard ship, the swing of the great seas, and the rolling and pitching of the steamer. The heave and swing of the steamer and the mountainous waves have been so realistically shown on the screen in the theatre that some squeamish spectators have been made almost seasick. It might be comforting to those who were made unhappy by the sight of the heaving seas to know that the operator who took one series of sea pictures, when ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... noon, and evening; the most squeamish recovered confidence in twenty-four hours; and every constitutional lubber concluded he was a ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... I nearly fell over him. "God damn you!" said I, and kicked him. He howled with pain, but, although he was the best of house-dogs and would have brought down any thief who came near him, he did not growl at me, and quietly followed me. I am not squeamish, but I was frightened directly the oath had escaped my lips. I felt as if I had created something horrible which I could not annihilate, and that it would wait for me and do me some mischief. The dog kept ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... We have a good many invitations, but I have not cared to accept any of them, for I do not think that Jeanne would care much for the life at an ordinary country house. I myself," she continued, with perfect truth, "am not squeamish, but the last house-party I was at was certainly not the place for a ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... possibly break through: It comes out now in sound and emphasis, and the modest Pen is as prone and ready to write it. So that I once more affirm, that if it were not done in respect to his Lady, who, no doubt, peruses him extreamly, it must naturally be the effect of Hypcrisie, for, to be squeamish in one place and not in another is Ridiculous, especially when one word is Innocent in its kind, and makes the sense, and the other when us'd makes it wretched Affectation, and ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... a blessed Hearing! I'm glad of the Reformation: Sir, you were so squeamish, forsooth, that a Whore wou'd not down with ye; no, 'twou'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... knaw? An' what matter if he is? Your business is with the bees, not him. An' you've got no quarrel with him because that Blanchard have. After what Will done against you, you needn't be so squeamish as ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Dutchmen, who were out on the Koodoo Flats with their cattle. Man, it's no good being squeamish. Do you think you can talk over these surly back-veld fools? If we had not done it, the best of their horses would now be over the Berg to give warning. Besides, I tell you, Sikitola's men wanted blooding. I did for the old swine, Coetzee, with my own hands. Once he set his dogs on me, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... went outside to feed the dogs. "Don't forget to beat his head off," he called back. "And if you're squeamish about it, just call on me. I won't keep ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Fielding's, and it may safely be set aside. One objection which has been made, and made with reason, is that Fielding, while taking care that Nemesis shall follow his hero's lapses, has spoken of them with too much indulgence, or rather without sufficient excuse. Coleridge, who was certainly not squeamish, seems to have felt this when, in a MS. note [Footnote: These notes were communicated by Mr. James Gillman to The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published by H. N. Coleridge in 1836. The book in which they were made, (it is the four volume edition of 1773, and ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... reckon I can take care of myself. I always could. And you—well, you know as well as I do what sort of a scrap that—that woods-rat can put up, or you ought to. He gave you a sort of a demonstration, once, if I remember correctly. I stick! I never was overly squeamish. But don't fool yourself, Archie, don't fool yourself. If we light, we're fighting with a regular guy, your insinuation to the contrary. I merely wanted you to realize what I know now. We'll think we've been in a battle before we ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... brother Harry to sell the ship. Couldn't think of it. Worry him to death. It would be like the end of the world coming. And certainly not for a business of that kind! . . . Do you think it would be a swindle? asks Cloete, twitching his mouth. . . George owns up: No-would be no better than a squeamish ass if he thought that, after all ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... they were, and the equals and betters of all other 'bores' upon the face of the earth, had managed to invest with a majesty that was almost Papal the whiteness and rigidity of his stone. But the marble at last grew animated and let it be understood that it didn't do to be at all squeamish if one went to that house, since the woman was always tipsy and the husband so uneducated that he called a ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... etait gentilhomme; Sainte-Beuve ne l'etait pas," was likely to make its unfavourable side specially felt in this connection. He seems to have disgusted even the Princess Mathilde, one of the staunchest of friends and certainly not the most squeamish or prudish of women. Nor, in another matter, can I approve his favourite mixture of rum and curacao as a liqueur. I gave it a patient trial once, thinking it might be critically inspiring. But the rum muddles the curacao, and the curacao does not really improve the rum. It is a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Some time the squeamish sister watched the spot; At length the other, who'd her wishes got, The station took; the lab'rer tried to please The second as the first, but less at ease; So many favours fell not to her share, And only treble comfort proved ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... Jasper. It is difficult, I know, to perish with dignity on sixteen and eightpence halfpenny: the odd coppers spoil the effect. Still we might bestow them on a less squeamish ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the name of each member of the colony; when they came and how often they have gone away, and the Lord help you if your residence isn't right! That's the one thing that the Judge is squeamish about, and as Mrs. Judge keeps tab for him, there is no use trying to fudge. If you don't come up before the Judge in six months and one week, she inquires of your landlady the reason for your delay. And of course the landlady knows the reason, even if you don't yourself. ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... enough to ruin him. Upright, honorable conduct is often its own reward. Now, our little red-haired friend can put his manners in a strait-jacket for a time and accommodate himself to the whims of the gentry; and he is not squeamish in money-matters, so that he gets money, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... blood in history is that line of Tacitus in his 'Germany,' which reads, 'In all grave matters they consult their women.' Years hence, when robust Saxon sense has flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot fastidious scholarship and squeamish fashion, some second Tacitus from the valley of the Mississippi will answer to him of the Seven Hills: 'In all grave ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... hinted, that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading, had not only rendered our hero unfit for serious and sober study, it had even disgusted him in some degree with that in which he had ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... circumstances may contribute, which would avail to render him worthy of praise for having employed this artifice in order to know those people, and to make trial of them; just as Gideon made use of some extraordinary means of choosing the most valiant and the least squeamish among his soldiers. And even if the prince were to know already the disposition of all these messengers, may he not put them to this test in order to make them known also to the others? Even though these reasons be not applicable to God, they make ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... not in the mood for it if I could," was his answer. "What folly does she give way to? This is the ninth time she hath felt strangely, and I have felt as squeamish as she—but nine is more than I ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... understand." "Oh, we had a family row this morning. I told her that if she wanted to get along in Chicago she'd have to discard her Millville morals and be a good fellow. She's squeamish. I let her ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... was entirely recognizable. Albeit Miss Lee, having spent much time in the mixed society of various European watering-places, was not by any means an unsophisticated young person, and was not at all a squeamish one, she was sensibly relieved by finding that the chair next to hers was occupied by a silvery-haired old lady of the most unquestionable respectability; and her composure was further restored, presently, by the return to his chair, on the other side of her of Mr. Port: who ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... nine o'clock in the morning, the wind grew high, and we being among the sands lay at anchor; I began to be dizzy and squeamish. Before dinner my Lord sent for me down to eat some oysters, the best my Lord said that ever he ate in his life, though I have ate as good at Bardsey. After dinner, and all the afternoon I walked upon the deck to keep myself from being sick, and at last about five o'clock, went to bed and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sensitive and irritable, but his natural generosity had kept him from becoming suspicious and mistrustful. This same false position was the cause of an utter inconsistency, which permeated his whole being. He was fastidiously accurate and horribly squeamish, tried to be cynical and coarse in his speech, but was an idealist by nature. He was passionate and pure-minded, bold and timid at the same time, and, like a repentant sinner, ashamed of his sins; he was ashamed alike of his timidity and his purity, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... No squeamish notions filled his breast, The Union was his theme; "No surrender and no compromise," ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... stumbling steps toward the light of her tent. Her eyes had not been used to such black shadow along the ground. She had, too, squeamish feminine fears of hydrophobia skunks, and nameless animals or reptiles that were imagined denizens of the darkness. She gained her tent and entered. The Mexican, Gino, as he called himself, had lighted her lamp and fire. Carley was chilled through, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... o' threatenin' feelin' in de blowin' of de breeze, An' I 's feelin' kin' o' squeamish in de night; I 's a-walkin' 'roun' a-lookin' at de diffunt style o' trees, An' a-measurin' dey thickness an' dey height. Fu' dey 's somep'n mighty 'spicious in de looks de da'kies give, Ez dey pass me an' my fambly ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... high principle; but something morally narrow and over-Anglican slightly offended the practical, this-worldly temper of Lady Casterley. It was a weakness, and she disliked weakness. Barbara would never be squeamish over moral questions or matters such as were not really, essential to aristocracy. She might, indeed, err too much the other way from sheer high spirits. As the impudent child had said: "If people had no pasts, they would have no futures." And Lady Casterley could not bear people without ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... deal at large with the spirit lest we weary the vulgar and the frivolous; we must not deal at large with the body, lest we infuriate the Puritanical and the squeamish. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... at bay Ye may kneel down and pray For a year and a day To be spared the distress of dispatching him, But the longer ye kneel The more squeamish ye'll feel 'Cause the louder he'll squeal, And at brotherly talk there's no matching him. Discussion's his aim, And as sure as you're game To give heed to the same, You regarding extremes with compunction, You may bet he'll requite Your compassion with spite, Knifing you in the night ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Lord Chetney, when the noise had died away, "that I couldn't remain dead while my little brother was accused of murder. I had to do something. Family pride demanded it. Now, Arthur, as the younger brother, can't afford to be squeamish, but personally I should hate to have a brother of mine ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... more squeamish than wise. Sir, how many grown up kings have we had, who have shown no more respect for the laws of the country, than if they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... voice choked by the weight of O'olo on his chest, and troubled by the imminence of death; offering first ten cans of biscuit, and then twenty, and then property and fine mats in quantities unstinted. But O'olo, although it was like a beautiful dream come true, dallied with the killing, being squeamish in regard to it, and needing a space to confirm his resolution, he saying with derision: "Thou pig-faced person, thou hast not the property thou namest, and even wert thou the Lord of the earth, yet still would I take thy head!" ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... events I have ended as a mere bookkeeper is perhaps a good reason why one paragraph will be enough. In my youth I had dreams a-plenty; but the event and the peculiar twist of my own temperament prevented their fulfilment. Perhaps in a more squeamish age—and yet that is not fair, either, to the men whose destinies I am trying to record. Suffice it then that of these men I have been the friend and companion, of these occasions I have been a part, and that the very lacks and reservations of my own character ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... and the other cop went to work, but most of them weren't squeamish. When it was over, the two picked up their whimpering captive. Gordon pocketed the revolver with his free hand. "Walk, O'Neill!" he ordered. "Your legs are still whole. ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... French Eva if she hadn't drowned herself. I believed it no more the second time than I had believed it the first. Anyhow, she wouldn't have had him. Schneider left us during those days. We hardly noticed his departure. Ching Po still prospers. Except Stires, we are not squeamish on Naapu. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... which never came to the knowledge of Caesar Augustus, and which were unknown to Solomon in all his glory. Where would have been the great English nation, if the adventurous cut-throats who followed Norman William from Saint Valery to Hastings had been troubled with squeamish notions about the rights of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... so outspoken, to be sure; but he came around to it in the course of a month or two, and kind o' beat around the bush then, and wanted to know what I thought on't, and—wall, I told him 'yes,'—I didn't see no use in bein' squeamish so long as I'd once made up ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... must crowd all into one grand mess Or mass; for should I stretch into detail, My Muse would run much more into excess, Than when some squeamish people deem her frail; But though a bonne vivante, I must confess Her stomach's not her peccant part; this tale However doth require some slight refection, Just to relieve her spirits ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... want something very badly," he explained with the utmost simplicity, "the only way to get it is to forge straight ahead. You can't afford to be squeamish over trifles. And I want you!"—his voice deepening to a ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... counting-house, the royal drawing-room, the senate,—what but fortune-hunters are they filled with? A fortune-hunter! Yes. You ARE one; and you would be nothing else, my dear Ned, if you were the greatest courtier, lawyer, legislator, prelate, or merchant, in existence. If you are squeamish and moral, Ned, console yourself with the reflection that at the very worst your fortune-hunting can make but one person miserable or unhappy. How many people do you suppose these other kinds of huntsmen crush in following their sport—hundreds at ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... why you get your back up, Young Jeff!" cried Grandma Brown. "The people of Lost Chief aren't ignorant. They do what they do because they prefer it that way. They know what the world calls their doings. Why be squeamish when Fowler comes in here and just repeats the world's attitude on such doings? Inez is the ruination of our young folks, and we ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... Monsieur says, has no charity. He drives clean, wholesome smoke out of the hotel, and stinks the place up with as nasty a chemical mixture as disgusting science ever invented. He reminds me of a Toronto professor of anatomy who wouldn't allow the poor squeamish medicals to smoke in the dissecting room, because, he said, one bad smell was better than two. If I had my way with Bulky I'd smoke him blue in the face, if for nothing but to drown his ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... proceeded two leagues on the passage, when, the wind shifting, blew directly in her teeth; so that they were obliged to haul upon a wind, and alter their course. The sea running pretty high at the same time, our hero, who was below in his cabin, began to be squeamish, and, in consequence of the skipper's advice, went upon deck for the comfort of his stomach; while the governor, experienced in these disasters, slipped into bed, where he lay at his ease, amusing himself with a treatise on the cycloid, with algebraical demonstrations, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... squeamish again; but I know he only intends by his qualms to swell his merits with me. O Belford! Belford! what a vile corruptible rogue, whether in poor or rich, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... with its crowds of starving sore-covered inmates. In filth it was a pig-sty, in smell a monkey-house, in ventilation another Black-hole of Calcutta. Turn to the next page, reader mine, if you are squeamish. Heaven be my witness, I have no desire to minister to morbid tastes; but I have an object in describing this dreadful oubliette, for it still exists—exists within thirty-two miles of British territory, and it is a scandal that some effort is not made to mitigate its horrors. Through the bars ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... are holding that gun of mine at an exceedingly uncomfortable angle—for me," was the cool rejoinder. "I've always had a squeamish horror of being shot ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... from such lawless people with the delicacy belonging to his timid and retiring nature, but it must be owned that Mr. Clive was by no means so squeamish. He did not know, in the first place, the mystery of their iniquities; and his sunny kindly spirit, undimmed by any of the cares which clouded it subsequently, was disposed to shine upon all people alike. The world was welcome to him: the day a pleasure: all nature a gay feast: scarce any ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brought up his medical books and studied; Eugene wrote letters home to his mother and sisters. Next morning Bianchon thought the symptoms more hopeful, but the patient's condition demanded continual attention, which the two students alone were willing to give—a task impossible to describe in the squeamish phraseology of the epoch. Leeches must be applied to the wasted body, the poultices and hot foot-baths, and other details of the treatment required the physical strength and devotion of the two young men. Mme. ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... is perfectly certain that most of them would rather drop than enter such places—for they are not afraid of fatigue—if there were risk of anything really wrong within. The labouring-class woman, as already explained, takes no hurt from a frank style of talk. She is not squeamish, but she has a very strong sense of her own honour; and if you remember how keen is the village appetite for scandal, you will perceive that there can be no fear of scandal attaching to her because of a visit to a public-house, or she would not ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... write simply for the refined, the blase, and the squeamish. We must write for that man who goes there on the street with his nose in his newspaper and his umbrella under his arm. We must write for that fat, breathless woman whom I see from my window, as she climbs painfully ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... a year, Warburton had not only become dissipated in his habits, but had connected himself with a set of gamblers, who, as he proved to be a skilful hand, and not at all squeamish, resolved to send him on a trip down the Ohio and Mississippi, to New Orleans, for mutual benefit. To this he had not the slightest objection. He told his wife that he was going to New Orleans on business ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... to spin, hilar spinner, hilador in spite of, a pesar de to spoil, gastar, echar a perder spoon, cuchara spokes, rayos spot, mancha, punto, sitio spot cotton, algodon disponible spring, resorte spring (season), primavera squeamish, melindroso to squeeze out, exprimir, arrancar squire, hijodalgo, hidalgo stain, mancha stamp, timbre stamp-rack, porta-estampillas stamps (postage), sellos standard-bearer, porta-bandera standing, posicion to ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... neither nice nor squeamish as to the nature of her gossip. She and the old fortune-teller, when out of sight of the rest of the servants, had always a dish of the choicest scandal fresh ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... tiny daughters and a baby son were the darlings of Sir Thomas More and his wife. To beguile the tedium of convalescence the invalid had scribbled off a jeu d'esprit, with its punning play on More's name, Encomium Moriae, in which every theme for laughter, in a far from squeamish day, was collected under that title. Read aloud to More and his friends, it was declared much too good to be limited to private circulation; and accordingly, with some revision and expansion, it was printed. That it scourged with ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... accomplishes His purposes by means which appear very singular to the eyes of men, and at the same time to observe that the manner in which that relief is obtained, is calculated to read a lesson to the proud, fanciful, and squeamish, who are ever in a fidget lest they should be thought to mix in low society, or to bestow a moment's attention on publications which are not what is called of a perfectly unobjectionable character. Had not Lavengro formed the acquaintance ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... bamboozled the Queen (an' she herself is as squar' a little woman as ever lived) inter gittin' Danbury outer th' city, an' now thet the fight is won fer 'em, an' now thet th' boys we brought is about ter raise hell (as they certainly is), Otaballo ain't goneter be squeamish 'bout removin' quiet like and safe everyone who bothers him. In three days we might not be able to git out long 'nuff to git tergether an outfit er ask any questions. There's a whole lot 'bout thet map o' yourn thet ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... himself, 'Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is?' Yet Parolles himself gives the best solution of the difficulty afterwards when he is thankful to escape with his life and the loss of character; for, so that he can live on, he is by no means squeamish about the loss of pretensions, to which he had sense enough to know he had no real claims, and which he had assumed only as a ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... suggested Vetch. "You don't like Gershom, I infer; but when you are ready to sweep, remember you mustn't be over-squeamish about your broom." ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... a firebrand, and his eyes sparkled with wrath, as he loudly exclaimed, "What difference does it make to you, you ungrateful cur, whether the account is true or false, so long as you get your money? Bring none of your squeamish objections here. Either take the account as I have made it out, and swear to it, without flinching, or"—and here he swore an oath too revolting to transcribe "not a cent of money ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... no very particular reason why you should be invited to read The Love Story of Guillaume-Marc (HUTCHINSON) it is, I vouch, a vivid enough tale of its genre. Squeamish folk, perhaps, may think that this is not the most opportune time at which to draw attention to the blood-lust that was so marked a feature of the French Revolution. But, granted that you do not suffer from squeams, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... on a rampage. I just grabbed the fust job that come along, good, bad, or indifferent—always kept doing something. You can look for a bird in the bush quite well when you've got one in the hand as when you hain't. To be sure I wasn't as squeamish as you are. I'd jumped at the offer you had this afternoon; but I reckon I'd taken toll too often to be very profitable. But in this way I always kept a-goin'—never got down underfoot so the stronger ones could tread on ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... with some bad disease." The witnesses further made oath, that the said Timothy lay out a-nights, and went abroad often at unseasonable hours; and it was credibly reported he did business in another family: that he pretended to have a squeamish stomach, and could not eat at table with the rest of the servants, though this was but a pretence to provide some nice bit for himself; that he refused to dine upon salt fish, only to have an opportunity to eat a calf's head (his favourite dish) in private; ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... private torment men would make of hell if they had the control of it. As to the nudities, if they were ever more nude than now, I should suppose, in their fresh brilliancy, they might well have startled a not very squeamish eye. The effect, such as it is, of this picture, is much injured by the high altar and its canopy, which stands close against the wall, and intercepts a considerable portion of the sprawl of nakedness with which Michael Angelo has filled his sky. However, I am not unwilling to believe, with ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Greenlanders, who have a sufficient excuse for persecuting him with continual attacks, in their total want of vegetables, and every species of food which the earth affords. But the Europeans, who are too nice and squeamish to eat his flesh, send out great numbers of ships, every year, to destroy the poor whale, merely for the sake of the oil which his body contains, and the elastic bones which are known by the name of whalebone, and applied to several purposes. When those who go upon this dangerous expedition ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... gobbles up the gosling as well as the goose; and, as I have heard our curate observe, tramples down the lofty turrets of the prince as well as the lowly cottage of the swain. That same lady, who is more powerful than coy, knows not what it is to be dainty and squeamish; but eats of everything, and crams her wallet with people of all nations, degrees, and conditions; she is none of your laborers that take their afternoon's nap, but mows at all hours, cutting down the dry stubble as well as the green grass; nor does she seem to chew, but rather swallows and ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... this Proteus in my gripe? How fix him down in one enduring type? Turn to the poor: their megrims are as strange; Bath, cockloft, barber, eating-house, they change; They hire a boat; your born aristocrat Is not more squeamish, tossing ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Beaufroy Barry in his essay on Anna Zwanziger—tells us that some of the methods of torture employed by criminal women are so horrible that they cannot be described without outraging the laws of decency. Less squeamish than Lombroso or Mr Barry, I gather aloud that the tortures have to do with the organs of generation. But male savages in African and American Indian tribes have a punishment for adulterous women which will match anything in that line women have ever achieved, and men in England itself have ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... live in squeamish days. Amid the beauties of your manuscript, of which no man can think more highly than I do, what will the squeamish say to such expressions as these,—'devoured their limbs, yet warm and trembling, lapping the blood,' page 10. Or to the giant's vomit, page 14; or to the minute and shocking description ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... for you, and I hope you will not have to use it; but these are stern times, Dale, and we must not be squeamish now." ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Wilder, you're a reg'lar out-and-outer, and stops at nothing, and curse me if I'd think any more of it than yourself. But Jack's as squeamish of bloodshed as young Miss that cries at her cut finger. It's the safer plan. Say what you will, nothing but that will stop a ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... vulgarity and hideous airs, not because they are so low in our general estimation, but because they are so high. Women of the same class in London are humble enough, and therefore rarely offend us who are squeamish. They show by their gestures that they hardly think themselves good enough to sit by us; they apologize for their presence; they conceive it to be their duty to be lowly in their gesture. The question is which is best, the crouching and crawling, or the impudent, unattractive self-composure. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... reach of Frank Stokoe's vengeance; which perhaps was the wisest thing they could have done, for Stokoe was the kind of man who in a case such as this would willingly have knocked a hole in each one of them. In those days people were not very squeamish, and Stokoe seems to have gone quietly back to bed without greatly troubling himself about the slain robber; but the man's friends must have stolen back during the night, for in a copse near by, in a shallow grave ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... believe be what you are not is the essence of vulgarity. Show over dirt is the one attribute of vulgar people. If any man can walk behind one of these women and see what she rakes up as she goes, and not feel squeamish, he has got a tough stomach. I wouldn't let one of 'em into my room without serving 'em as David served Saul at the cave in the wilderness,—cut off his skirts, Sir! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a habit of it. One sweater doesn't make a summer! I hope Mrs. Berry won't be so squeamish! If I thought she would, I'd throw hers in the ash barrel before I'd ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... obviously against him, the Conservative leader had a majority in the legislature in his favour. That this majority had been elected on other issues, and that the proper constitutional course was to consult the people, mattered not to him. Here was a big thing to do, and he was not the man to be squeamish on a point of constitutional correctness. He held his majority together by the strong hand. In 1866 he succeeded in getting a resolution passed, authorizing the sending of 'delegates to arrange with the Imperial government a scheme of union which ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... hour. Suddenly I heard a tramping in the bushes, and in breaks my little gray mule. Thinks I them 'Rapahoes ain't smart; so tied her to grass. But the Injuns had scared the beaver so, I stays in my camp, eating my lariat. Then I begun to get kind o' wolfish and squeamish; something was gnawing and pulling at my inwards, like a wolf in a trap. Just then an idea struck me, that I had been there before trading liquor ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... that this scandal about poor Meynell is probably providential. It must and will weaken the Modernist party enormously. To thank God for such a thing sounds horrible, but after all, have we any right to be more squeamish than Holy Writ? 'Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered.' The warnings and menaces of what are called the Imprecatory Psalms show us plainly that His ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... above all, were the subject of no raptures or transports of delight. If she indulged any enthusiasm, in view of the approaching change, it was in the prospect of endless shirt-making, and in calculations about how cheaply (not how happily) she could enable her husband to live. She had no squeamish delicacy about allowing the world to know the scope and meaning of her arrangements, and all her friends participated in her visions of comfort and economy. False modesty was no part of her nature—and her sentiment could be reduced to an algebraic formula—excluding ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... any relations with him," answered my friend; "but we must not be squeamish respecting our instruments in dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu. Slattin has a rotten reputation—even for a private inquiry agent. He is little better than ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... bears of Palestine which tore forty-two children who made faces at Elisha. He thought first of a free-lunch saloon, but he had an objection to using the fork just laid down by another man. He became less squeamish later. He was resolved to feast, and that the banquet should be great. He entered a popular down-town place and squandered twenty-five cents on a single meal. The restaurant was scrupulously clean, the steak was good, the potatoes were ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... had burned the only existing copy. As a matter of fact, the manuscript was not published until 1830, when all the people concerned had long been reduced to dust. There are five or six pages, Diderot said to Mdlle. Voland, which would make your sister's hair stand on end. A man may be much less squeamish than Mdlle. Voland's sister, and still pronounce the imaginative invention of D'Alembert's Dream, and the sequel, to be as odious as anything since the freaks of filthy Diogenes in his tub. Two remarks may be made on this strange production. First, Diderot never intended the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley |
