"Curmudgeon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Here's Julia must grow into a crotchety old female, myself into a solitary, embittered recluse, and you into a lonely, doddering old curmudgeon—and all for sake of this ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... slave, curmudgeon! Now thy bones aches, thy joints cramps, and convulsions stretch ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... content the part of 'double-dealer,' a part to which he was not, otherwise, adapted, without in the least degree compromising his unassailable and quite unmerited reputation of being a kind-hearted old curmudgeon, could make the Cure and everyone else laugh until they cried by saying in a harsh voice: "What d'ye say to this, now? It seems that she plays music with her friend, Mile. Vinteuil. That surprises you, does it? Oh, I know nothing, nothing at all. It was Papa Vinteuil who told me ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... hacker who never leaves his cubicle. The term 'Gnoll' (from Dungeons & Dragons) is also reported. 2. A curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing environment. The combination 'ITS troglodyte' was flung around some during the Usenet and email wringle-wrangle attending the 2.x.x revision of the Jargon File; at least one of the people it was intended ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... peers was firmly established. So long as they were rich and spent their money freely, we should not be too particular. They were to be judged by standards other than those of common men; for his part, he was glad they had got in place of an old curmudgeon a man who would take an interest in the Church, and spend money on the place and the people. If he took a fancy to a pretty face, where was the harm? 'Twas nothing to the likes of them, best let well alone; ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... say it, but Graylock ended up by warning Mr. Goodwyn that if he were in his shoes he would keep a sharp eye on a boy who had had no father these many years to train him right. That kind of hit me too, and I couldn't help shaking my fist at the old curmudgeon ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... took possession of his features. At length, he hawked up, with incredible straining, the interjection, "Ah!" that seemed to have stuck some time in his windpipe; and thus gave vent to his indignation: "Have I come alongside of you at last, you old stinking curmudgeon? You lie, you lousy hulk! ye lie! you did all in your power to founder me when I was a stripling; and as for being graceless and wicked, and keeping bad company, you tell a d—d lie again, you thief! there was not a more peaceable lad in the county, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... hear Pop laugh and carry on all the time, as if this was the cream of the joke. I tell you, we were all mad enough; and when we got to old Jake Van Couter's, we just rebelled. We all hated Jake, anyhow; and Tom Jones he stood right out in the road, and said Jake was a mean old curmudgeon; and then Pop got hold of Tom before we knew it, and down came his cane ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... boys have lots of grit, but he'd never get over it. Dol!" he wound up, raising his voice to a sharp pitch. "Say, Dol, I'm going to try a shout for help. Herb must be getting anxious about us by this time. If we could once make him hear, he could try some trick to lure this old curmudgeon away, or creep up and shoot him. Something must ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... I shall bring you some of the songs you'll have to sing in my 'Beggar's Opera'—that is if we can talk that curmudgeon Rich into the ideas that I and my friends have in our minds. Are ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... we are neither girls nor widows—danced around it this morning, wondering what sort of curmudgeon ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... am sorry to say that I never met with so avaricious and so wicked an old curmudgeon; he allowed me almost daily to die of hunger, without troubling himself about my necessities; and, to say the truth, if I had not helped myself by means of a ready wit I should have closed my ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... stirred and no twig snapped underfoot. The coyote is your real lord of the mesa, and so he makes sure you are armed with no long black instrument to spit your teeth into his vitals at a thousand yards, is both bold and curious. Not so bold, however, as the badger and not so much of a curmudgeon. This short-legged meat-eater loves half lights and lowering days, has no friends, no enemies, and disowns his offspring. Very likely if he knew how hawk and crow dog him for dinners, he would resent it. But the badger is not very well contrived ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... obligations of his life. He felt like a man rudely awakened by a tactless servant in the middle of a sweet dream. His lips were still tingling with Leonora's kisses! His whole body was aglow with her gentle warmth! And here was this old curmudgeon coming along with a sermon on "duty," "family," "what they would say"—as if love amounted to nothing in this life! It was a plot against his happiness, and he felt stirred to the depths with a sense ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... provide me with by this perpetual discontent with what's set before one. Why can't you eat and be thankful? To look at that girl is a liberal education; she has a fine voice too, and her beauty, her freshness, the energy of life in her, give me every sort of artistic pleasure. What a curmudgeon I should be—what a grudging, ungrateful fellow, if, after all she has done to delight me, I should abuse her because she can't speak out her tiresome speeches—which are of no account, and don't matter, to my impression at all,—as well as one of your thin, French, snake-like ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... does all this mean? You seem to me to resemble other men in nothing. You steal a golden basin set with jewels from a signor who receives you with magnificence, and you give it to a curmudgeon who ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... Hugh. Don't you see that all things are working for the best? Your rupture with old Houghton will only secure you greater favor with our people, and Ella be cured all the sooner of any weakness toward that old curmudgeon's son." ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... what would I have next? Mr. Diaper said times was come to such a pitch!! since when he was first in the business, for salaries, says he, is ris to double, and not half the work done that was, and no gratitude—(cursed old curmudgeon!) He said if I left them just now, I might whistle for a character, except one that I should not like; but if he don't mind I'll give him a touch of law about that—which brings me to what happened to-day with our lawyers, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... there are in people's lives! There are Eustace and Marion simply miserable this morning because of that hideous barn they can't get rid of. Well, it is hideous certainly; but it doesn't disturb my peace of mind in the least. What a mean curmudgeon Sir John must be, by the way! I should not have thought it from his photograph; such a frank, open, generous face he seemed to have. However, we all know how photographs can mislead one. I wonder where that wretched boy ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... Of course you don't, you ignorant curmudgeon, if noospapers is all you've read. Now, Pat, I got this book, not for myself but ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... never cease,' thought Alan, amazed. 'Is that old curmudgeon in the business, too? He's the last man I should have imagined would mix himself up ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... her claws, and sealed her eyes, And clipped her wings, and tied her beak, Would it cause you any great surprise If, when you decided to give her an airing, You found she needed a little preparing? —I say, should you be such a curmudgeon, If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon? Yet when the Duke to his lady signified, 280 Just a day before, as he judged most dignified, In what a pleasure she was to participate,— And, instead of leaping wide in flashes, Her eyes just lifted their long lashes, As if pressed by fatigue ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning |
