"Grumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Church preferment he had none; Nay, all his hope of that was gone; He felt that he content must be With drudging-in a curacy. Indeed, on ev'ry Sabbath-day, Through eight long miles he took his way, To preach, to grumble, and to pray; To cheer the good, to warn the sinner, And if he got it,—eat a dinner: To bury these, to christen those, And marry such fond folks as chose To change the tenor of their life, And risk the matrimonial strife. Thus were his weekly journeys made, 'Neath summer suns and wintry ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... was one of the worst in the kingdom, the subscriptions were irregular, the kennel servants were ill-paid, the poor cottagers never received payment for losses when Reynard visited their hen-coops, and even the farmers began to grumble at needless damage to their hedges, and to refuse to "walk" the puppies. But the new Master had changed all this. He bore his share, but no more, of the expense caused by the reforms he at once introduced, and he reminded his proud yet stingy ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... was to have little peace that night! Hardly had Dick finished his grumble and sauntered away, before her husband's step ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... the order with a grumble, looked from his unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head in definite negation when Max cajoled him ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... help thinking that to grumble in the presence of that rich, despotic personality ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... rarely out of her sight after their first meeting, and the ridiculous excuse she gave to her husband's family was, she feared he would be kidnapped and made a Cossack of! And young Lord Cressett, her husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a man old enough to be her grandfather. As if the age were the injury! He seemed to think it so, and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found him on the grounds of Cressett: 'like vermin,' he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I said before, you've got to do one thing or the other. You have to trust Longworth or to go on without him. Now, for Heaven's sake make up your mind which it is to be, and don't grumble.' ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... than we do, to grumble or find fault, but we hate just as bad to have our boats detained beyond a reasonable time, at your place; and when our boats leave here for your place, we look for them back at a certain time; and if they ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... houses, so that they are not blown away. It was made to serve man, and it works without a grumble. ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... weaker than the one who has provided the dinner, who must wait until their master or father is done before they have a chance to take a bite. But, as you may see by this picture, they do not wait very patiently. They roar and growl and grumble until their turn comes. ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... bad thing to be a falconer. But if you would rather grumble than to listen to me, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... me better," said Will. "I will never grumble on that subject again." There was a gentleness in his tone which came from the unutterable contentment of perceiving—what Dorothea was hardly conscious of—that she was travelling into the remoteness of pure pity and loyalty towards her ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... we do not grumble with our good fortune," said Arthur, laughing; "we shall have plenty to do, ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... of dissatisfaction finally began to appear, and, after the nature of such things, they developed with marvellous rapidity. People began to grumble about "contraction of the currency." In every country there arose a party which demanded "free money." Demagogues pointed to the brief reign of paper money after the demonetization of gold as a happy period, when the people had enjoyed ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... find in the sea, or that may drift on the shore. I've a whole island that I may honestly call my own, a box of candles, plenty of matches, four cans of oil, a lamp and a lantern, a good boat, and lots of other things besides; so I am pretty well off, after all, and ought not to grumble at the hard luck ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... That's the wife of the director of the local treasury! Bow, I tell you," he would grumble insistently. ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... first railway train, speed ten miles an hour; now we grumble at fifty. In a few years we shall have an aerial Marathon, with the circumference of the ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... said good-night again and left the room. Dona Casiana continued to grumble, then ensconced her rotund person in the rocker and dozed off into a dream about an establishment of the same type as that across the way; but a model establishment, with luxuriously appointed salons, whither trooped in a long procession all ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... man said, opening the gate. "It is late for a discharge; but I don't suppose the prisoner will grumble at that." ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... the early days of March, 1917, began to bear fruit. In spite of the warnings of the few loyal labor leaders still at liberty, the workers began to grumble and to talk revolt. Their stomachs were empty. On February 27, 1917, when the Duma went into session again, 300,000 workingmen had gone out on strike in Petrograd. The air was charged with electricity. Everybody realized that the critical moment was approaching: the final battle between ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... was kept chained in the lines, and every day Langur Dass, the low-caste hillman in Dugan's employ, grubbed grass for her in the valleys. All night long, except the regular four hours of sleep, he would hear her grumble and rumble and mutter discontent that her little son shared ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... held clear and bright and frosty, bitterly cold, everything crisp and sparkling in the sun; but there was no sign of fresh snow, and the ski-ers began to grumble. On the mountains was an icy crust that made "running" dangerous; they wanted the frozen, dry, and powdery snow that makes for speed, renders steering easier and falling less severe. But the keen east wind showed no signs of changing for a whole ten days. Then, suddenly, there ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... arriving without a train appearing, my men began to grumble. In the excitement of this adventure they had omitted to prepare any food, and they were not now allowed to make fires, because the smoke evolved in culinary operations would have been immediately noticed by the enemy's outpost. We ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... grumble at fate. Hitherto, Jonas, we have been marvellously preserved. First of all, we two were alone saved from Jotapata; then we, with ten others, alone out of six hundred escaped alive from Jerusalem. We have reason for thankfulness, rather than repining. We have been delivered out of the hands ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... should become a first-rate singer. The pupil was apt, the master was exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly, Mrs. Walker's progress was very remarkable: although, for her part, honest Mrs. Crump, who used to attend her daughter's lessons, would grumble not a little at the new system, and the endless exercises which she, Morgiana, was made to go through. It was very different in HER time, she said. Incledon knew no music, and who could sing so well now? Give her a good English ballad: ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... campaigning had made in him. He had fought in Italy, in Spain, in the long blockade of the Pompeians at Dyrrachium. He had learned the art of war in no gentle school. He had ceased even so much as to grumble inwardly at the hardships endured by the hard-pressed Caesarian army. The campaign was not going well. Pompeius had broken through the blockade; and now the two armies had been executing tedious manoeuvres, fencing for a vantage-ground before ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... or "redheads," who sing their sweet, merry tunes all summer, and if they do take a cherry or two the farmer should not grumble. They destroy many bugs and caterpillars and eat weed-seeds that might trouble the fruit-grower more than the missing cherries. The yellow warbler, sometimes called the wild canary, flits through bush and tree and trills its gay notes in town and ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... unkind of me to suspend my answer to your question—for indeed I have not been very well, nor have had much heart for saying so. This implacable weather! this east wind that seems to blow through the sun and moon! who can be well in such a wind? Yet for me, I should not grumble. There has been nothing very bad the matter with me, as there used to be—I only grow weaker than usual, and learn my lesson of being mortal, in a corner—and then all this must end! April is coming. There ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... taking that for granted, wrote more largely of less tangible things. She remembered that she had said that life, if it was no more than its present appearances, was "utter nonsense." She went back to that. "One says things like that," she wrote "and not for a moment does one believe it. I grumble at my life, I seem to be always weakly and fruitlessly fighting my life, and I love it. I would not be willingly dead—for anything. I'd rather be an old match-woman selling matches on a freezing ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... I detest mobs, especially such ones as they delight in—greasy Jews, hairy Germans, Mulatto-looking Italians, squalling children, that run between your legs and throw you down, or wipe the butter off their bread on your clothes; Englishmen that will grumble, and Irishmen that will fight; priests that won't talk, and preachers that will harangue; women that will be carried about, because they won't lie still and be quiet; silk men, cotten men, bonnet men, iron men, trinket men, and every sort of shopmen, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... were disposed to grumble at the small part they seemed to be playing in the great tussle in which England was engaged, the authorities were satisfied that for so small a town to have kept occupied during the first critical month of the war 10,000—and ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... miserable now. We were weak and cold and wretched. There wasn't a thing to eat or drink on the raft. The fire had given no time to get anything. Some of the men began to grumble. It would have been better, they said, to have started off as soon as they found out the fire, and have had time to put something to eat and drink on the raft. It was all wasted time to try to save the ship. It did no good, after all. The captain ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... seamen, that as soon as conveyed on board the British men of war, they are examined as to the length of time they have been at sea; and according to the knowledge and experience they appear to have, they are stationed; and if they grumble at the duty assigned them, they are called mutinous rascals, and threatened with the cat; the warrant officers are charged to watch them closely, lest they should attempt to pervert the crew, and to prevent them from sending letters from ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... If we mention it with favour we may be regarded, however unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure sensuality. If we condemn it, we either go over to the Puritans or we join those who are wont to come to table with no edge to their appetites and who therefore grumble at all good fare. There can be no doubt that the value of healthy innocent voluptuousness, like the value of health itself, must have been greatly discounted by all those who, resenting their inability ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... consumed his small savings. Since the ruin of St. Domingo and the pillaging of grocers' shops colonial products are dear; the carpenter, the mason, the locksmith, the market-porter, no longer has his early cup of coffee,[2521] while they grumble every morning at the thought of their patriotism being rewarded ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... go almost everywhere—at least, there are only just a few houses to which we are not asked. But those few make all the difference. It is so humiliating to feel that one is not in quite the best society. However, Lady Kirkbank is a dear, good old thing, and I am not going to grumble about her.' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... sharply. "I see how it is as well as anybody can do. I knew how it was when I left the colony. Don't be alarmed about me. Do you think I am to be turned against my own flesh and blood by finding out their follies; or to grumble at the place God put me in?—Nothing of the sort! I know the kind of situation perfectly—but one may make the best of it, you know: and for that reason ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... carts moved slowly by. One or two stopped before the shop, and the carters offered vegetables for sale. The old woman would have nothing to say to them, but waved them on irritably. Three had thus stopped and again proceeded, and an impatient grumble broke from the old lady as a fourth, a covered wagon, drew up before ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... present case her cousins, by their ill-temper and fretfulness, had quarrelled with each other; and when Dinah would not let them play—as, indeed, they justly deserved to be punished—they did nothing but grumble and cry the whole day, and were so conscious of their bad behaviour as to be afraid of seeing their mother; while Miss Placid, serene in her own innocence, entertained herself for some time with looking at the horse above mentioned, and afterwards with pricking it, till ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... butler, and served so well in rehearsals that Pierre could only grumble. One afternoon she superintended the comedy. She found a thousand faults with him, so many, in fact, that Pierre did not understand what it meant, and became possessed with the vague idea that she was hitting him over the groom's shoulder. He did not like it; and later, when they were ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... grow aweary of the burdens I am bearin', An' I grumble when I'm footsore at the rough road I am farin', But I strap my knapsack tighter till I feel the leather bind me, An' I'm glad to bear the burdens for the ones who come behind me. It's for them that ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... told, have been entering the houses of private citizens, taking whatever they saw fit, and committing many outrages. I trust, however, they have not been doing so badly as the people would have us believe. The latter are all disposed to grumble; and if a hungry soldier squints wistfully at a chicken, some one is ready to complain that the fowls are in danger, and that they are the property of a lone woman, a widow, with nothing under the sun to eat but chickens. In nine cases out of ten ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... to enter for your cash, smash, crash, Past drowsy Charley, in a deep sleep, creep, But frightened by Policeman B 3, flee, And while they're going, whisper low, "No go!" Now puss, while folks are in their beds, treads leads. And sleepers waking, grumble—"Drat that cat!" Who in the gutter caterwauls, squalls, mauls Some feline foe, and screams ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... considered prosperous. This money goes for extras at the table, for baseball equipments, or for company mascots. The sergeant-major usually has charge of this disbursement, and the soldiers, though they grumble at his orders, can not help respecting him. The sergeant-major has been seasoned in the service. He is a ripe old fellow, and a warrior to the core. The company cook is also an important personage. It was the old cook at Balingasag—I think that he had served for twenty ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... them find time, even on week-days, to assist at the most holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In such congregations there is indeed Catholic life. These pious Catholics carry the blessing of heaven with them wherever they go. Amid all the cares and troubles of life they are gay and cheerful, whilst others grumble and are sad. The religious doctrines and practices learned in youth, can seldom or never be blotted out. The question of Catholic schools is a question of making the country Catholic. If this means be neglected, all other ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... here this day week, and I shall grumble at his excessive caution...The public may well say, if such a man dare not or will not speak out his mind, how can we who are ignorant form even a guess on the subject? Lyell was pleased when I told him lately that you thought that language might be ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... an old man were mumbling complainingly to himself. She smiled coldly. It was very like Nicky Viner—it was a habit of his to talk to himself, she remembered. And, also, she had never heard Nicky Viner do anything else but grumble and complain. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... fellow. We're all disagreeable and grumble when we're knocked over. That's only natural. Children are cross when they're unwell, and I suppose we're only big children. ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... consisted of an imaginary dialogue between Cato and Laelius. We found the first portion rather heavy, and retired a few moments for refreshment (pocula quaedam vini).—All want to reach old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it; therefore they are donkeys.—The lecturer will allow us to say that he is the donkey; we know we shall grumble at old age, but we want to live through youth and manhood, IN SPITE of the troubles we shall ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... close, the thermometer is at 109 degrees in the shade, and everything one touches seems to be at melting point! Unfortunately we have had all our cool things for our journey, and they are too dirty to wear in a "live" town. These three last days are the only days we have had to grumble at the heat; and, I expect, if we bad been out at the farm, quietly doing our various works, we should not have felt it so much; but a tent on a hot day is like a ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... doing well, but not well enough for that. Next year, if I live, you will be able to have a carriage. Don't begin to grumble, Honoria. I have got L150 to spare, and if you care to come round to a jeweller's you can spend it on ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... are worthy of record. On pitch-dark nights in pouring rain the men, wet to the skin, covered with mud and filth, without a smoke, groping about in the dark to find a likely stone, carried on the work in silence; and when the word was passed along to knock off work, they "turned in" without a grumble into a wet bivouac. There was no complaining, and the men were never required by their officers to bring along the stones faster. The only noise that broke the stillness of the night was the incessant ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... leaden skies of a Swedish December day before the first snow has fallen. It made him long for sunlight, and the parties brought it to some extent. Then care and caution were forgotten, although his father might grumble before and after. Then the daily routine was broken, and Granny became cynically but actively interested, bent above all on seeing that "the ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... chiefs and leaders of the Creeks; and the Americans fondly hoped that it would end hostilities. It did nothing of the kind. Though the terms were very favorable to the Indians, so much so as to make the frontiersmen grumble, the Creeks scornfully repudiated the promises made on their behalf by their authorized representatives. Their motive in going to war, and keeping up the war, was not so much anger at the encroachments of the whites, as the eager thirst for glory, scalps, and plunder, to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... day's work (our guns and the remainder of our tents being just issued), an order came from Beaufort that we should be ready in the evening to unload a steamboat's cargo of boards, being some of those captured by them a few weeks since, and now assigned for their use. I wondered if the men would grumble at the night-work; but the steamboat arrived by seven, and it was bright moonlight when they went at it. Never have I beheld such a jolly scene of labor. Tugging these wet and heavy boards over a bridge of boats ashore, then ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... was a shepherd who lived among the mountains with his wife and children; and so very poor was he that he often found it hard to give his family enough to satisfy their hunger. But he did not grumble; he only worked the harder; and his wife, though she had scarcely any furniture, and never a chance of a new dress, kept the house so clean, and the old clothes so well mended, that, all unknown to herself, she rose high in the favour of the ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... the same urgency, writes from Missolonghi,—"The Greek ship sent for your Lordship has returned; your arrival was anticipated, and the disappointment has been great indeed. The Prince is in a state of anxiety, the Admiral looks gloomy, and the sailors grumble aloud." He adds at the end, "I walked along the streets this evening, and the people asked me after Lord Byron !!!" In a Letter to the London Committee of the same date, Colonel Stanhope says, "All are looking forward to Lord Byron's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... meat in the world. No marvel though that saucy, stubborn generation, the Jews, were forbidden it; for what would they have done, well pamper'd with fat pork, that durst murmur at their Maker out of garlick and onions? 'Slight! fed with it, the whoreson strummel-patch'd, goggle-eyed grumble-dories, would have gigantomachised — RE-ENTER GEORGE WITH WINE. Well said, my ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Zack Chandler of Michigan, and proposed a compromise. "General Rosecrans," said he, "has a great many friends; he fought the battle of Stone River and won a brilliant victory, and his advocates begin to grumble about his treatment. Now, I will tell you what I have been thinking about. If you will confirm Schofield in the Senate, I will remove him from the command in Missouri and send him down to Sherman. That will satisfy the radicals. Then I will send Rosecrans to ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... are quite right," he answers, somewhat to Eleanor's surprise. "It is foolish, and unnecessary. Now you won't grumble, my pet, if I go for a long day's sport to-morrow. It will do me all the good in the world, some excitement and exercise. I have been getting dreadfully ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... taint of this new poetic diction into which we have now fallen, after all our abuse of the far more manly and sincere "poetic diction" of the eighteenth century; they will find no loitering by the way to argue and moralise, and grumble at Providence, and show off the author's own genius and sensibility; they will find, in short, two real works of art, earnest, melodious, self-forgetful, knowing clearly what they want to say, saying it in the shortest, the simplest, the calmest, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Easter Day in the morning—and do you sit down at the wheel and spin. See, you put your foot on the treadle so, to turn the wheel, and you twist the flax with your fingers so. Don't you get up, but just turn the wheel and grumble ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... These were the thanks which honest Bows got for his friendship and his life's devotion. And I do not suppose that the old philosopher was much worse off than many other men, or had greater reason to grumble. On the second floor of the next house to Bows's, in Shepherd's Inn, at No. 3, live two other acquaintances of ours. Colonel Altamont, agent to the Nawaab of Lucknow, and Captain the Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at all is over their door. The captain does not ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unnecessary privations. Where they are exposed to difficulties, he does not hesitate to employ all the means in his power to aid them. In return, the soldier professes for his officer an affection, a devotion, a sort of filial respect. Discipline, he knows, must be severe, and he does not grumble at its penalties. In battle, he does not abandon his chief; he watches over him, will die for his safety, will not let him fall into the hands of the enemy if wounded. At the bivouac he makes the officer's fire, though his own should die for want of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... examine one of them:—The Heirs of Tranby Chase. It weighed four or five pounds. The publishers would never have had to grumble at its brevity, or have been compelled to use large type and wide margins to "bulk up." It was written in the thin, early Victorian handwriting not often met with in this generation of writers. It subscribed faithfully to the great canons of publication—for instance, it was written on "one ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... this is all we poor single men can do under the circumstances. Married men bully their wives, grumble at the dinner, and insist on the children's going to bed. All of which, creating, as it does, a good deal of disturbance in the house, must be a great relief to the feelings of a man in the blues, rows being the only form of amusement in which ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... productive strength of the country. The Forgotten Man works and votes—generally he prays—but his chief business in life is to pay. His name never gets into the newspapers except when he marries or dies. He is an obscure man. He may grumble sometimes to his wife, but he does not frequent the grocery, and he does not talk politics at the tavern. So he is forgotten. Yet who is there whom the statesman, economist, and social philosopher ought to think of before this man? If any student of social science comes to appreciate the case of ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... notions into a child's head?" said a tiresome lawyer, who had come to pay a visit, and sat on the sofa. He did not like the student, and would grumble when he saw him cutting out droll or amusing pictures. Sometimes it would be a man hanging on a gibbet and holding a heart in his hand as if he had been stealing hearts. Sometimes it was an old witch riding through the air on a broom and carrying her ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... grumble at the farmers, acause you deals with them first-hand; but you be too stupid to do aught but hunt by sight. I be an old dog, and I hunts cunning. I sees farther than my nose, I does, I larnt politics ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... soul took the sous in the basket to be the gift of the brothers, and, as her portion is not always the same from day to day, but depends on what they can spare from the store set apart for almsgiving, she would not notice the diminished cakes and milk, save perhaps to grumble a little at the increase of the beggars who trespassed thus on her pension." There was silence among us for a moment, then St Aubyn's boy spoke. "Father," he asked, tremulously, "shall I not see that ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... nuts come from? Anyone would think you were a rabid Protectionist who reads your howls about imported plays. Art is universal, not local—I read that in some real high-toned book—and if a play is good, don't worry whether its author is French or German or American. You don't grumble if he is Norwegian. Why not? Do be consistent even if you cannot be broad-minded. And, lastly, let the Censor alone; you have flung enough mud at him; I am tired of reading energetic attacks which you know quite well are mere beating of the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... hollow length of tree-trunk, the player worked his flat drumsticks of ironwood with amazing rapidity. The call trilled and rumbled, rising and falling, now a patter of light musical sound, now a low grumble. ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... came home alone, only just in time for a late dinner, and growled out rather crossly that Harold had chosen to walk home, and not to be waited for. Eustace himself was out of sorts and tired, eating little and hardly vouchsafing a word, except to grumble at us and the food, and though we heard Harold come in about nine o'clock, he did not come in, but ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a reality of tragedy about him which for the moment overcame her. She had no joke ready, no sarcasm, no feminine counter-grumble. Little as she agreed with him when he spoke of the necessity of retiring into private life because a man had written to him such a letter as this, incapable as she was of understanding fully the nature of the irritation ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... not read this letter so loud as the Lessons, unless you wish Lizzie to hear every word, for she has all her mother's quick senses. There is not much of it, and the scrawl seems hasty. We might have had more for three and fourpence. But I am not the one to grumble about bad measure—as the boy said about old Busby. Now, Maria, listen, but say nothing; if feminine capacity may compass it. Why, bless my heart, every word of it is French!" The rector threw down his spectacles, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... be quick about it!" the deep grumble proceeded to tell them; and somehow poor Bumpus was forcibly reminded of the growl of a lion he had once heard in a menagerie, as well as several other things along the same "away ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... resolved to go, and only asked me and my company to go along with them, I positively refused it, and rose up (for I was sitting on the ground) in order to go to the boat. One or two of the men began to importune me to go, and when I still refused positively, began to grumble, and say they were not under my command, and they would go. "Come, Jack," says one of the men, "will you go with me? I will go for one." Jack said he would; and another followed, and then another; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... except the school work. Four of the children have had chills and fever, and I have had to rise at night to care for them. I have been trying to do the work of three people and not complain. Still I'd like to grumble a little, if I could find the right one to talk to. I am beginning to feel a little like Josiah Allen's wife, when she said, 'Betsy Bobbet, you're ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... the miller. He could grumble to Ruth himself, but he would not stand for any other person's criticism of her. "Lemme tell ye, she worked her passage all right. An' I vum! I b'lieve thet 'twas me, myself, thet run the old ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... for one who was. At length he found one—a meek young man from Trumbull County—who agreed to pay for his board in praying. For a while all went smoothly, but the boarding-master furnished his table so poorly that the boarders began to grumble and to leave, and the other morning the praying boarder actually "struck!" Something like the following dialogue occurred ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... are only certain of coming back again where it is possible to do as we please, I won't grumble about what we are obliged to eat," Neal said, with ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... indignant protest against those who would suppress the dialect, against the regents and the rectors whom "we must pay with our pennies to hear them scoff at the language that binds us to our fathers and our soil!" And the poet cries out, "No, no, we'll keep our rebellious langue d'oc, grumble who will. We'll speak it in the stables, at harvest-time, among the silkworms, among lovers, among neighbors, etc., etc. It shall be the language of joy and of brotherhood. We'll joke and laugh with it;—and as for the army, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... got no cause to grumble at it," said a fat-faced man in very dirty corduroys. "It's your chice, an' your livin'! You likes the road, an' you makes your grub on it! 'Taint no use you findin' fault with the gettin' o' ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the appointment of Dr. Michaelis, says "there is no chance of his clubbing together with the big industrialists and misguided agitators." So long however as they are clubbed separately we shall not grumble. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... Countrymen came down from distant villages into towns and cities, to see perverters whom they had never heard of, and to learn the righteousness of hatred. When heretics waxed fewer the religious began to grumble that God, in losing his enemies, had also ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... night is the only time for cooking. The decrees of an order for a detail are inexorable. A soldier must take it as it comes, for none ever know but what the next duties may be even worse than the present. As a general rule, soldiers rarely ever grumble at any detail on the eve of an engagement, for sometimes it excuses them from a battle, and the old ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... and the domestic buildings of the monks. The erection of the castle is dated in the twelfth century, and from this time we may consider the older abbey buildings around the church to have been deserted and left to ruin; but we can hardly grumble at a transfer which has given us so curious a combination of military and monastic architecture in the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... change, and I'm not sorry for one," quoth Mr. Jack, "I'm stiff all over. No one can stand such work long. Won't the shearers growl! No shearing to-day, and perhaps none tomorrow either." Truth to tell, Mr Bowles' sentiments are not confined to his ingenuous bosom. Some of the shearers grumble at being stopped "just as a man was earning a few shillings." Those who are in top pace and condition don't like it. But to many of the rank and file—working up to and a little beyond their strength—with whom swelled wrists and other protests of nature are ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... acting chaplain. His hospital stories are full of point and pathos. He tells of one man with twenty-two shell wounds, and yet living and cheerful; of another with a hole as big as a hand in his leg, and another big hole in his arm, and yet refusing to grumble, and professing himself quite comfortable. Of this man an Australian said, 'He exasperates me; he never has any pain.' He pictures to us a corporal seeing to the comfort of his men and horses, and then, by way of a change, teaching his men ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... outcome of the quiet and stable home life of an island people, have done more than anything to make the Englishman a deceptive personality to the outside eye. He has for centuries been permitted to grumble. There is no such confirmed grumbler—until he really has something to grumble at, and then no one who grumbles less. There is no such confirmed carper at the condition of his country, yet no one really so profoundly convinced of its perfection. A stranger might well think from his utterances ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... amendments came decidedly under Wolfe's ideas of "freak." But there are some extremes to which the machine dare not go, and it did not dare to go on record as against popular municipal government. Wolfe and his associates could and did grumble, but they did not dare refuse the several ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... Colonel Lawton. "Are you going my way, Mr. Batholommey? It's queer, Frederik," he added, bidding his host good-bye, "it's queer—deucedly queer how things turn out. There's one thing certain: the old gentleman should have made a will. But it's too late now for us to grumble about that. By the way, what are you going to do with all his relics and family heirlooms, Frederik? Have you thought of it? I supposed, of course, you'd keep everything just as he left it. But from the way you've talked this ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... isn't fair," the eldest sister said, in a gentler voice. "You know I never blamed you. I only showed you that even a popular actress sometimes remembers that she is a woman. And if she is a woman, you must let her have a grumble occasionally." ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... they offered an excellent excuse for my sudden departure. It didn't come to my mind that the white spots might have been the cause of my sudden longing for my own little pink room. I simply knew I wanted to go home; and wake up in the morning cross and disagreeable; and grumble about the bacon and coffee at the breakfast ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... hundred feet higher, where I halted for a while on a rocky island fairly clear of snow. As coolie after coolie arrived, breathing convulsively, he dropped his load and sat quietly by the side of it. There was not a grumble, not a word of reproach for the hard work they were made to endure. Sleet was falling, and the wet and cold increased the discomfort. There was now a very steep pull before us. To the left, we had a glacier beginning in a precipitous ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and heathen, live on poor fare and go to bed hungry. This is from necessity, not from choice. The poorest man is particular in his degree as to what he eats, more especially as to the manner in which his food has been prepared. Even the beggar off the road will unblushingly and loudly grumble if the fare at a feast to which he has been invited by some wealthy man is not exactly to his mind. The children of mission schools, many of whom have come out of lives of real privation, are sometimes very critical about their meals, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... They loved to grumble, those old salts, for as soon as one had shot off his grievance his neighbour would follow with another, each ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... heavy with moisture and very still and warm; a heady fragrance of precocious blooms flavoured the air, vying with the scent of rain. The silence was profound, but shaken now and then by a grumble of distant thunder. The world hung breathless on the issue ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the directors found they had expended 460,000 pounds on the works, and that they were still far from completion. They looked at the loss of interest on this large investment, and began to grumble at the delay. They desired to see their capital becoming productive; and in the spring of 1829 they urged the engineer to push on the works with increased vigour. Mr. Cropper, one of the directors, who took an active interest in their progress, said to Stephenson ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... a good officer, an able tactician and a resolute leader. He had hardly, however, realised as yet that the movements of a brigade must be subordinated to those of the whole army, and he was wont to grumble if his troops were held back, or were not allowed to pursue some local success. Steuart was also a West Pointer, but with much to learn. Taylor and his Louisianians played so important a part in the ensuing operations that they deserve more detailed mention. The command was a mixed one. One of the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... indicated that the Shiuana ordered him to wait until daylight. It was sure destruction, he felt it; but the Shiuana spoke through the medium of the old man, and the Shiuana were of course right. He could not complain or even grumble. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... objects of the highest regard. All classes vie with one another in their attentions. The rich send their luxuries; the paupers, however, not having anything to give, go themselves and wait on them and nurse them. For this there is no help, and the rich grumble, but can do nothing. The sick are thus sought out incessantly, and most carefully tended. When they die there is great rejoicing, since death is a blessing; but the nurses labor hard to preserve them in life, so as to prolong the ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... Never was a little brother or sister more real to them than was "Peggy Mel" as she rushed into the hive laden with stolen honey, while her neighbors gossiped about it, or the stately elm that played sly tricks, or the log which proved to be a good bedfellow because it did not grumble. Burroughs's way of investing beasts, birds, insects, and inanimate things with human motives is very pleasing to children. They like to trace analogies between the human and the irrational, to think of a weed as a tramp stealing rides, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... and my company to go along with them, I positively refused it, and rose up, for I was sitting on the ground, in order to go to the boat. One or two of the men began to importune me to go; and when I refused, began to grumble, and say they were not under my command, and they would go. "Come, Jack," says one of the men, "will you go with me? I'll go for one." Jack said he would—and then another—and, in a word, they all left me but one, whom I persuaded to stay, and a boy left ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... much mince-pie, goes to his weekly lecture, and, seeing only half a dozen people there, proceeds to grumble at those half-dozen for the sins of such as stay away. "The Church is cold, there is no interest in religion," and so on: a simple outpouring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... but what I'd better hide you till night," the landlord informed Lida. "As I said, they're naturally genteel, but——" He hesitated when he heard the growing grumble of voices. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... is implied a frequency, or iteration of small acts. And the same frequency of acts, but less subtile by reason of the clearer vowel a, is indicated in jangle, tangle, spangle, mangle, wrangle, brangle, dangle; as also in mumble, grumble, jumble. But at the same time the close u implies something obscure or obtunded; and a congeries of consonants mbl, denotes a confused kind of rolling or tumbling, as in ramble, scamble, scramble, wamble, amble; but in these there ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... learning. Some people go through life with their eyes shut, and then grumble there is nothing to see in it! Well—you want that Arab buried? What a fancy! Look you, then; stay by him, since you are so fond of him, and I will go and send some men to you with a stretcher to carry ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... cultivation of their fields there. This addition to the arable land has been a great boon to the people. I cannot say, however, judging by those with whom I have conversed, that they are satisfied. They grumble at the new tax imposed for the construction and maintenance of the canals, and also at the tax they have to pay for their holdings in the hills, though I believe it to be very light. They would gladly have all the benefits of a firm and improving government ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... A grumble came from the hall without. Evidently his charge, if we may so designate the fellow he had brought there, had his own ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... the old boy had to sleep upon it!" young Bright reported to the senior members of the firm. The lawyers of B—— were accustomed to make fun of Judge Orcutt or grumble about his ways of doing things. He was certainly different from the ordinary run of probate judges or of all judges for that matter. The smart law firms that had dealings with him professed to consider him a poor lawyer, but everybody ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... they grumble, "When?" Guns of Verdun answer then, "Sisters, when to guard Lorraine Gunners ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... dear Thomas. SHE never showed such disrespect to HER husband: and as for affection, wives never think of that now-a-days, she supposes: but things were different in HER time—as if there was any good to be done by staying in the room, when he does nothing but grumble and scold when he's in a bad humour, talk disgusting nonsense when he's in a good one, and go to sleep on the sofa when he's too stupid for either; which is most frequently the case now, when he has nothing to do but to sot ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... you've had your luck in the wars, you've the less reason to grumble at the bit of a surge you may have felt in your garments, as they run you up to this here yard-arm. I say, brother, I've known stouter fellows take the same ride, who never knew when or ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... now changed, and not for the better. Still, if any one has no right to grumble, it is the archaeologist, because the building of these suburban quarters has placed more knowledge at his disposal than could have been gathered before in the lapse of a century. I quote only one instance. Famous ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... thunder and grumble At high and at humble Until he became, in a while, Mordacious, pugnacious, Rapacious. Good gracious! They called him the Yankee Carlyle! But he never took rest On his quarrelsome quest Of the giants, both mighty and ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... of the farmhouse, dignified by the name "Attica." My companions were all single men; good, reliable fellows who were working for a principle and would ordinarily have declined such a lodging- place, but under the circumstances were not apt to grumble, but made the best of it. It was like camping out, and all its mischances were turned into fun. My roommates were called "the Admiral," "the Dutchman," "the General" and "the Parson,"—nicknames given each one of them for ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... stole along the wall to that door, intending to listen if aught were stirring within, or on the stairs, or in the rooms above. And I had just got my fingers on the rounded pillar of the doorway, and the thunder was just dying to a grumble, when a hand seized the back of my neck as in a vice, and something hard, and round, and cold pressed itself insistingly into my right temple. It was all done in the half of a second; but I knew, just as clearly as if I could see it, that a ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... experience and common sense, upon what factors their price seems mainly to depend? Two factors spring to mind at once; their cost of production and their usefulness. As regards the former, the case seems clear enough. We may indeed sometimes grumble that the price of this or that commodity is unconscionably high in comparison with its cost; but this only goes to show that we conceive a relation between price and cost as the normal, governing rule. If one commodity cost only a half as much to produce as another, we ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... acquiesced; "and they are a bit shabby, too. You are going down, Grif. You never used to be shabby. None of us were ever exactly that, though we used to grumble sometimes. We used to grumble, not because other people had things, but because we had ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... realise these facts will not, therefore, grumble overmuch at bad times. They will, at least, have had the sense to see that those times were bound to come, and have refused to believe that they had entered into a perpetual paradise of high prices. In this respect ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... adroitly handled, will exploit the majority almost as effectively after Home Rule as before it. Captain Craig will dictate terms to us not from the last ditch, but from a far more agreeable and powerful position, the Treasury Bench. And we undertake not to grumble, for these are ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... determined me to make extensive additions to the scene of the 'Venusberg.' I thought that this would give the staff of the ballet a choreographic task of so magnificent a character that there would no longer be any occasion to grumble at me for my obstinacy in this matter. The musical composition of the two scenes occupied most of my time during the month of September, and at the same time I began the pianoforte rehearsals of Tannhauser in the foyer of ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... pindlin' under this old locust-tree," Sophy heard him grumble. "Throwin' down leaves an' branches every day in the year. Half on 't's rotten. It ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... so much, prattler," said Gervique, "and look out on your side. When we have got by them, it'll be time to grumble. Look out ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... thyself another: A maiden's heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upwards, And it needeth that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety: He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure, Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... he looks at the sky he rejoices. In short, for such a man, the mere process of living is happiness. But it is quite the reverse with the other sort of man; you may plate him with gold, and he will continue to grumble; nothing satisfies him; success in life affords him no pleasure, even if it be perfectly self-evident. The man simply is incapable of experiencing satisfaction; he is incapable, and that is the end of the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... their rights, however, as well as the rich, and even the Snarling Princess was obliged to submit to the disappointment at which she could only grumble. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing |
