"Officiousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always taken a deep interest in the affairs of other people. It is to be presumed that women have a larger mental grasp than men. They crave for more business when they are business-like, and thus by easy steps descend to mere officiousness. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... the officiousness of a servant at the inn to which the sufferers were carried, was taken at once to the post. And, after all, things turned out not quite so bad as anticipated; for when the doctors came to examine the state of Lady Isabel, not cursorily, they found there would be no ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was time to interfere. "The truth is," I said, "that M. Grabot here is not so much to blame. He was the victim of a trick which these rascals played on him; and in an idle moment I let it go on. That is the whole secret. However, I forgive him for his officiousness since it brings us together, and I shall now have the pleasure of ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... of little messes in tiny saucepans on the hob, such a dressing and undressing of infants, such a tying, and folding, and pinning; such a nursing and warming of little legs and feet before the fire, such a delightful confusion of talking and cooking, bustle, importance, and officiousness, as never can be enjoyed in its full ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... at present, but I don't think Arlington's suit will prosper, and you will laugh when I tell you why: it is not that the youth is too shy and the maiden too cold; it is not the officiousness of the Berwicks;—it is because Lord Arlington has some thirty or forty thousand a-year. He is so rich, and the Rochdales so poor, and so stiffly disinterested withal; and it is such a mortal sin to think of money in this dirty world, where we cannot live without ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... Hedgehog oppose them. With all the pertinacity of ignorance, they maintained their certainty of his abnormal condition; and with all the officiousness of quackery, they insisted upon immediate amputation. Aided by two volunteer assistants, the self-made surgeons cut off limb after limb before their reckless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... there, just a minute!" this last as John, who had a secret delight in baiting officiousness, ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... signatures of whom might be obtained at all times; but, established as my practice is, I would scorn to importune those gentlemen, and impertinently to place their names before the public in a position which every sensible man must declare to be that of extreme negligence, ignorance, or unbecoming officiousness. ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... it was somewhat unpleasant and unpropitious. The morning after my arrival I was sitting at breakfast: my scout, the Arimaspian, apprehending that the singleness of his eye may impeach his character for officiousness, in order to escape the reproach of seeing half as much only as other men, is always striving to prove that he sees at least twice as far as the most sharpsighted: after many demonstrations of superabundant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... right, mum, for your officiousness, and obsequiousness and toadying to—precious Mr. Gray!—serves you doubly right for famishing me at ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... to this pious sentiment; and her brother applauded the honesty which could not be perverted by any interest whatever. She remained concealed in their house, where she helped in the kitchen, cleaned the rooms, and redoubled her usual diligence and officiousness. Her old master came to Lovere on pretence of adjusting a lawsuit, three days after, and made private inquiry after her; but hearing from her mother and brother (who knew nothing of her being here) that they ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer. Without all the qualities which made him the jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... woman, like an electric spark, firing a whole life-train of feeling and memory; but the lines of her face never moved, and not the stirring of a muscle told what the touch had reached, besides a few nerves. She had done her charge no good by her officiousness, as June presently saw with grief. It was not till Mrs. Randolph had thoroughly satisfied her displeasure at being thwarted, and not until Daisy was utterly exhausted, that Mrs. Randolph stayed ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... had rather offend the shades of a hundred John Bunyans than leave my most unlettered hearer without his full and proper Sabbath- night lesson. The third armed thief, then, that fell upon Valiant was, under other names, Impertinence, Meddlesomeness, Officiousness, Over-Interference. Pragmatic,—by whatever name he calls himself, there is no mistaking him. He is never satisfied. He is never pleased. He is never thankful. He is always setting his superiors right. He is like the Psalmist in one thing, he has more understanding than all ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... pitched headlong in assisting her as far down as possible. She lowered her skirts while I followed and then I helped her into the domino, rejoicing in the silken caress of her hair on my hands as I arranged the hood, a pleasant piece of officiousness for which I got thanks I did not deserve, and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... by which this interview was brought about were, in reality, only the officiousness and the skill of Antonona, and the weakness with which Don Luis acceded to her request that he should grant it, why forge lies, and cause the two lovers to be impelled, as it were, by Fate, to see and speak with each other alone, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... them to—doubtless to the extreme delight of Acting Sailing-Master Morris who seemed anxious enough to fire the gun and make the capture; although they would at the moment have stuck to a child hearing the authority of the United States. It is significant, however, that the over-officiousness of Mr. Morris has not tended much to his advantage as he no longer belongs to the United States Navy; he having been quite as unfortunate as a certain District Attorney, who, also, endeavored to impress the Government as to his undoubted unfriendliness to the cause of ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... coincided with the pious officiousness of his Minister of Religion, and undertook to draw up himself the question and answer in the new catechism. "Is submission to the government of France a dogma of the Church? Yes; Scripture teaches us that he who resists the powers resists the order of God; yes, the Church ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... in this mood that I had to put Monny on that coastguard camel, while "Antoun" stood looking on. He did not offer to help the girl, as their talk yesterday on the subject of baggage-camels versus running camels had not conduced to officiousness. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... in the hall, with well-meaning officiousness bringing forward his coat and hat. His presence helped to dissipate an impulse which seized Major Graham to rush upstairs again for one other word of farewell. Had he done so what would he have found? Anne sobbing—sobbing with the terrible intensity ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... the care of their nobler part, and tell them how little addition is made by all their arts to the graces of the mind. But when was it known that female goodness or knowledge was able to attract that officiousness, or inspire that ardor, which beauty produces wherever it appears? And with what hope can we endeavor to ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... tell her. You may say to Father Frontford from me that it will be time enough for him to undertake the disposal of my property when it is mine. I thank him for his officiousness!" ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... draw down a shower of raillery upon the head of the mousquetaire, who, in order to shield the honour of a lady, is compelled to deny that the handkerchief is his. His companions walk away, and Aramis reproaches D'Artagnan with his officiousness. The Gascon blood gets up, good resolutions are forgotten, and a third rendezvous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... that nothing can carry the air of greater presumption than a servant intruding his opinion unasked upon his master, but at the same time there are certain seasons when the real danger of the master may not only excuse, but render laudable, the servant's officiousness. I therefore flatter myself that the congress will receive with indulgence and lenity the opinion I shall offer. The scheme of simply disarming the tories seems to me totally ineffectual; it will only embitter their minds ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... and the tinned American butter from the Speranza, and the boiling of rice mixed with flour for ground-baiting our pitch. And she, at first astonished, was soon all deft housewifeliness, breathless officiousness, and behind my back, of her own intuitiveness, grated some dry almonds found there, and with them sprinkled the fried tench. And we ate them, sitting on the floor together: the first new food, I suppose, tasted by me ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... distinguished the right one, the one that should have been shown him, as blue or green or purple, and intimated that her other friend, her fellow-Olympian, as Berridge had thought of him from the first, really did too clumsily bungle matters, poor dear, with his officiousness over the red one! She went on really as if she had come for that, some such rectification, some such eagerness of reunion with dear Mr. Berridge, some talk, after all the tiresome music, of questions really urgent; while, thanks to the supreme strangeness ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... our ministers and synods expressing this dissent, and proposing to form a new creed, if they deem it requisite. To call the dissenting position of the Definite Platform a new one, is therefore a historical error; and to attempt to cast odium on it by the charge of officiousness, is also an act of injustice. The same charge would equally lie against the greater part of our best ministers during the last half century, and against the founders of the ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... idle immaterial skeyn of sley'd silk] All the terms used by Thersites of Patroclus, are emblematically expressive of flexibility, compliance, and mean officiousness. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... crossed out the digression in the printed book, and sent the animadversions to Lord Bolingbroke, then at Paris. The style of the great dogmatist, thrown out in heat, must no doubt have contained many fiery particles, all which fell into the most inflammable of minds. Pope soon discovered his officiousness was received with indignation. Yet when Bolingbroke afterwards met Warburton he dissimulated: he used the language of compliment, but in a tone which claimed homage. The two most arrogant geniuses who ever lived, in vain exacted submission from each ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... merciless practices and depraved tastes, not only caused him a painful shock, but also moved him with fervid desire to offer comfort and render help.—Yet, what to say, how to approach Richard without risk of seeming officiousness and consequent offense, he could not tell. The young man's experiences and his own were so conspicuously far apart. For a moment he stood uncertain and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to me," continued the girl, leaning forward in her chair, and beaming all over with kindly officiousness; "now for once you must be rational and do just what I tell you. I shall never like you again if you oppose me in this, for I have set my heart upon it; you must promise beforehand that you will be good and not make any objection. Do ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... refresh himself from the weariness of his travel, and the inclemency of the storm. But the heart of Edwin was too full to partake of the provisions that his attentive host had prepared. The chearfulness however of the blazing hearth and the generous officiousness of the hermit, seemed by degrees to recover him from the insensibility and lethargy, that for a time had swallowed ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... in the train, in the steamboat, or in hotels, in fluent if rather "bookish" German, in correct but somewhat halting French, or, if it was a Roman Catholic priest he had to deal with, in sonorous Latin. And, without anything approaching cant or officiousness, he always tried to bring the conversation round to the subject of religion—to the state of religion in the country in which he was travelling, about which he was always anxious to gain first-hand information, and, if possible and he could do it without offence, to the ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... In Tayabas the officiousness of the Governor almost brought him to an untimely end. Two well-known inhabitants of Pagsanjan (La Laguna) were accused of conspiracy, and, without proof, court-martialled and executed. The Governor went to witness the scene, and returning ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... boy. "Another time." Then to himself, "Bother his officiousness! Wants to be very civil so that I shan't notice about his being there ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... made by an officer of so little dignity, without any known direction from his superiours, could be considered only as the zeal or officiousness of an individual, unworthy of publick notice, or the formality ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... desert him, that he was silent when he had not something of consequence to say, blushed whenever he happened to find himself mistaken, and hung down his head in the presence of the ladies, without the readiness of reply, and activity of officiousness, remarkable in young gentlemen that are bred ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson |
