"Squeamish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of that, Jeffreys, will make another man of you. It will send you into dreamland. You'll forget there is such a thing as misery in the world. Don't be squeamish, old fellow. You're cold and weak, you know you are; you ought to take it. You're not too good, surely—eh? Man alive, if you never do anything worse than take a drop of brandy, you'll pass muster. Come, I say, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Lady 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, ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little choice where even the best is only tolerable. The common quality, however, of all Dryden's comedies is their nastiness, the more remarkable because we have ample evidence that he was a man of modest conversation. Pepys, who was by no means squeamish (for he found "Sir Martin Marall" "the most entire piece of mirth ... that certainly ever was writ ... very good wit therein, not fooling"), writes in his diary of the 19th June, 1668: "My wife and Deb to the king's play-house to-day, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... agreed 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 ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... pleased with your just and sensible preface against the squeamish or bigoted persons who would bury in oblivion the faults and follies of princes, and who thence contribute to their guilt; for if princes, who living are above control, should think that no censure is to attend them when dead, it would be new encouragement to them to play the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 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
... herein lay their mistake. Money, likewise, is only the outward and visible sign of power. All these families were made up of persons who preserved a high tradition of courtesy, of true graciousness of life, of refined speech, with a family pride, and a squeamish sense of noblesse oblige which suited well with the kind of life they led; a life wholly filled with occupations which become contemptible so soon as they cease to be accessories and take the chief place in existence. There was a certain intrinsic merit in all ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... 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 do ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... 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 ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... wouldn't carry on with this game for all he's worth, and that I believe is not much." He had intended to go direct to Dunmore House from the Kellys, and to have seen Barry, but he would have had to stop for dinner if he had done so; and though, generally speaking, not very squeamish in his society, he did not wish to enjoy another after-dinner tete-a-tete with him—"It's better to get him over to Tuam," thought he, "and try and make him see rason when he's sober: nothing's too hot or too bad for him, when he's mad dhrunk ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... on, for Von Anspach had "seen to it," prodigally. And "Oh, well!" I thought; "if everybody else is so extravagantly pleased, what in heaven's name is the use of my being squeamish? Besides, she is only doing what I am doing, and getting all the pleasure out of life that is possible. She and I are very sensible people. At least, I suppose we are. I wonder, though? Meanwhile, I had better go and look for that preposterously beautiful Elena. And a fig for ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Somehow he slipped in between us; we discovered him crouched by the newspaper raking over the contents. This was no time for ceremony; he got a prompt cuff over the head and slunk away shivering and shaking his ears. And then the distribution began. Now, your cat, at the best of times, is squeamish about his food; he stands no tricks. He is a slow eater, though he can secure his dinner with the best of us. A vicious snatch, like a snake, and he has it. Then he spreads himself out to dispose of the prey—feet ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... was not in the least squeamish about telling us that Tippoo Tib had surely buried huge quantities of ivory, and had caused to be slain afterward every one who shared ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... specimens of that ingenious and lively species of fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There is one still better paper of the same class. But though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three years ago, was probably thought as edifying as one of Smallridge's sermons, we dare not indicate it to the squeamish readers of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not squeamish. They thrust their hands into the lathery mouths of their brutes to show the state of their teeth, and wiped their fingers on their trousers or grass afterwards, without a tremor, though my friend could never forbear a shudder at the sight. If sometimes they came ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... know 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, ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... most delicate courtesy, and true missionary enterprise. In looking at these noble representatives of savage life, she was greatly puzzled to discover where the dirt ended and the Indian began: but philanthropy should overlook such trifles. Philanthropy shouldn't be squeamish. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... morning, noon, and evening; the most squeamish recovered confidence in twenty-four hours; and every constitutional lubber concluded he was ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... whose characteristic consists in the possession of sound lungs and sonorous voice. He is particularly jealous of their failure, and hence, as a means of their preservation, he keeps them in good exercise. "Practice makes perfect;" and believing in this maxim, he uses his vocal functions without squeamish regard to the possibility of their decline. One would imagine from the volume and strength of tongue-power put forth in his conversation that he considered his hearers stone deaf. He does not in ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... "I'm squeamish," he admitted. "The trouble on Dara is Med Service fault. Before my time, but still ... I'll stick to rations ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... every kind will abound among such folk, inevitably, and they will resort to extraordinary expedients in their search for relief. Although squeamish as a race about inflicting much pain in cold blood, they will systematically infect other animals with their own rank diseases, or cut out other animals' organs, or kill and dissect them, hoping thus to learn how to offset their neglect of themselves. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... Prisoner at the bar, you have been found guilty by a jury, after a very long and careful consideration of your remarkable and strange case, of a very serious offence; an offence which squeamish moralists are apt to call robbing the widow and orphan; a cant phrase also, with which I hesitate to soil my lips, designates this offence as swindling. You will permit me to remark that the very fact that such nauseous and improper words can be used about the conduct ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... this action she absolutely retracts it. Why then does my foolish fondness seek to establish for her the same merit in my heart, as if she avowed it? Pr'ythee, dear Belford, once more, leave us to our fate; and do not thou interpose with thy nonsense, to weaken a spirit already too squeamish, and strengthen a conscience that has declared itself of ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... servants are not up to what they used to be. They are getting squeamish, and you have to be so careful how you speak to them or they will leave you. We are kept always on the lookout for ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... roaring 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 of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... objections that can be brought against this project's coming to perfection, and proved it to be convenient for the state, of interest to the Protestant church, and consonant with Christianity, nay, with the very scruples of modern, squeamish statesmen. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... No squeamish notions filled his breast, The Union was his theme; "No surrender and no compromise," His day-thought ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... is a very ... uh ... commendable desire," he said in a low, gentle voice that was a perfect match for his outward appearance of high gentility. "We can always use a good man," he continued, "who isn't afraid ... nor too squeamish." ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... for it. There was something in the side of life I saw, too, not only on the paper, that made me heart-sick; and then the rush and fight and scramble to be first, to beat the other man. Probably I am too squeamish. I saw classmates and college friends diving into it, bound to come out ahead, dear old, honest, frank fellows, who had been so happy-go-lucky and kind and gay, growing too busy to meet and be good to any man who couldn't be good to them, asking (more ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... 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 origin, means big, strong. It ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... 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 closely to my heels for about ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... over-squeamish in the case. What! eating stupid sheep a crime? No, never, sire, at any time. It rather was an act of grace, A mark of honour to their race. And as to shepherds, one may swear, The fate your majesty describes, Is recompense less full than fair For such usurpers ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... couldn't see to read my music, but I took th' paper in wi' me, to ha' something to do wi' my fingers. Th' folks' heads danced, as I stood as right afore 'em all as if I'd been going to play at ball wi' 'em. You may guess I felt squeamish, but mine weren't the first song, and th' music sounded like a friend's voice telling me to take courage. So, to make a long story short, when it were all o'er th' lecturer thanked me, and th' managers said as how there never was a new singer ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mistress of two of 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 attention could be spared ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... 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 ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... are the grain of sand between big wheels. I iterate that the footpad who attacked you last night was merely a prologue. I happen to know your cousin has entrusted the affair to Heinrich Obendorf, his foster-brother, who, as you will remember, is not particularly squeamish." ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... at the peculiar character of his employer, and in a way slightly disgusted, but he was not in a position to cavil or feel squeamish over apparent lack of honesty, and resolved at once ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... in spite of that Billycock of a husband who talks like the original Rothschild. By the bye, Wing is using him for a good thing. He's sent him out West to pull that street railway chestnut out of the fire. I'm not particularly squeamish, Reggie, though I try to play the game straight myself—the way my father played it. But by the lord Harry, I can't see the difference between Dick Turpin and Wing and Trixy Brent. It's hold and deliver with those fellows. But if the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the cost of refusal," she said. "His offer wasn't help or neutrality: it was help or opposition by every means in his power. He left me in no kind of doubt as to that. He's not used to being challenged and he won't be squeamish. You will have the whole of his Press against you, and every other journalistic and political influence that he possesses. He's getting a hold upon the working classes. The Sunday Post has an enormous sale in the manufacturing towns; ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... but feel acutely. Often they are too highly sensitized for their 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 of a fine organism. ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... 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 ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... &c 489; refuse &c 764. Adj. unwilling; not in the vein, loth, loath, shy of, disinclined, indisposed, averse, reluctant, not content; adverse &c (opposed) 708; laggard, backward, remiss, slack, slow to; indifferent &c 866; scrupulous; squeamish &c (fastidious) 868; repugnant &c (dislike) 867; restiff^, restive; demurring &c v.; unconsenting &c (refusing) 764; involuntary &c 601. Adv. unwillingly &c adj.; grudgingly, with a heavy heart; with a bad, with an ill grace; against one's wishes, against one's will, against the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... what the devil has come over you,' cried Toussac, turning suspicious eyes upon my protector. 'I never knew you squeamish before, and certainly you were not backward in the affair of the man from Bow Street. This fellow has our secret, and he must either die, or we shall see him at our trial. What is the sense of arranging a plot, and then at the last moment turning ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the ballet, framed and glazed, petticoats and all, mind you. But about your dog, Giglamps: -that cupboard there would be just the ticket; you could put him under the wine-bottles, and then there'd be wine above and whine below. Videsne puer? D'ye twig, young 'un? But if you're squeamish about that, there are heaps of places in the town where you could keep ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... judgment of what was sensible and sound in fighting-risks I do not know. General Trenchard, their supreme chief, believed in an aggressive policy at all costs, and was a Napoleon in this war of the skies, intolerant of timidity, not squeamish of heavy losses if the balance were tipped against the enemy. Some young flying-men complained to me bitterly that they were expected to fly or die over the German lines, whatever the weather or whatever the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... be admitted at once that many of Maupassant's earlier short-stories have to do with the lower aspects of man's merely animal activity. Maupassant had an abundance of what the French themselves called "Gallic salt." His humor was not squeamish; it delighted in dealing with themes that our Anglo-Saxon prudery prefers not to touch. But even at the beginning this liking of his for the sort of thing that we who speak English prefer to avoid in print never led him to put dirt where dirt was not a necessary element of his narrative. ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... such houses before the 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 convictions; and the astonishing system of detection which had grown up ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... everywhere Were sickened and dismayed; The Turk, not squeamish as a rule, No special glee betrayed; And even Mr. BERNARD SHAW Failed to defend ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... "We're too squeamish," he said. "It comes of the long Peace. I've sent word to Costello. I suppose I'll have to appear at the inquest. They say a wise man never found a dead man. No one would accuse me ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... at any rate," he remarked, grimly. "The idea of eating rats is horrid, of course, but I don't know why it should be. Certainly many persons have eaten them, and in an emergency I don't know why I should be any more squeamish than others. ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... are those paid 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 ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... means squeamish, on the testimony of his nose and ears P. Sybarite then and there concluded that he would have to have become exceedingly blase indeed ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the ways of the truly rich are past finding out. After a man has attained a fortune sufficient to keep him in yachts and automobiles, one would think he could afford to indulge himself in the luxury of being squeamish; that as to where he obtained any further increase of wealth, he would prefer to pick ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He'd rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... he rose to his feet. It was a good thing he remembered Alexander was squeamish and didn't like anatomy. The door was to his left, an iris door with eight leaves—terribly old-fashioned. About ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... C. and the ladies went off:—thunder-under-under came the knocks at the door; squeedle-eedle-eedle, Mr. Wippert's fiddlers began to strike up; and, about half-past eleven, me and the gents thought it high time to make our appearance. I felt a LITTLE squeamish at the thought of meeting a couple of hundred great people; but Count Mace and Sir Gorman O'Gallagher taking each an arm, we ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who said that he represented a syndicate, which was a thing for which Dick had not the least reverence. The injustice of the proceedings did not much move him; he had seen the strong hand prevail too often in other places to be squeamish over the moral ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... trades which the employers kept going for local reasons—these must be hunted out and brought to a standstill, even at the cost of increasing unemployment. They were making energetic preparations for war, and it was not the time to be squeamish about their weapons. Pelle was in his element. This was something better than ruining a single shoemaker, even if he was the biggest in the city! He was rich in ideas, and never wavered in carrying them into execution. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... refined a taste, even in office, even in the rank in which you are placed. One hesitates to proclaim the excessively stupid things that stir the crowd, and the blockhead who is bold enough to declare his folly creates a hellish noise with his nonsense, while a man of refinement, who is not always a squeamish man, remains in his corner unseen. Remember that more moths are caught at night with a greasy candle than with a ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... to do anything," rejoins the vaqueano. "If you're so squeamish about giving offence to him you call your father's friend, you needn't take any part in the matter, or at all compromise yourself. Only stand aside, and allow the law I've just spoken of to ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... in, one of the fields of the Indians, where good alfalfa can be purchased for the animals and fresh vegetables and fruit (in season) for one's own use. If you are not too squeamish to see aboriginal man in his primitive dirt, study him in his home. Try to learn to look at things from his standpoint. If possible, witness one of his dances—a religious ceremony—and arrange to enter his primitive toholwoh or sweat-house, where he will give you a most effective ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... 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 ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... 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 ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... squeamish!" he said. "The first thing you know you'll be as bad as Fletcher." There was a moment's silence. "What does he say ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the old hag, the slatternly woman, and the dirty children. The stew was poured out into a huge wooden platter; they used no plates, but dipped with their fingers. The sight awakened a little disgust in Bob, but he was too hungry to be squeamish, and he succeeded in picking out various morsels which had not been touched by the dirty hands ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... in 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 of "the ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... would feel squeamish about shooting before she hurled the knife, then she was certainly right. But she knew better than to make one preliminary motion. And Kagig knew better than to permit further pleasantries. I saw him ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... next applied at Brunswick Wolfenbuttel; no lack of Princesses there: Princesa Elizabeth, for instance; Protestant she too, but perhaps not so squeamish? Old Anton Ulrich, whom some readers know for the idle Books, long-winded Novels chiefly, which he wrote, was the Grandfather of this favored Princess; a good-natured old gentleman, of the idle ornamental species, in whose head most things, it is likely, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 abominable assafoetida, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... squeamish. However, as you are a novice, let us put off the rest until you are seasoned. The pictures are not all horrible. Each book refers to a different country. That one contains illustrations of modern civilization in Germany, for instance. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... 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. ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... shrapnel burst, the front squadrons seemed to stumble and fall. The ranks were so near that the change from living human beings into mangled pieces of flesh and rags could clearly be seen. More than one veteran gunner felt squeamish at the sight. But the rear squadrons, though their horses' hoofs were squelching in the blood of their comrades of a moment before, never blenched or faltered but swept on at a thundering gallop. Again the guns spoke, and again. That was all. Amid the vines, here and there a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... did not always choose his friends with the best of judgment," said he. "I am not squeamish, and I would not have boys kept in a glass case, but—yes, I'm afraid Arthur was not always too careful." He replaced the cigarette neatly between his lips. "This man, now—this man whom you saw to-night—what sort of looking man will ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... began, "you don't know what you lost by being over squeamish. Such a perfect jewel-box of a room, with the tiniest single bed of solid mahogany! Isn't it queer that Arthur should have locked it up, and isn't it fortunate for us that Mrs. Johnson found that rusty old key which must have originally belonged ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... the word you're not that at all, sir. You're a great builder. You've done more for the Northwest than any man living. You couldn't have done it if you had been squeamish. I hold the end justifies the means. What you've got is yours because you've won it. Men who do a great work for the public are entitled to ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 Americans, why ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... disagreeable, but disgusting to them. Rough, rude men as most of the Rangers are, little prone to delicate sentimentalism, they are, nevertheless, true to the ordinary instincts of humanity. Accustomed to seeing blood spilled, and not squeamish about spilling it if it be that of a red-skinned foe, it is different when the ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... heads. Entrails they had none. They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being done, as I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... force when they dared. It was like beating mad hounds from off their worry. What established order at last was that King rolled up his sleeves and began, so that eagerness gave place to wonder. The "Hills" are not squeamish in any one particular; so that the fact that the cave became a shambles upset nobody. The surgeon's thrill that makes even half-amateurs oblivious of all but the work in hand, coupled with the desperate need of winning this first trick, made ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... but I kept hid for more than an 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 with ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... as this is, in a sense, a living part of the man who creates it, and one can well imagine him putting off the day of its destruction, and grudging that it should perish with all its power of awakening old chords of memory and revitalising buried years. For his own part he was no squeamish moralist and if it were only for his own eyes he would enjoy passages which the more fastidious public might ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Holford. "What!" said Vane, "would you have me steal a dory then?" "Do you make it a matter of conscience," replied Holford, "to steal a dory, when you have been a common robber and pirate, stealing ships and cargoes, and plundering all mankind that fell in your way! Stay here if you are so squeamish?" and he left him to consider of ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... or so habitually set about the ruin of their neighbors' wives, as they once did. Generally, people now call a spade an agricultural implement; they have not grown decent without having also grown a little squeamish, but they have grown comparatively decent; there is no doubt about that. They require of a novelist whom they respect unquestionable proof of his seriousness, if he proposes to deal with certain phases ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 never saw a vacant place ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sufficient justification in that attitude. As for the ease with which he planned to kill and cover his killing under the semblance of accident, he would have said, if you could make him speak of it, that he was not squeamish. They'd all have to die some ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... 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 there when he ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... I 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... will have no act of mine cut her adrift and push her under. Much better to stand the gaff. I suppose one hardens to anything in time." His look wandered about the room. "And the diabolic part of it all is that this squeamish feeling of responsibility for another may achieve as much harm in the long run ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... I 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 to ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... You are so entangled, that you can neither advance nor recede. You are fixed where I have placed you.—Thus much for the present. Now leave me in my native good humour. As to the old lawyer, I can soon manage him, never fear—Get the better of your squeamish conscience, and ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... as squeamish as all that, are you? Just because it was in a dead man's hand—and in ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... wrapped in ninefold fur, his squeamish Grace Defies the fury of the howling storm; And whilst the tempest whistles round his face, Exults to find his mantled ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... be squeamish, Ben. They are double our number, and if we don't kill them by a surprise, they will ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... pretty clearly, I flatter myself, the game I was playing; and, though some rigid moralist may object to its propriety, I say that anything is fair in love, and that men so poor as myself can't afford to be squeamish about their means of getting on in life. The great and rich are welcomed, smiling, up the grand staircase of the world; the poor but aspiring must clamber up the wall, or push and struggle up the back stair, or, PARDI, crawl through any of the conduits of the house, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... except to naturally increase the worth of my services. I'm not squeamish about stiffs, but I like to know what I am doing. What are you holding on to ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... a much higher authority—that is the authority of the Peers. I do not know why we should be so much restricted with regard to the House of Lords in this House. I think I have observed that in their place they are not so squeamish as to what they say about us. It appeared to me that in this debate the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) felt it necessary to get up and endeavour to defend his chief. Now, if I were to give advice to the hon. Gentlemen opposite, it would be this—for while stating that during the last four ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... 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 ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... often of works of "absorbing interest" that appeared at "the psychological moment" that one feels a bit squeamish about applying these phrases even to such a book as Mr. HARRY DE WINDT'S Russia as I Know It (CHAPMAN AND HALL); but honestly their appropriateness cannot be denied in view of the author's peculiar knowledge of the too mysterious country on which interest just now is so poignantly concentrated. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... curtly. "I just thought it might be a convenience to you. I'd help you out. I don't see 't you need be so—squeamish. What you're doing ain't so pure an' lofty 't you can set up for Marcus Aurelius and ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... if it belonged to a fellow who's dead?... There! See that hole in the shirt. That's a bullet-hole. Don't be squeamish. It'll ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... former of whom is supposed by Rous[242] (one of the most credulous of our early historians) to have founded the University of Cambridge. The latter had probably greater abilities than his predecessor; and a thousand pities it is that William of Malmesbury should have been so stern and squeamish as not to give us the substance of that old book, containing a life of Athelstan—which he discovered, and supposed to be coeval with the monarch—because, forsooth, the account was too uniformly flattering! Let me here, however, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... particularly in those provinces, viz. Sicily and Asia, which paid their taxes in the form of tithe and not in a lump sum. The collection of these revenues could be made a very paying concern seeing that it was not necessary to be too squeamish about the rights and claims of the provincials. And, indeed, by the time of the Gracchi all these joint-stock companies had become the one favourite investment in which every one who had any capital, however small, placed it without hesitation. Polybius, ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... making fun of me," thought Sydney, as he drew himself up, went hurriedly to where the first lieutenant was scanning the horizon with a glass, and waited till he had done, feeling very squeamish and uncomfortable the while. ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... is fifty years or thereabouts younger than the earlier. It may be said that almost all mediaeval work is in similar case. But then the great body of mediaeval work is anonymous; and even the most scrupulous ages have not been squeamish in taking liberties with the text of Mr Anon. But the author is named in both these versions, and named differently. In the elder he is Layamon the son of Leovenath, in the younger Laweman the son of Leuca; and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... 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
... 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... as Gordon 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
... out to the West with the intention of working hard and using his hands as well as his brains; he had not been squeamish; he had, in fact, laboured like a ploughman; and to be obliged to give in had been galling and bitter. There are human beings into whose consciousness of themselves the possibility of being beaten does not enter. This man was ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
