"Wrangling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to see that they had something to urge in their behalf and offered to sell them the whole tract at twenty-five shillings an acre, or to take them as tenants, but they stubbornly refused his offers and after much wrangling announced their intention to stand suit. Ejectment proceedings were accordingly brought by Washington's attorney, Thomas Smith of Carlisle. The case was tried in 1786 before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... the jury had been impaneled, after long days of petty wrangling and childish recrimination among the opposing lawyers, that Stolz came to Ames and laid down his sword. The control of C. and R. should pass unequivocally to the latter if he would but save Ketchim ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... country that has been debatable ground between Turk and Christian for centuries, it has been a coveted prize to be won and lost on the diplomatic chess-board, or, worse still, the foot-ball of contending armies and wrangling monarchs. Long before the Ottoman Turks first appeared, like a small dark cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, upon the southeastern horizon of Europe, to extend and overwhelm the budding flower of Christianity and civilization in these fairest portions of the continent, Belgrade ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... religious in character, there is hardly one without its humorous element. In the play of Noah, for instance, Noah's shrewish wife makes fun for the audience by wrangling with her husband. In the Crucifixion play Herod is a prankish kind of tyrant who leaves the stage to rant among the audience; so that to "out-herod Herod" became a common proverb. In all the plays ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... sinned. The river that flowed so peacefully and carried beauty and joy wherever it ran, thou hast despoiled and rudely ravaged. Thou smotest its breast with terrible rocks; thou wouldst not heed its complaining cry; thou turnedst its peace into mad wrangling. But worse, thou slewest with thine own foot the little one that loved thee and saved thy life from the fierce Wolf. For this the river and the Squirrel shall be avenged. Thou didst choke the river with rocks; thou didst crush the Squirrel with thy foot. Thou shalt thyself ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... ladies had in the meantime left the room, not failing to let it be seen that they resented the wrangling scene which had been thrust upon them. Mistress Daisy had crossed the floor to where Lady Johnson stood, with others, and this frightened group were now almost ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... of Washington and the first administration, Hamilton having carried his point in Congress that New York should be the temporary seat of government; there was jealousy and wrangling over this, as over most other matters involving state pride, but Hamilton believed that should the prize fall to Philadelphia, she would not relinquish it as lightly as New York, which geographically was the more unfit for a permanent gathering, and that the inconvenience to which most of the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Treasury, which have been fully refuted to the board. It might appear these are like doubting the justice of that Court were I to suffer myself to be decoyed or provoked into another. Two years have already been wasted in wrangling, and I am heartily weary of it. Since my return I have the satisfaction to find the public, if possible, still more pleased from the experience they have had of the punctuality as well as the expedition of the ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... ratiocination have been much improved by any systems of art, or methodical institutions. The logick, which for so many ages kept possession of the schools, has at last been condemned as a mere art of wrangling, of very little use in the pursuit of truth; and later writers have contented themselves with giving an account of the operations of the mind, marking the various stages of her progress, and giving some general rules for the regulation of her conduct. The method of these writers is here ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... everywhere and all of them bore painful evidence of their newness. So did the clothes of their owners for that matter—men's garments still bore their price-tags. The beach was crowded with piles of merchandise over which there was much wrangling, barges plying regularly back and forth from the anchored ships added hourly to the confusion. As outfits were dumped upon the sand their owners assembled them and bore them away to their temporary camp sites. In this occupation every man ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... in that ministry cause me great anxiety. They have reached a very high point, as your Majesty will learn from the statements which all of them are certain to write to you. In so new a country, governed by heathen kings, to have wrangling and lack of harmony among the religious who instruct them cannot fail to cause scandals and difficulties. Your Majesty will command the proper remedy to be applied. Inasmuch as I see the necessity of ministers ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... the harness room, his face red with wrangling. He took a position to the right of the door, shaking hands with newcomers, inviting them over and over again to cut loose and whoop it along. Into the ears of his more intimate male acquaintances he dropped a word as to punch and cigars in the harness room later on, winking with vast ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... king, grasping the vessel; "none shall know: and, behold, I will rise on the morrow; and my two sons, wrangling for my crown—verily I ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... circuit of the roof, picking out familiar landmarks and wrangling lazily over distances and geographical boundaries, they were ready to go down. Bob must return to work, and the girls had planned a trip to the Bureau of ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... look a little further into the absurdities over which American statesmen are so vehemently wrangling. Our government assumes the old time function of all governments to make and regulate the currency or money for the transaction of business—a mere convenience for the measure of values in buying and selling—in another way a thing performing ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... throats; not one step farther would they stir. Then it seemed best to frighten the pursuing enemy if possible, and prevent their falling upon the invalids. It was already dusk, and the pursuers were advancing with much noise and hubbub, wrangling and disputing over their spoils. Then all of a sudden the rearguard, in the plenitude of health and strength (2), sprang up out of their lair and run upon the enemy, whilst those weary wights (3) bawled out as loud as their sick throats could ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... at the end of the day, although the work at Orchards Farm was no harder than she had always been used to at home. There, however, it had been done in peace and quietness, here all was hurry and confusion. It was a new and distracting thing to live in the midst of wrangling disputes, to be called here, shouted after there, to do bits of everyone's business, and to be scolded for leaving undone what she had never been told to do. Altogether a heavy change from her old peaceful life, and she could not ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... hereditary hatred, The ancestral thirst of vengeance. Gitche Manito, the mighty, The creator of the nations, 80 Looked upon them with compassion, With paternal love and pity; Looked upon their wrath and wrangling But as quarrels among children, But as feuds and fights of children! 85 Over them he stretched his right hand, To subdue their stubborn natures, To allay their thirst and fever, By the shadow of his right hand; Spake to them with voice majestic 90 As the sound of far-off waters Falling ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Not the service of one's country or the perfecting of one's character is the note of Georgian injunctions, but the fear of being cheated and of being sick. Misson's instructions begin at once with praise of fixed rates in Holland, where one is spared the exhaustion of wrangling. The exact fare from Cologne to Maintz is his next subject, and how one can hire a coach and six horses for three crowns a day; how the best inns at Venice are The Louvre, The White Lion, and The French Arms; how one can stay at The Louvre for eight livres a day and pay seven or eight ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... six pirates,[FN244] each brandishing a naked brand in hand, and boarding us tied our arms behind us and carried us to their craft. They then tare the veil from my face and forthwith desired to possess me, each saying to other, "I will enjoy this wench." On this wise wrangling and jangling ensued till right soon it turned to battle and bloodshed, when moment by moment and one by one the ravishers fell dead until all were slain save a single pirate, the bravest of the band. Quoth he to me, "Thou shalt fare with me to Cairo where ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... to the motion of the ship, when out of the black chasm, upon the weather bow of the Peregrine, leaped forth a yellow tongue of light fringed with red and encircled by a ruddy cloud; and three seconds later the boom of a gun broke with a dull, ominous clangour above the wrangling of sea and wind. Molly straightened herself. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... at that place, they heard groans and moans, and shrieks and wrangling. Presently they saw Alberich bring from a cleft of the rock a wretched Mime, one of the inhabitants ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... fellow. In spite of all logic he dares swear and maintain it, that a cuckold and a town's-man are termini convertibles, though his mother's husband be an alderman. He was never begotten (as it seems) without much wrangling, for his whole life is spent in pro et contra. His tongue goes always before his wit, like gentleman-usher, but somewhat faster. That he be a complete gallant in all points, cap-a-pie, witness his horsemanship and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... those who amongst us pass for the most learned and accomplish'd Gentlemen, and Scholars, are, for the most part, grosly ignorant of, look upon as base, rustick, and things below them: is (in this learned Author's Opinion) infinitely more to be valued, than a Man brought up either in wrangling at the Bar; or the noisie, and ridiculous Disputes of our Schools, &c. To this Sense the learn'd Modena. And 'tis remarkable, that after all that wise Solomon had said, that All was vanity and vexation of Spirit (among so many particulars he reckons ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... N.E.D. as 'a brawl, wrangle, squabble' and marked obsolete. It seems to differ from its numerous synonyms by the suggestion of what we call a muddle: that is an active wrangling which has ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... great army of Turks under the sultan Kerboga. The crusaders were stimulated by the supposed discovery of the "holy lance," or the steel head of the spear which had pierced the side of Jesus. The Turks were vanquished, and the citadel of Antioch was possessed by Bohemond. The wrangling chieftains were now compelled by the army to set out for Jerusalem. When they reached the heights where they first caught a glimpse of the holy city, the crusaders fell on their knees, and with tears of joy broke out in hymns of praise to God. But, not accustomed to siege operations, and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Papa has yielded the advance and everybody is hard at work. The shipyard is so crowded that the men hinder each other; everybody hurrying or being hurried; the rush and confusion and shouting and wrangling are astonishing to our family, who have always been used to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... subsequent wrangling over this unfortunate treaty, if so invidious a term may be applied to the dignified utterances of diplomacy, it is unnecessary to give a detailed account. Our own country cannot but regret and resent any formal stipulations ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... afternoon, Jim, coming back first from the Wednesday round with the cart, entered the farm kitchen, while John Backhouse was still wrangling at one of the other farmhouses of the hamlet about some disputed payment. The old man came in cold and weary, and the sight of the half-tended kitchen and neglected fire—they paid a neighbour to do the housework, as far as the care of her own seven children would let her—suddenly ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... man or woman either, paid little attention; but was soon stript to his doublet, with tucked-up sleeves, and naked arms up to the elbows in blood and grease, slashing, cutting, hacking, and hewing, with the precision of Sir Tristrem himself, and wrangling and disputing with all around him concerning nombles, briskets, flankards, and raven-bones, then usual terms of the art of hunting, or of butchery, whichever the reader chooses to call it, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the truth," he retorted. "She was nothing to me at that time; she was 'only my sister's companion.' However," he added, straightening himself haughtily, "there is no use in wrangling over the matter any further. I married Edith Allen the night before last, and henceforth she will be the mistress of my home. I confess it is a trifle hard on you, Giulia," he continued, speaking in a conciliatory tone, "but you must try to be sensible about it. I will settle ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... paid was only to that point, and that if we wanted animals for Cuicatlan we must make a new arrangement. This was sheer blackmail, because there had been no misunderstanding in the matter, and a liberal price had been paid. After wrangling for an hour, we shook the dust of Papalo literally from our feet, and started to walk to Cuicatlan, telling the town authorities that our burdens must be taken by mozos to the cabecera before three o'clock, and that we should pay nothing for the service. Probably we should not have been ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... the forests in profusion, possesses some supernatural virtue that will make a man who chews it impervious to the weapons of his enemies. That this virtue exists is generally accepted; but when it comes to a discussion of how, when and where to chew the nut, much wrangling goes on; and such men as survive in battle claim that their particular method is proved to be the correct one, while such as succumb are cited in proof of the error of their process of absorbing the juices of the juby-juby nut. The survivors include, of course, representatives ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... first to indicate new life. They preached with more unction, and addressed themselves to the immediate demands of the parish, especially to provide for the orphans and widows of those who had fallen in battle. Certain ministers who had spent their youth in vain theological wrangling, preached sermons which contained better matter than redundant metaphor and classical quotations. Mueller and Scriver serve as fitting illustrations of the improvement. They avoided the extended analytical and rhetorical methods long in use, and adopted the more practical ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... to clothe me, 'twill be of your bounty, and each of you shall traffic with the folk for himself. Ye are my sons and I am your mother; wherefore let us abide as we are, lest your brother come back and we be disgraced." But they accepted not her words and passed the night, wrangling with each other. Now it chanced that a Janissary[FN291] of the King's guards was a guest in the house adjoining Judar's and heard them through the open window. So he looked out and listening, heard all the angry words that passed between them and saw the division of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... his hands as a guarantee of good faith. The Chinese government demurred at first to these demands, but the threat of Mr. Wade to leave Peking unless they were accepted before a certain day finally caused it to give a reluctant consent. Some months were then spent in diplomatic wrangling over the conditions under which the British officials should proceed to Yunnan, and what their powers should be on their arrival there. The Chinese government showed, in the opinion of Mr. Wade, a strong desire to avoid fulfilling its part of the contract. The negotiations ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Helen and Zebedee listened to the singing, to voices wrangling about the words, and when a figure appeared at the window they turned together and retreated beyond the privet hedge, behind John's vegetable garden and through the door on ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... moment before she opened the door, dreading to hear the dear memory of her mother still under discussion, but Grandmother and Aunt Matilda were wrangling happily over the hair-wreath in the parlour. This was a fruitful source of argument when all other subjects had failed, for Grandmother insisted that the yellow rose in the centre was made from the golden curls of Uncle ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... name of Christ, and dost thou pretend to be a man departing from iniquity? take heed, lest thy departing from iniquity should be but for a time. Some do depart from iniquity, as persons in wrangling fits depart from one another; to wit, for a time, but when the quarrel is over, by means of some intercessor, they are reconciled again. O! Satan is the intercessor between the soul and sin, and though the breach between ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... so that there was no end of those who would have liked to have had her, each man for his own. Even that day there were three princes at the castle, each one wanting the queen to marry him; and the wrangling and bickering and squabbling that was going on was enough to deafen a body. The poor young queen was tired to death with it all, and so she had come out into the garden for a bit of rest; and there she sat under the shade of an apple-tree, ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... was mutiny. The soldiers left in charge of the house had loosed the landlord, and speedily made their retreat as soon as news of the tumult reached them. The court-yard was now a scene of wrangling and confusion. The landlord, supported by a number of idlers collected from the street, was disputing violently with the wagoners. Some of the wagons were harnessed and ready for departure, but from others the canvas covering had been ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... like. Wait till he reduces the staff of the army and the secretaries. I know Delgratz and Kosnovia, and he does not. He will win the people, it is true; but he will alienate the men who can twist the people this way and that to suit their own purposes. Before a month is out he will be wrangling with the Assembly. See if I am not a prophet. Oh, yes, Julius, you and I must go to Delgratz. No hurry; slow but sure. I'll break the journey at Vienna. We must sound Stampoff too. But before I go, I should like to be sure that the girl has ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... anything. He waited awhile, hoping they would get tired; but he got tired out first. You see, it comes natural to a spook to sleep in the daytime, but a man wants to sleep nights, and they wouldn't let him sleep nights. They kept on wrangling and quarrelling incessantly; they manifested and they dark-seanced as regularly as the old clock on the stairs struck twelve; they rapped and they rang bells and they banged the tambourine and they ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... word. They beat him again, till their arms were tired, and staggered to bed. In the morning, however, the steadiness with which he adhered to his story obtained him some degree of credence; the immediate consequence of which was, that the two brothers, after wrangling a long time on the knotty question, which of them should try his fortune first, drew their swords and began fighting. The noise of the fray alarmed the neighbours who, finding they could not pacify the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... sought my hammock as soon as the daylight faded, and lay there thinking of them all at home. To open my eyes was to look on a mob of crouching figures by the distant fire, wrangling as it seemed—for I could not hear them—over their cards and dice. But—close my eyes, and in a moment I was in Jeanne Falla's great kitchen at Beaumanoir, with Carette perched up on the side of the green-bed, swinging her feet and knitting blue wool, and Aunt Jeanne herself, kneeling in the ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... burgesses to the council, which burgesses you must understand were not elected at the folkmotes of the town, or hundred, but in a sort of hole-and-corner way by a few of the bigger men of the place. What the king practically said was this: "I want your money, and I cannot be for ever wrangling with you stubborn churles at home there, and listening to all your stories of how poor you are, and what you want; no, I want you to be REPRESENTED. Send me up from each one of your communes a man or two whom I can bully ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... near the Philippines in case of war did not occur to him, or if it did occur to him anything which he could obtain there from the aid of the United States probably seemed for the moment of little consequence compared with escaping from his wrangling companions with enough money to ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... by two things: the concessions came just too late; the reservations were not promptly and effectively enforced. The King declared that for two months past the States-General had accomplished nothing save wrangling, that the time had therefore arrived for recalling them to their duties. His royal will was that the distinction between the three orders should be maintained, and after announcing a number of financial and other reforms, he ordered the deputies to separate at once. The King then left the hall ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... until nine, when the driver declared he could go no farther, and proceeded to make camp by the roadside, not far from a couple of yurts. A light shone out, and there was the sound of angry voices and wrangling, but I could not find out what was the matter. Nicolai's German always gave out, as the Indian babu said his presence of mind did, "in the nick of time." Finally, the Russians sulkily turned their horses loose and set up the little shelter tent where the three men were to sleep. Apparently there ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... a mediaeval Italian despotism. Acquiring an unlawful right over the towns of Rimini, Cesena, Sogliano, Ghiacciuolo, they ruled their petty principalities like tyrants by the help of the Guelf and Ghibelline factions, inclining to the one or the other as it suited their humour or their interest, wrangling among themselves, transmitting the succession of their dynasty through bastards and by deeds of force, quarrelling with their neighbours the Counts of Urbino, alternately defying and submitting to the Papal legates in Romagna, serving as condottieri in the wars of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the whole. Courage, affection, and truth are native to all who live in this world. Under the dramatic image of Ossian wrangling with the Talkend, [Note: St. Patrick, on account of the tonsured crown.] the bards, themselves vainly fighting against the Christian life, a hundred times repeat through the lips ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... these breaches of vows in men, the act seldom fails to produce injury to the whole character; it leaves, after all the joking, a stain, and, amongst those who depend on character for a livelihood, it often produces ruin. At the very least, it makes an unhappy and wrangling family; it makes children despise or hate their fathers, and it affords an example at the thought of the ultimate consequences of which a father ought to shudder. In such a case, children will take part, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... Are you aware? These young men, in whom is the hope of our country, who are to bring fame to our groves and forests, who, alas! even now neglect the chase, may receive thereby a new impulse to despise it, if they see that those who should give examples to others, bring back from the chase only wrangling and quarrels. Have also due regard for my grey hairs, for I have known greater sportsmen than you, and I have often judged between them as an arbitrator. In the Lithuanian forests who has been equal to Rejtan, either in stationing a line of beaters, or in himself encountering the ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... we never did—of a reason for our eagerness, we might have had it in the way our evening's entertainment invariably turned out to be the legitimate sequel of our day's work. For there wasn't a cabaret of them all that did not reflect somehow the things we had been busy studying and wrangling over ever since our arrival in Paris, the merit they shared in common being their pre-occupation with the art and literature of the day to which they belonged. The tiresome performance known as a Revue, which is all the vogue just now in the London music-halls, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... better stop the wrangling out there." He stared at her, appeared suddenly to hear the loud voices from the street, and then, releasing Madeline, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... who really was in a state in which he didn't mind what he blurted out. "He isn't himself. He begged me to tell his sister that he offered no remarks on her conduct. Very improper and inconsequent. He said—I was tired of this wrangling. I told him I made allowances for the state ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... were together in the garden, talking of trivial matters. Then she fell to wrangling with him concerning something that Caro had written and of which she had the manuscript. In the end she begged me would I go seek the writing in her chamber. I went, and hunted where she had bidden me and elsewhere, and spent a good ten minutes vainly in the task. Chagrined ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... slicker o'er his head, A tryin' to check the cattle in their speed. At last we got them milling and kinda quieted down, And the extra guard back to the wagon went; But there was one a-missin' and we knew it at a glance, 'Twas our little Texas stray, poor Wrangling Joe. ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... body was slim in the Asiatic way, his face was rotund. It was round, like the moon, and it irradiated a gentle complacence and a sweet kindliness of spirit that was unusual among his countrymen. Nor did his looks belie him. He never caused trouble, never took part in wrangling. He did not gamble. His soul was not harsh enough for the soul that must belong to a gambler. He was content with little things and simple pleasures. The hush and quiet in the cool of the day after the blazing toil ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... The wrangling rustics' loud abuse, The coarse, unfeeling, witless jest, The threat obscene, the oath profuse, And ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... through, may very well have been added to the original character by Apologists and Sectarians who, at that time, could ill afford to consider nice psychological points, seeing that what they needed, above all, was a wrangling and abusive deity. These two conflicting halves in the character of the Christ of the Gospels, which no sound psychology can ever reconcile, Nietzsche always kept distinct in his own mind; he could not credit the same man with sentiments sometimes so noble and at other times so vulgar, and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... establish our paine and disturbance? The dissentions of philosophicall sects in this case are verbal: Transcurramus solertissimas Hugos [Footnote: Travails, labours.] "Let us run over such over-fine fooleries and subtill trifles." There is more wilfulnesse and wrangling among them, than pertains to a sacred profession. But what person a man undertakes to act, he doth ever therewithal! personate his owne. Allthough they say, that in vertue it selfe, the last scope of our aime is voluptuousnes. It pleaseth me to importune their eares still with ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... super-Simba. The dispute might in the ordinary course of events have come to shooting; but only after hours of excited wrangling, and as a climax worked up to in a crescendo of emotion. This expeditious nipping in the bud was a ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... was setting, All the clouds were getting Beautiful and silvery in the rising moon; Beneath the leafless trees Wrangling in the breeze, I could hardly see them ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... on the 6th of November, in the twentieth year of the reign of James I. in which the voters for members of Parliament are directed, "not to choose curious and wrangling lawyers, who may seek reputation ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... voices came to the ears of the pursuers. As they crept closer and closer, they became aware of the fact that the party had halted and were wrangling among themselves over some point in dispute. With Selim in the lead, crawling like panthers through the dense undergrowth, the trio came to the edge of the timber land. Before them lay the dark, treeless valley; almost directly below them, not fifty yards away, clustered the group ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Mr. Bethune tellin' her how she'd git rich ef she could fin' a gol' mine, an' how she could buy her fine clos' like yourn an' go to the city an' live." And she remembered that the woman had said that all the time she and Lord Clendenning had been wrangling over the eggs, Bethune and Microby had "talked an' ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... is much matter to be heard, and learn'd: you to your former Honor, I bequeath your patience, and your vertue, well deserues it. you to a loue, that your true faith doth merit: you to your land, and loue, and great allies: you to a long, and well-deserued bed: And you to wrangling, for thy louing voyage Is but for two moneths victuall'd: So to your pleasures, I am for other, then ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the American islands were everywhere greeted as heavenly visitors, and the natives would not have been astonished had the caravels spread their sails—their wings, as they first were called—and flown into the clouds, carrying Columbus and his wrangling, jealous, sensual, gold-greedy company with him. Afterward they would have been more astonished than sorry. When the white men discovered this simple faith among the savages they encouraged it, for it induced the Indians to give up their wives, daughters, houses, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... of an unnamed coulee with a pebbly-bottomed creek running across its front, looked picturesque and peaceful—from a distance. Disenchantment lay in wait for him who strayed close enough to hear the wrangling in the cook-tent, however, or who followed Slim to where he slumped bulkily down into the shade of a willow fifty yards or so from camp—a willow where Pink, Weary, Andy Green and Irish were lying sprawled and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... doubt almost to the last moment of a four years' contest, as it is now well known it was. Probably the one saving fact in all those years was that the young soldiers of the republic—and they were nearly all young then—knew little and cared less about the wrangling of self-seeking politicians and visionary doctrinaires in the rear, but fought steadily on to the end, never doubting for a moment the final triumph. I have never been able to recall a single instance of doubt manifested by any soldier in the field, though I did know a very few cases of officers ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... boys and girls to hold a check on their tongues, and not to be always wrangling and snapping at one another, scolding, and finding fault, and quarrelling? Then do you lead the way, that they may follow. Lead the way by keeping a check on your tongues, by being gentle and forbearing—you, husband and wife, one with another, not given to ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... temporary bitterness of some disappointment, have hastily made marriages which will embitter all their future life,—or which at least make it certain that in this world they will never know a joyous heart any more. Men have died as almost briefless barristers, toiling into old age in heartless wrangling, who had their chance of high places on the bench, but ambitiously resolved to wait for something higher, and so missed the tide. Men in the church have taken the wrong path at some critical time, and doomed themselves to all the pangs of disappointed ambition. But I think ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... done? Fellow permits the striker either to leave the ball where the interruption left it, or to place it where he thinks it would have stopped, if unmolested. This again is a rule far less simple, and liable to produce far more wrangling, than the principle of the other authorities, which is that the ball should either be left where it lies, or be carried to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... cannot give you sight Whereby to see that with you there are some To lead you, and be led. But they are dumb Before the wrangling and the shrill delight Of your deliverance that has not come, And shall not, if I fail you — as ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... of life buzzed about the hamlet, pierced through by the shrill undertones of the wrangling children, most of whom had paused in their play to scan ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and Phil Evans, who were not men to waste time in wrangling when nothing could come of it, agreed upon doing something. It was evident that escape was not to be thought of. But if it was impossible for them to again set foot on the terrestrial globe, could they not make known to its inhabitants what had become of them since their disappearance, and tell ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... sought the king's interference, but as the duke had interest at court, she received but little satisfaction. Then commenced disputes, which, after months of wrangling, ended by the duchess escaping in male attire out of France, in company with a gay young cavalier, Monsieur de Rohan. After various wanderings through Italy and many adventures in Savoy, she determined on journeying to England. That her visit ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... horses, and galloped down the hill to the spot, and demanded what was the matter. The people said that it was the King of France and his son who had been made prisoners, and that there were no less than ten knights and squires that claimed them. These men were wrangling and contending together with so much violence and noise that there was danger that the king and the young prince would be pulled to pieces by them. The king, in the mean time, was entreating them to be quiet, ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... (17) (he exclaimed), what a blessing to have discovered! (18) Now we shall have no more divisions of opinion on points of right and wrong; judges will vote unanimously; citizens will cease wrangling; there will be no more litigation, no more party faction, states will reconcile their differences, and wars are ended. For my part I do not know how I can tear myself away from you, until I have heard from your own lips all about the grand discovery ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... wrangling would have continued it is impossible to say, for at that moment the gentleman returned with a trowel, spade, and basket, and proceeded to remove her from her native soil. In justice to her, it must be confessed that, when the moment came to part for ever from all her old friends, and the surroundings ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... mercer, L60 sterling, payable the 25th day of the month and of Deago Decastron [Diego da Castro, a Spaniard] other L60 sterling, payable the 26th day of the same month, the which shall be both content at the day; and as for master Lewis More, Lombard, [he] is paid and I have the bill; his attorney is a wrangling fellow—he would none ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... generous parent should have said, "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;" and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty. Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. A man can distinguish himself between temper and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God governs the world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign dominion. Wars, without ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... out at the doors, or screaming from the inside. The sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of the place, were the public-houses; and in them, the lowest orders of Irish were wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards, which here and there diverged from the main street, disclosed little knots of houses, where drunken men and women were positively wallowing in filth; and from ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Hanson she had talked with Lord Carlisle, a relative of Byron's, and by his advice had requested Hanson to receive her brother as his guest. Of the trouble between her brother and his mother she said: "As they can not agree, they had better be separated, for such eternal scenes of wrangling are enough to spoil the very best temper and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... gunpowder: if you take away his artillery from him, he has not a word to say for himself. I might likewise mention the law pedant, that is perpetually putting eases, repeating the transactions of Westminster Hall, wrangling with you upon the most indifferent circumstances of life, and not to be convinced of the distance of a place, or of the most trivial point in conversation, but by dint of argument. The state pedant is wrapt up in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... will naturally ask—Can this be called a Coalition? A Coalition implies some power of coalescing. But among the four Powers there was far more of disunion than union. In fact, England was the sole link between these wrangling confederates, and that, too, solely by means of what Carlyle called the cash nexus. Grenville, using a more homely metaphor, averred that the German princes turned towards England as an inexhaustible milch-cow. The animal in this case could dictate her terms; and thus the relations of the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... interbranch wrangling is precious time taken from the intelligent initiation and adoption of coherent policies for our national ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... yet touched the cause they knew, And are wrangling over its direful flood, They promise to build me better than new, And stop the drain on my famished blood; But lest they're careful while building the dam They'll scoop out a grave for ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... out, bestowed an amiable but languid wink upon me, as much as to say that I knew what Mr. Philip's company was at best. When I came out after my dinner, they were still sitting there, Courtenay yawning, and Tom and Philip wrangling ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... just reached this part of her sentence, when in Pao-y's rooms was heard a continuous sound of wrangling; but as what transpired is not yet known, the ensuing chapter ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... colonies is most graphic, though Emerson Tennent has also given a most interesting and correct account of their habits. The former writes:—"From the arrival of the first comer until the sun is high above the horizon, a scene of incessant wrangling and contention is enacted among them, as each endeavours to secure a higher and better place, or to eject a neighbour from too close vicinage. In these struggles the bats hook themselves along the branches, scrambling ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... two brigands, who deprived him of his arms. The cupidity of these men was aroused by a splendid gold chain which he wore, and one of them snatched it from his neck. Presently, however, forgetting the maxim that there is honour even amongst thieves, the two bandits began wrangling for the possession of the booty, and whilst they were so occupied Hunniades managed to recover his sword, and, engaging them in fight, he ran one through the body, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... they fight like cats and dogs," put in the doctor's son. "I don't believe they have one real pleasant day." And he was right; the Spink crowd were usually wrangling from morn to night and already one of the number had left and started for ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... which they had always preferred. King John, however, was not satisfied. He entertained vague hopes of finding spice islands, or something worth having, in the western waters; and he wished to have the Line of Demarcation carried farther to the west. After a year of diplomatic wrangling a treaty was signed at Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, in which Spain consented to the moving of the line to a distance of 370 leagues west from the Cape Verde islands.[548] It would thus on a modern map fall somewhere between the 41st and 44th meridians west of Greenwich. This amendment ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Russian Revolution, though marked by extreme antagonisms, and much wrangling, was nevertheless comparatively peaceful in character. There was no extensive violence, such as would justify the use of the term "civil war." It was to avoid civil war that such constant, and on the whole honest, efforts ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... shock of seeing the spring-house drifted with snow, all the windows wide open, the spring frozen hard, and people sitting there during the rest hour, in furs and steamer rugs, trying to play cards with mittens on—their hands, not the cards, of course—and not wrangling. ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... against men but against God. The 'disputings' are not wrangling with others but the division of mind in one's self-questionings, hesitations, and the like. So the one are more moral, the other more intellectual, and together they represent the ways in which Christian men may resist the action on their spirits of God's Spirit, 'willing,' or the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you as a proof of your friendship for me, and your self-control," said the king, earnestly. "I am tired of this everlasting disputing and wrangling; I will have peace in my house; I do not know how long we will have peace in the world. It seems to me that on the horizon of politics heavy clouds are beginning to tower up; let us therefore take care that our literary ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... as well As Nisi Prius, would not sell Reason's perfection ever To wrangling suitors sans horse-shoe, Lawyers would soon have nought to do, Their subtle efforts ceasing too, Reason from right ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... solemn vow of him, and give him a solemn vow in return. Promise one another sacredly, never, not even in mere jest, to wrangle with each other; never to bandy words or indulge in the least ill-humour. Never! I say; never. Wrangling, even in jest, and putting on an air of ill-humour merely to tease, becomes earnest by practice. Mark that! Next promise each other, sincerely and solemnly, never to have a secret from each other under whatever pretext, with whatever excuse it may be. You must, continually and every moment, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... thump Of churning; and the "glung-glung" of the pump, With sudden pad and skurry of bare feet Of little outlaws, in from field or street: The clang of kettle,—rasp of damper-ring And bang of cookstove-door—and everything That jingles in a busy kitchen lifts Its individual wrangling voice and drifts In sweetest tinny, coppery, pewtery tone Of music hungry ear has ever known In wildest famished yearning and conceit Of youth, to just cut loose and eat and eat!— The zest of hunger still incited ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... spoke first—before James could begin his angry accusations. "What were you wrangling ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... insolent proceeding of Pausanias, that he should leave all the other Greeks in their place, and march them backwards and forward like helots, only to place them opposite the bravest troops of the enemy. Aristeides, however, said that they were entirely mistaken, for a few days before they had been wrangling with the Tegeans for the honour of being posted on the left wing, and had been delighted when they obtained it; but now, when the Lacedaemonians of their own free will yielded the right wing to them, and in some sort offered them the post of honour ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... speak, sir?—What, madam, did he say? Wrangling!—for shame!—before your wedding-day! Nay, gentle lady, by thine eyes of blue, And vermeil blushes, I did not mean you! Bless me, what friends at every glance I see! Artists and authors—men of high degree; Grave politicians, who have weighed each chance, The next election, and ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... may be saying a prayer, or giving up his soul to God, and here are these unclean ones wrangling with one another and saying all sorts of... Have shame ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... I tell you, I would rather see them thus employed than at their drill, for all their wrangling and jangling.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... already, and that wittily, handled the juggle of religion, and withal discover'd with what impudence and ignorance priests pretend to be inspir'd: But are not our wrangling pleaders possest with the same frenzy? who cant it? These wounds I receiv'd in defence of your liberty; this eye was lost in your service; lend me a hand to hand me to my children, for my faltering hams are ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... will be wrangling—for woman will fret About anything infinitesimal small: Like the Sage in our Plato, I'm 'anxious to get On the side'—on the sunnier side—'of a wall.' Let the wind of the world toss the nations like rooks, If only you'll leave me at peace with ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... slave labor, a form of which lingered into the 20th century. While independence was achieved in 1975, democratic reforms were not instituted until the late 1980s. The country held its first free elections in 1991, but frequent internal wrangling between the various political parties precipitated repeated changes in leadership and two failed coup attempts in 1995 and 2003. The recent discovery of oil in the Gulf of Guinea promises to attract increased attention to the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... marriage-bed,—brain plotting against brain, heart loathing heart. It is a duel of life and death between those sworn through life and beyond death at the altar. But it is carried on with all the forms and courtesies of duel in the age of chivalry. No conjugal wrangling, no slip of the tongue; the oil is on the surface of the wave,—the monsters in the hell of the abyss war invisibly below. At length, a dull torpor creeps over the woman; she feels the taint in her veins,—the slow victory is begun. What mattered ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... articles gathered out of Seyton's sermons by his adversaries;" which, he says, he "exhibits to the reader, to the intent that men may see, not only what true doctrine Seyton then preached consonant to the Scriptures, but also what wrangling cauillers can do, in depraining that is right, or in wrastyng that is ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... Italy. Here had the Goths chosen one of their nobles, Ildibad, for their king, but the new king had but one thousand soldiers under him, and his might well seem a desperate cause. Before the end of 540, however, the departure of Belisarius, the wrangling among his successors, the oppressions of Alexander the Logothete, the disaffection of the ruined soldiery had completely changed the face of affairs. An army of considerable size, consisting in great measure of deserters ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... tribe which was present retorted that he ought not to bless that chief, but theirs; for the one was a most unjust man, but the other averse to injustice. And when there had been a great contention and barbaric wrangling between them, they attacked each other. But I, using many words, kept exhorting them to be quiet, seeing that the divine man was able enough to give a blessing to both. But the one tribe kept saying, that ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... an old Syriac monk, he sought the fields and unfrequented solitudes, where he gave loose to his imagination, and where celestial beings came to comfort him. He despised alike the reasonings of philosophers, the dogmas of divines, and the disputes of wrangling sectarians. He rose above all their prejudices, and sought light and truth from original sources. His peace was based on the conviction that God's Holy Spirit spoke directly to his soul; and this was above reason, above authority, a surer guide ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... of unhappy wrangling, a revival of the old smuggling spirit, the risk of seizure and confiscations, and shipping merchants with long faces talking ruin. The theory of free trade versus protection was as debatable and opinions were as conflicting then as now. Some were for retaliation, others for conciliation; ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... gave us a good deal of uneasiness; but it is no longer wonderful that he should be buried here, when Mr. Jackman has so barbarously murdered him with you. I fancy he would risk another broken head, rather than give up his title to it as an officer of the Crown. We go on here wrangling as usual, but I am afraid all to no purpose. Those who are in possession of power are determined to use it without the least pretence to justice or consistency. They have ordered a Scrutiny for Westminster, in defiance of all law or precedent, and without ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore |
