"Bugbear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... externals, my dear fellow. When a man knows he has nothing within his head to trust to,—when he has neither sense nor genius, he puts on a wig, ties up his neck in a white choker, sits in a big chair, and frightens the world with his silence. Remember, if you were not a baby, he would not be a bugbear." ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... accomplished, and the other two were doubtful. Still, by patience, conciliation, and subsidies, we might hope in the course of time that the wounds we had inflicted would gradually be healed, and a more stable condition ensue. For a short period it was so; but then the old bugbear of Russian advance over the dreary wastes of Central Asia again supervened, and exercised its malign ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... very extraordinary and far from encouraging. The partisans of this plan argue that fear of a war, disastrous for England, which might end by putting France once more in possession of Canada, would be the most certain bugbear for America, where the propinquity of our religion and our government is excessively apprehended; they say, in fact, that the Americans, forced by a war to give up their project of liberty and to decide between us and them, would certainly give them ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... any other limner that ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of conscience, I seize this opportunity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence upon the poor, blameless man, for the sake of that dreary picture of Lear, an explosion of frosty fury, that used to be a bugbear to me in the Athenaeum Exhibition. Would fire ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have come down to us from our fathers of the marvellous prowess of the knights of your Order, and how at Smyrna, at Acre, and elsewhere, they performed such feats of valour that their name is still used by Turkish mothers as a bugbear to frighten their children. But the stories have always seemed to me incredible; now I perceive they were true, and that the present members of the Order in no way fall short of ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... very dream, too; and the lot of shillings, and the shawl—ay, and the inquest, and the rumours how that Mrs. Quarles had come to her end unfairly, and no hoards found—and—and the honey-pots missing. Ha! at any rate he'd have a search to-morrow. No bugbear now should hinder him; money's money; he'd ask no questions how it got there. His own bit of garden lay the nearest to Pike Island, and who knows but Ben might have slung a crock this way? It wouldn't do to ask him, though—for Burke might look himself, and get the crock—was ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was bought and read and shouted in the ears of his enemies by thousands of the people. It was a more daring satire than even The Shortest Way. In the end of it Defoe calls upon the Pillory, "Thou Bugbear of the Law," to speak and say why ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... its brow,— He has past it,—and now Having once gained the summit, and managed to cross it, he Rolls down the side with uncommon velocity; But, run as he will, Or roll down the hill, That bugbear behind ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and I don't know that I understand it now you tell it me," replied the major, just a little crossly, for he did not like poetry; it was one of his bugbear humbugs. "But one thing is plain: you must not expose yourself to what in such a search would ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... 1st of July, Bressant sat at his table, with his books and papers about him. He was in an excellent humor, for he had just arrived at the conclusion that he might, and would, safely encounter his bugbear Cornelia. If the professor invited him to tea, and to spend the evening, he was resolved to accept; and, at that moment, he felt a hand laid upon his shoulder, and, turning quickly round, recognized the sombre ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... won't be such a bugbear as you think. If you were not worried into a morbid condition over all this trouble, you would not look so seriously upon a thing which I regard as a piece of mere night prowling, with a ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... dark-haloed indeterminate limbo where dwelt that bugbear of Charles Courtier, the great Half-Truth Authority, he himself had a couple of rooms at fifteen shillings a week. Their chief attraction was that the great Half-Truth Liberty had recommended them. They tied him to nothing, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Minnesota in the winter is like a wine, so exhilarating is its effects on the system; while its extreme dryness and elasticity prevents any discomfort from the cold which is such a bugbear to many. The extreme cold does not last but for a few days, and should the invalid choose to be domiciled during this brief interval, no great harm would come; but we apprehend that, once there, they could not be kept in-doors in consequence of it. Why, laboring ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... persecuting a mere boy: one whose foot was not yet firmly fixed on the second round of the great ladder upon which he himself towered so securely and so high!—And yet—had not this same belittling blemish been the bugbear of his own, generous existence? Was anything impossible in one whom he had known again and again to stoop to the pettiest forms of personal malice ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Italy; would to God it never came into the mind of the French kings to try their strength in this country! Should they ever do so, Italy is lost.' For the other princes, the King of France was alternately a bugbear to themselves and their enemies, and they threatened to call him in whenever they saw no more convenient way out of their difficulties. The Popes, in their turn, fancied that they could make use of France without any danger to themselves, and even Innocent VIII ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... more ability of all kinds, extending even to the arts and mechanics more valour, and, when it pleased him, more discernment, grace, politeness, and nobility. But then no man had ever before so many useless talents, so much genius of no avail, or an imagination so calculated to be a bugbear to itself and a plague to others. Abjectly and vilely servile even to lackeys, he scrupled not to use the lowest and paltriest means to gain his ends. Unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband, detestable master, pernicious neighbour; without friendship, without friends—incapable ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... of which consists in receiving the money. Whether the person be wise or foolish, sane or insane, a native or a foreigner, matters not. Every ministry acts upon the same idea that Mr. Burke writes, namely, that the people must be hood-winked, and held in superstitious ignorance by some bugbear or other; and what is called the crown answers this purpose, and therefore it answers all the purposes to be expected from it. This is more than can be said of the other ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... of God! Believe it, fellow-creature, There's no such bugbear: all was made by Nature. We know all came of nothing, and shall pass Into the same condition once it was By Nature's power, and that they grossly lie That say there's hope of immortality. Let them but tell us what a soul is: then We shall adhere to these ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... wife, as if resenting the word. "But you make such a bugbear of the least little matter that there's no encouragement ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... to say, when it dealt with foreign complications, or electoral reforms—he followed his leader. When the Legislature acted socially—that is to say, for the good of the people—he followed his conscience. On the last occasion when the great Russian bugbear provoked a division, he voted submissively with his Conservative allies. But, when the question of opening museums and picture galleries on Sundays arrayed the two parties in hostile camps, he broke into open ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... there is no such secret;—it is a bugbear! But the moral perversion of the person who could soberly ask the question that Helwyse asked is not so easily disposed of. It met, indeed, with full recognition. As for the subtile voice, having accomplished ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... forward during the progress of these negotiations. In Echo Canon, it had an opportunity to inspect the bugbear of the previous autumn,—the Mormon fortifications. As the canon—which is more than twenty miles long—approaches the Weber River, it dwindles in width from five or six hundred yards to as many feet. Its northern side becomes a perfect wall of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... besom of societarian reformation—your only modern Alcides' club to rid the time of its abuses—is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear MENDICITY from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags—staves, dogs, and crutches—the whole mendicant fraternity with all their baggage are fast posting out of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the crowded crossing, from the corners of streets and turnings of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... have, from the first, steadily refused to look upon spiritualism in this bugbear fashion. The thing was either true or false—or, more probably still, partly true and partly false: and I must bring to bear on the discovery of its truth or falsehood, just the same critical faculties ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... we like what we loathe; but we like to indulge our hatred and scorn of it; to dwell upon it, to exasperate our idea of it by every refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of illustration; to make it a bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to others in all the splendour of deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatise it by name, to grapple with it in thought, in action, to sharpen our intellect, to arm our will against ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... interviews with the Doctor, and a knowledge of the kindly influences under which Adele has grown up, may lessen the danger of a religious altercation between mother and child, which has been his great bugbear in view of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... rebellion that we associate likin, a tax which has for years past been the bugbear of the foreign merchant in China. The term means "thousandth-part money," that is, the thousandth part of a tael or Chinese ounce of silver, say one cash; and it was originally applied to a tax of one cash ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... it Christian Science? Did you dare, Eloise Evringham, did you dare spoil your life—my life—our future, by scaring Dr. Ballard with that bugbear?" The angry ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... residence and carries on a dry goods business, he might gamble as much as should please him and the law would not take hold of him. He would ask anybody to read the law understandingly and then deny this round assertion. This act, said he, is bugbear—it is a disgrace as it now stands, for it smacks of cowardice. The legislators, he presumed, had a little sense, and they knew that some kind of a law must be passed, and they were ingenious enough to know how to frame it to sound well, and yet be ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... he was, Wendell Pemberton could not entirely conceal his wonder that Patricia should have remained so long in ignorance of her condition. He spoke concerning malformation and functional weaknesses and, although obscurely because of the bugbear of professional courtesy, voiced his opinion that Patricia had not received the most adroit medical treatment at the time of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... talked so candidly, and with such an air of treating the whole business as the bugbear of a timid monarch, that ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... such. All thoroughly prosperous people are a nuisance. That is a general proposition, and I stand by it. Go over your list of acquaintances and you will admit it is true. Here's to trouble! May it always chasten and never overwhelm us: our greatest bugbear and our best friend! It sifts our friends and unmasks our enemies. Like a lovely woman, it ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... criers went. They put on their Sabbath face concerning the declaration of war, and told with approval how the Royal hand had trembled in committing itself to the form of signature to which its action is limited. If there was money to be paid, there was a bugbear to be slain for it; and a bugbear is as obnoxious to the repose of commercial communities ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to be altered without a law.'[1178] Exaggerated dread of Popery suspected latent evils, it scarcely knew what, lurking in this kind of worship. Perhaps, too, it was thought to border upon 'enthusiasm,' that other religious bugbear of the age. A paper in the 'Tatler' speaks of it not with disapproval, but with something of condescension to weaker minds, as 'the rapturous way of devotion.'[1179] In fact, cathedrals in general were almost unintelligible to the prevalent sentiment of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... this dreamer, with his father's ark, The bugbear he hath built to scare the world, Shaken my sister? Are we not the loved Of Seraphs? and if we were not, must we Cling to a son of Noah for our lives? Rather than thus——But the enthusiast dreams ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... morals, the small proprieties, and lesser virtues that lie on the surface of things and give life its polish, Audrey was for ever riding full-tilt against prejudices or raising a crusade against what she chose to term 'the bugbear of ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... See AEsop's Fables, No. 121. Halme. [Greek: Drapetes] is the title. All readers of Plautus and Terence know what a bugbear to slaves the threat of being sent to the mill was. They would have to turn it instead of horses, or ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... stress upon two which are, so to say, the beginning and end of all things, the alpha and omega of human philosophy—viz., the grave and the womb;[179] the latter the bait as well as the portal of life, the former the bugbear and the goal of all things living. The idea, no less than the form, is manifestly Indian. Birth and death constitute the axis of existence; the womb is the symbol of the allurement that tempts men to forget their sorrows, to keep the Juggernaut wheel revolving and to supply ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Campbell does not give full sweep to his genius. He has wings that would bear him up to the skies, and he does now and then spread them grandly, but folds them up again and resumes his perch, as if afraid to launch away. The fact is, he is a bugbear to himself. The brightness of his early success is a detriment to all his future efforts. He is afraid of the shadow that his own ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... word masculine is only a bugbear: there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude; for their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength, must render them, in some degree, dependent on men in the various relations ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... other. But she had as yet shown no military power outside her own bounds, either by land or sea; and England looked with scorn on the threats of a state which possessed neither army nor fleet. "America," Lord Sidmouth wrote at this time, "is a bugbear: there is no terror in her threats!" Canning indeed saw in the embargo only a carrying out of his policy by the very machinery of the American Government. The commerce of America ceased to exist. Her seamen were driven to seek employment under the British flag; and ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... papa be a bugbear to frighten me. What can he do? I don't suppose he'll beat me. And I'd rather he would than shut me up here. As for you, mamma, I don't think you care for me a bit. Because Sophy is going to be married to that oaf, you are become so proud of her that you haven't half ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... advantages—particularly after lunch; and sometimes, where an old house was empty, we would go over it, and stare at beams and chimneypieces and hear the haunted tale of its fortunes, with a faint half-memory in our breasts of that one-time bugbear we had known as "copy." But though more than once a flaccid instinct would move us to have out our pencils, we would only end by bunging our foolish mouths with them, as if they were cigarettes, and then vaguely wondering at them for that, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... always intended, ever since my conversation with Mr. T. about the Malstrom, to have called in at Loffoden Islands on our way south, and ascertain for myself the real truth about this famous vortex. To have blotted such a bugbear out of the map of Europe, if its existence really was a myth, would at all events have rendered our cruise not altogether fruitless. But, since leaving Spitzbergen, we had never once seen the sun, and to attempt to make so dangerous a coast in a gale of wind ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... "author" of the Bible to stand sponsor for the condensation of the "records" of his ancestors which Smith unearthed. It was discovered very soon after the organization of the Mormon church was announced that the word was of Greek derivation, uopuw or uopuwv meaning bugbear, hobgoblin. In the form of "mormo" it is Anglicized with the same meaning, and is used by Jeremy Collier and Warburton.* The word "Mormon" in zoology is the generic name of certain animals, including the mandril baboon. The discovery of the Greek ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... with themselves when they came among the mountains, that the innocent insolence could do no harm. It became a fixed sentiment when she alone survived to uphold it, and one demonstration of it amused the whole neighborhood in a good-natured way. "People from Birthwaite" were the bugbear—Birthwaite being the end of the railway. In the Summer of 1857, Mrs. Wordsworth's companion told her (she being then blind) that there were some strangers in the garden—two or three boys on the mount, looking at the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... was once more moving through the water, with her jibboom pointing in the right direction, and every mile that she now travelled was so much to the good, increasing our chances of getting across the Line and making our escape from the awful region of equatorial calms which constitute such a ghastly bugbear to those who go down to the sea in sailing-ships. Our self-congratulations proved, however, to be premature, for the breeze lasted only about half an hour when it died away again, leaving us as completely becalmed as before. But during that half-hour we had ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... the poor daughter's bugbear," I said to myself. "Certainly," I remarked aloud—I admit, rather perversely—"if you have lived a great deal in pensions, you must have got acquainted ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... relics of equal verity and value, were sought eagerly by those rich enough to procure them, and when obtained were believed to ensure much good fortune to the possessor. A fear of the "evil eye"—that bugbear which still disturbs the happiness of the lower class Italians and of the Eastern nations generally—was carefully provided against. One great preservative was the wearing of a ring with the figure of a cockatrice upon it. This imaginary ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... the great bugbear and tyrant of printers—that infamous mockery of a legal tribunal, the Star Chamber—was another gigantic obstacle cleared away from the path of journalism. The Newes Bookes, which, in spite of all difficulties, had already become abundant, now issued forth in swarms. They treated de rebus omnibus ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... looking clever enough to make all on board the schooner believe they wanted to come on board. The crew felt like scraping acquaintance with them, favoring them with a hook, and the like; but then there interposed that great bugbear—the treaty line. Hard was it to tell where this line was; it might, for aught to the contrary, be on the top of a wave, upon which we might be tossed, much against Smooth's inclination, far into the unlawful side. Being, however, inside of the line and surrounded ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... will be heavy and the expenses ruinous. You will have to spend from twelve to fifteen thousand francs merely to win the suit,—but you will win it, if you care to. The suit will only increase the enmity of the Gravelots, for the expenses will be even heavier on them. You will be their bugbear; you will be called litigious and calumniated in every ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... abominable and hideous mask before its eyes, it is afraid of death. But its fear is only because of its lack of understanding. If it knew, it would by no means be afraid or shudder at death. Our reason is like a little child who has become frightened by a bugbear or a mask, and cannot be lulled to sleep; or like a poor man, bereft of his senses, who imagines when brought to his couch that he is being put into the water and drowned. What we do not understand we cannot intelligently deal with. If, for instance, a man has a penny and imagines it to ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... bugbear of her existence was making history in his own way. The Dago Duke was no inconspicuous figure in Crowheart, for his daily life was punctuated with escapades which constantly furnished fresh topics of conversation to the populace. He fluctuated between periods of abject poverty and ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... also to take their place with ease in high society? He was very well off certainly at Framley; but he could never hope for anything beyond Framley, if he allowed himself to regard Lady Lufton as a bugbear. Putting Lady Lufton and her prejudices out of the question, was there any reason why he ought not to accept the duke's invitation? He could not see that there was any such reason. If any one could be ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... practice, and irrespective of the beneficial results that might have followed its modification, we can only regret that the deity was not acquainted with Emerson's opinion that "a foolish consistency is the bugbear of little minds." Even what is said to be the greatest mind of all might easily ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... Matteis's secretary; and 4th and 5th, two spies. These men united in a conspiracy to destroy various persons who were obnoxious to them in the province, some of them actuated by political motives, and others in order to get possession of the property of their victims. The bugbear of the Court is Carbonarism, and Matteis pretended that there was a Carbonari plot on foot, in which several persons were implicated. He employed the spies to seduce the victims into some imprudence of language ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... with Mr. Adams shows to Europe that Mr. Seward imitated the rebels, and tried to frighten England with the bugbear of King Cotton; and also that he has no solid and abiding convictions whatever. Now, he preaches emancipation, yet, at the beginning of his great diplomatic activity, he openly sided with slavery; aye, he is still willing to save it for the sake of the Union, and, above ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... qualified Spaniard, [176] Coolie, Portuguese, or man of any other non-British race, will each thus have a vote, the same as every Englishman or any other Briton. Why, then, should the vote of the Negro be so especially a bugbear? It is because the Negro is the game which our political sportsman is in full chase of, and determined to hunt down at any cost. Granted, however, for the sake of argument, that black voters should preponderate at any election, what then? We are gravely ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... his constant companion. The baron inspired universal terror with his gloomy character, his eccentricities, and more especially by the fearful appearance of his face. The children were quite panic-stricken in his presence. Parents and nurses used him as a bugbear to ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... in political management, and, instead of being dragged down, as was most feared, their enfranchisement has tended to elevate them. Under our system of the Australian ballot, they have found that the contaminating influence of which they had been told was but a bugbear, born of fright, produced by shadows. They learned that to deposit their vote did not subject them to anything like the annoyance which they often experienced from crowds on "bargain days," while their presence drove from the polls the ward workers who had been so obnoxious ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... him an opening in some profession, and the thought of being made a notary was a bugbear to the young man: "Think of me as dead, if they cap me with that extinguisher." And yet, in the next sentence, he breaks out into a cry of desolate disgust at the aridity of his actual circumstances: "They call ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... just beginning to be the bugbear set up for those whom the world held to be ultra-religious, and my mother was so far disturbed at our interest in what was termed Oxford theology that the warning would have alarmed her if it had ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... barrier against future threats of Ashanti invasion, and make security more secure. The political officers of the Protectorate will be the best judges of the steps to be taken; and, if they are active and prudent, we shall hear no more of the Kumasi bugbear. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... returns Thornfield Hall is quit of all its guests, and Mr. Rochester and she resume their former life of captious cordiality on the one side, and diplomatic humility on the other. At the same time the bugbear of Miss Ingram and of Mr. Rochester's engagement with her is kept up, though it is easy to see that this and all concerning that lady is only a stratagem to try Jane's character and affection upon the most approved Griselda precedent. Accordingly an ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Who, beckoned by the forward-leaning wave, First left behind him the firm-footed shore, And, urged by every nerve of sail and oar, Steered for the Unknown which gods to mortals gave. Of thought and action the mysterious door, 250 Bugbear of fools, a summons to the brave: Strength found he in the unsympathizing sun, And strange stars from beneath the horizon won, And the dumb ocean pitilessly grave: High-hearted surely he; But bolder they who first off-cast Their moorings from the habitable ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... passage of twelve leagues has been our bugbear for some days, as travelers whom we met at Annapolis pictured its horrors so vividly, representing its atrocities as exceeding those of the notorious English Channel. Yet we glide as smoothly through the eddies and ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... be dreadful to the bad;* To innocence 'tis like a bugbear dress'd To frighten children. Pull but off the mask, And ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... to Cecil Linton was duly dispatched, and the fact of his impending arrival broken to Mrs. Brown, who sniffed portentously, and gave without enthusiasm directions for the preparation of his room. "Mrs. Geoffrey" was rather a bugbear to Brownie, who had unpleasant recollections of a visit in the past from that majestic lady. During her stay of a week, she had attempted to alter every existing arrangement at Billabong—and when she finally departed, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... of Bonaparte; they cannot arise in it, nor find access to it; his aversion to the unsubstantial phantoms of political abstraction extends beyond disdain, even to disgust.[1152] That which was then called ideology, is his particular bugbear; he loathes it not alone through calculation, but still more through an instinctive demand for what is real, as a practical man and statesman, always keeping in mind, like the great Catherine, "that he is operating, not ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 'black man,' but who nevertheless do not like to be left alone in the dark. We would beg you to let your light shine into a few dark corners out of which we cannot clearly see our way. Do not despise us if we still secretly believe a little in the black man. We will not forget that he is merely a bugbear; but it will pacify us to hear from your own mouths what the true and natural facts of the case are. In the first place, what are, in your opinion, the means employed by nature, in the struggle for the existence of species, to ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... like Longlee, Stafford, and Walsingham, were beginning to lose their fear of the great bugbear by which England had so long been haunted. It was, therefore no deep stain on the Queen's sagacity that she, too, was willing to place credence in the plighted honour of Alexander Farnese, the great prince who prided himself on his sincerity, and who, next to the King his master, adored ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Patty, as they started off in the car one morning, "why people make such a bugbear of Christmas shopping. I think it's ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... scruple, joined the communion of the Baptists. Like other Nonconformists, these were inclined to the Liberal side in politics, and, at least in the beginning, regarded Buonaparte as a deliverer. From the time of his joining the Spearmen, Thomas Smith became in consequence a bugbear to his brethren in the faith. "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword," they told him; they gave him "no rest"; "his position became intolerable"; it was plain he must choose between his political and his religious tenets; and in the last ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Constitution From fierce partisans and wranglers. Owsley's firm administration, From the bench and bar judicial, In the governor's chair of power, Comes in heraldry unsullied, On the banner of the contest, Of the pen and diction contest, Mightier than the sword of battle. He reduced the annual bugbear, The state debt, so long amassing, And devoted all his efforts To the Commonwealth's advantage. In eighteen hundred two and sixty, He laid down his useful manhood, In the dust of lasting greatness, At his home in Boyle county. ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... gods, fear supports their empire over the minds of mortals. So early are men accustomed to shudder at the mere name of the Deity, that they regard him as a spectre, a hobgoblin, a bugbear, which torments and deprives them of courage even to wish relief from their fears. They apprehend, that the invisible spectre, will strike them the moment they cease to be afraid. Bigots are too much in fear of their God to love ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... us acquainted with the real nature of this arrogant and peculiar South-land. It was said that the Crimean struggle did much good by dispelling the cloudy hobgoblin mystery which hung over Russia, and, while it destroyed its prestige as a bugbear, more than compensated for this, by giving it a proper place abreast of civilized nations in the great march of industry and progress. Just so we are learning that the South is perfectly capable of receiving white labor, that it is not strangely and peculiarly different from the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... dwindled away one by one, most of them very poor and despicable, even to the Natives, among whom they had Married. They added, that they had no Embarkations, only mere Canoes and Rowboats in Madagascar; so that these Pirates (so long a terrible Bugbear to peaceable Merchantmen) are now become so inconsiderable as to be scarcely worth mentioning; yet I do think that if care be not always taken after a Peace to clear all out-of-the-way Islands of these piratical Vermin, and hinder others from joining them, it may prove a Temptation ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... duty, the fulfiling of use, which, rightly understood, is the universal panacea against all the troubles and sorrows of this life, is too often a fearful bugbear in the eyes of those who understand it not. This subject, however, brings us to the third and last topic to be discussed under the head of Life. The love of duty, to be effectual or real, must be earnest; for earnestness is the certain result of living Affection. Through this, all our other ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... Spite of this bugbear, she had gone with a light free step all along her road, walking rather quick; for other thoughts had kept her company, and the image of her little flying packet shot once and again through her mind. At length she came to Mr. Stoutenburgh's gate, and Faith's ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... thy rewards; behold also, he fears none of thy penalties. Thou canst not answer even by killing him: the case of Anaxarchus thou canst kill; but the self of Anaxarchus, the word or act of Anaxarchus, in no wise whatever. To this man death is not a bugbear; to this man life is already as earnest and awful, and beautiful and ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... me right at my ease. I was in the presence of a knight; but he was first and last a man. Straight to the point he went. He never puts a man through that bugbear of the soldier, a host of seemingly inconsequential questions; he has the particulars of each man who is likely to come under his direction ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... Philip, with an air of pleasant detachment, "I see. You are in a first-rate fix. I was always prepared for that. Coke told me about Bulmer—warned me off, so to speak. I forgot his claims at odd times, just for a minute or so, but he is a real bugbear—a sort of matrimonial bogey-man. If all goes well, and we enter Pernambuco without being fired at, you will be handed over to the British Consul, and he will send a rousing telegram about you to England. Bulmer, of course, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... published, in the "Independant," a terrible article on the intrigues of the clergy, in response to a short paragraph from Vuillet, who had accused the Republicans of desiring to demolish the churches. Vuillet was Aristide's bugbear. Never a week passed but these two journalists exchanged the greatest insults. In the provinces, where a periphrastic style is still cultivated, polemics are clothed in high-sounding phrases. Aristide called his adversary "brother Judas," or "slave of Saint-Anthony." ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... of superstition. Were you to enact before my very eyes some of those feats which, to the senses of others, would stamp you as the preternatural being you assume to be, I would doubt the evidence of my own senses ere I permitted such a bugbear to oppress ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... objectively more in evidence,—that subject is the one that holds the center of the inner attention. That is the controlling idea or purpose. Ordinarily, it is some diversion; occasionally, the haunting bugbear of some unfinished work or obligation. If the mind is dominated by such ideas or any other than the real problem in hand, the ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... experience might have given him, he felt that native and original horror of the excellent Judge which is proper to a weak, delicate, and apprehensive character in the presence of massive strength. Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible. There is no greater bugbear than a strong-willed relative in the circle of ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... but natural I should first have turned to this as a mode of obtaining the desired results; but, alas! all attempts in that direction signally failed—the ware most persistently refused to have anything to do with emulsion. The bugbear was the fixing agent or hypo., which not only left indelible marks, but, despite any amount of washing, the image on a finished plate vanished to nothing at the end of an hour's exposure in the show window. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... ministers still adhered to its principles, and preached the Puritan theology undiluted. These men were democratic in their ecclesiastical views, and stout protestors against Patronage, which has always been the bugbear of the sects in Scotland. As Burns expresses it, they did their best to stir ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Supreme Court at Washington against the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 has had its effect, and to-day we find the Negro more discriminated against in his civil than in any other class of rights. Then, too, the social bugbear has had much to do with this discrimination. However, progress has been made. It has been slow, of course, because of the channel (public opinion) through which it has been compelled to come. In many sections of the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... 8th about noon I arrived at Kolor, a considerable town, near the entrance into which I observed, hanging upon a tree, a sort of masquerade habit, made of the bark of trees, which I was told, on inquiry, belonged to Mumbo Jumbo. This is a strange bugbear, common to all the Mandingo towns, and much employed by the pagan natives in keeping their women in subjection; for as the kafirs are not restricted in the number of their wives, every one marries as many ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... that she was poor, and she knew that everybody knew it; yet so long as she was not in absolute want, and the poor-house, that bugbear of honest poverty, was yet far distant, she managed to keep a cheerful heart, and visited her neighbors on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... not a man. I cannot love my enemy; for my enemy is not a man, but a beast. And if I have any, I can love him as a beast, and wish to beat him." No equivocation here, surely. On superstition he comments,—"It has been long a bugbear, by reason of its having been united with hypocrisy. But let them be fairly separated, and then superstition will be honest feeling, and God, who loves all honest men, will lead the poor enthusiast in the path of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... beside a clear, brown river, which kept his mother busy exhorting him and his half-dozen brethren to not be falling in and drowning themselves on her. Her days were haunted by apprehensions of that catastrophe, which, however, was not included in the plot of her life's drama. Con's chosen bugbear was the bridge which bestrode the river close by, and beneath the arch of which he had once happened to be while a cart passed overhead. For the lumbering rumble had been an appalling experience, which he shuddered to ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... which could not otherwise have arisen. But for this spelling no one would have dreamed of confusing the totally unrelated bodies, cacao and the milky coconut. (You note that I spell it "coconut," not "cocoanut," for the name is derived from the Spanish "coco," "grinning face," or bugbear for frightening children, and was given to the nut because the three scars at the broad end of the nut resemble a grotesque face). To make confusion worse confounded the old writers referred to cacao seeds as cocoa nuts (as for example, in The Humble Memorial of ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... application of scientific procedure to life we see extending to the control of the energies of the human factor. We have already spoken of guarantees that affect the spirit and the morale of labor. We hear of the prevention of unemployment, the removal of the bugbear of "losing the job." Most advance of all is being made in the application of the principles of mental and physical hygiene and of scientific management to the actual details of movement and the whole process of expenditure of energy, counting costs in terms of time and energy, in much the ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... agriculture, would they view it in the light of an invasion upon their respective interests. They do not give a quid without receiving a quo every way as valuable. The reduction of farm consumption—the bugbear of the project—will be met and compensated by a steady and proportionate demand from other quarters. Whilst in the United Kingdom, the 8,100,000 acres of land now required to feed the horses, together with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... two vessels were able to resume their voyage, prepared to face all the dangers of the South Sea, and to double Cape Horn, that bugbear of all navigators. As far as Staten Island the weather was uniformly fine, but beyond it the explorers had to contend with extremely violent gales, storms of hail and snow, dense fogs, huge waves, and a swell in which the vessels laboured heavily. On the 24th March, the ships lost sight of each other ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... there was the influence of the much paraded bugbear of social equality forced upon the whites. To use the inns, hotels, and parks, established by authority of the government and the places of amusement authorized as the necessary stimulus to progress, to buy a railroad ticket at the same ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the monks, seeing him flee, marvelled and questioned him of the cause, which he told them; whereupon quoth the abbot, 'Marry, thou art no child nor art thou new to the church that thou shouldst thus lightly take fright; let us go see who hath played the bugbear with thee.' Accordingly, kindling several lights, the abbot and all his monks entered the church and saw that wonder-rich and goodly bed and thereon the gentleman asleep; and what while, misdoubting and fearful, they gazed upon the noble jewels, without drawing anywise near ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... idle qualms, This shrinking backwards at the bugbear conscience; In early life I heard the phantom nam'd, And the grave sages prate of moral sense Presiding in the bosom of the just; Or planting thongs about the guilty heart. Bound by these shackles, long ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... Temptation, be not fond of Needless, or Too much Retirement. Where was it, that the Devil fell upon our Lord? it was when he was Alone in the Wilderness. We should all have our Times to be Alone every Day; and if the Devil go to scare us out of our Chambers, with such a Bugbear, as that he'll appear to us, yet stay in spite of his teeth, stay to finish your Devotions; he Lyes, he dare not shew his head. But on the other-side by being too solitary, we may lay our selves too much open to the Devil; You know who says, Wo to ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... into which he saw hanging upon a tree, a sort of masquerade habit, made of the bark of trees, which he was told belonged to Mumbo Jumbo. The account of this personage is thus narrated by Mr. Park: "This is a strange bugbear, common to all the Mandingo towns, and much employed by the pagan natives in keeping their women in subjection, for as the kafirs are not restricted in the number of their wives, every one marries as many as he can maintain, and, as it frequently happens, that the ladies disagree ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... for titillating purposes. What appears to be ground glass is only the little crystals or small particles of alkali that have not been dissolved. So that fastidious snuff-takers may dismiss this bugbear at once and forever. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... this time.... Somewhere, from the first, in an obscure fold of consciousness, she had felt the stir of an unnamed, unacknowledged fear; and now the fear raised its head and looked at her. Well! She would look back at it, then: look it straight in the malignant eye. What was it, after all, but a "bugbear to scare children"—the ghost of the opinion of the many? She had suspected from the first that Wyant knew of her having shortened the term of Bessy Amherst's sufferings—returning to the room when he did, it was almost impossible ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... gone upon the principles of slavery in all your proceedings; you neglect in your conduct the foundation of all legitimate government, the rights of the people; and, setting up this bugbear, you spread a panic for the very purpose of sanctifying this infringement, while again the very infringement engenders the evil which you dread. One extreme naturally leads to another. Those who dread republicanism fly for shelter to the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... dread of this humble functionary, and imagining that much study and labour had made his friend a little mad, Gozlan took no denial, and, button-holing Balzac, lugged him off into the leafy avenues. And there, sure enough, after a while, they saw the bugbear, who, as soon as he perceived the two pedestrians, bore down on them with plodding but vigorous step. The shorter of the two turned pale, but tried to put on an air of dignified indifference. Soon the official ran in under their lee, passed alongside with ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... to be, Returning to the barren womb of nothing, Whence first they sprung; then might the debauchee Untrembling mouth the heavens:—then might the drunkard Reel over his full bowl, and, when 'tis drain'd, Fill up another to the brim, and laugh At the poor bugbear Death: then might the wretch That's weary of the world, and tired of life, 390 At once give each inquietude the slip, By stealing out of being when he pleased, And by what way, whether by hemp, or steel. Death's thousand doors stand open.—Who ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... mean between these two extremes, for in that is the aim of wisdom. Visit the gaols, the slaughter-houses, and the market-places; for the presence of the governor is of great importance in such places; it comforts the prisoners who are in hopes of a speedy release, it is the bugbear of the butchers who have then to give just weight, and it is the terror of the market-women for the same reason. Let it not be seen that thou art (even if perchance thou art, which I do not believe) covetous, a follower of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of the rough mariners and warriors when they saw their stern mistress, whose name was used by mothers and nurses all over the kingdom, as a bugbear, with which to frighten naughty children, now comforting and caressing this stolen child; when she fed him with her own hands, and then took him in her arms and hushed him to sleep—singing to him a wild, childish ditty, which she remembered, because her ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... liberty and property's so dear, They scorn their laws or governors to fear; So bugbear'd with the name of slavery, They can't submit to their own liberty. Restraint from ill is freedom to the wise! But Englishmen do all restraint despise. Slaves to the liquor, drudges to the pots; The mob are ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... radio boys took their turn and gave their visitors a radio concert that was wonderful in its variety and beauty. The night happened to be unusually free of the annoying static that is the bugbear of the wireless, and every note of the music was as clear and sweet as though the performers were only a few yards away. Tim and Larry listened as though they were entranced, and when the concert was finished they were as enthusiastic ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... question: an occasional tapir or peccary from the woods, and otters and fish from the streams, had attracted the shots of the party, but merely as welcome additions to their game-bags, not as food for their fears. To-night, however, the veritable bugbear of the tropical forest paid them a visit, and left a real souvenir of his presence. As the Indian servants stretched themselves out in slumber under the bright stars and in the partial shelter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various |
