"Cantankerous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said, "always giv her a turn. For her part she preferred Missy, who, though she did kick uncommon, and were awful cantankerous to manage, was always ready to make it up, and say as she had been naughty. For my part," concluded Sarah, "I am free to confess I have often giv Missy a sly shake when she was in one of them tantrums, and I got the chance, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... very disagreeable. This was somewhat unusual, as he was generally very bland and polite, but to-night he was so cantankerous that I fancied he must have been drinking. To me he was especially insulting, and went so far as to hint that I, unlike other Englishmen, was a coward; that I hadn't courage to resist a man manfully, but would act towards an enemy in a cunning, serpent-like way. This was not the first occasion ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... steal a look, and was not reassured to see in the jurymen's faces doubt replacing mirth. Then Hiram Hopkins's hearty voice, ringing with opposition, struck upon his delighted ear. He remembered Hiram's dislike for the cantankerous Keith. ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... then patronized 'Walter Scott,' as they loftily called him: and He, dear, noble, Fellow, thought they were quite justified. Well, your Emerson has done him far more Justice than his own Countryman Carlyle, who won't allow him to be a Hero in any way, but sets up such a cantankerous narrow-minded Bigot as John Knox in his stead. I did go to worship at Abbotsford, as to Stratford on Avon: and saw that it was good to have so done. If you, if Mr. Lowell, have not lately read it, pray read Lockhart's account of his Journey to Douglas ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... Besides these winged devils, we have swarms of flies, which also bite and sting, with a venomous rancor of which I should have thought their frivolity incapable. Besides these, every cupboard and drawer in our rooms is full of moths. Besides these, we have an army of cantankerous fleas quartered upon us. Besides these, we have one particular closet where we keep—our bugs, and where for the most part, I am truly thankful to say, they keep themselves. Besides these, we have two or three ants' nests in our bedroom, and everything ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... now sworn enemies and the stringing of the wires became a matter of intense interest, as this was the test which would prove the truth or fallacy of Jennings' cantankerous harping that ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... into a river to save somebody from drowning, if you do not plunge in yourself, at least do not jeer at him for his method of swimming. So Roosevelt, who shrank from no bodily or moral risk himself, held in scorn the "timid good," the " acidly cantankerous," the peace-at-any-price people, and the entire tribe of those who, instead of attacking iniquities and abuses, attacked those who are desperately engaged in fighting these, For this reason he probably failed to absorb from Godkin's criticism some of the benefit which ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... say, in all the circumstances of the case, his really was a rather vulgar speech. But it was certainly impassioned, and probably as purely instinctive as his denunciation of all the causes which appeal to the gullible many without imposing upon the cantankerous few. His arguments, it is true, were merely an elaboration of those with which he had favored some of us already; but they were pointed by a concise exposition of the several definite principles they represented, and barbed with a caustic rhetoric quite admirable in itself. In a word, ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... the cantankerous—here! come in, you! she wants to see you!" and Direxia, holding the door in her hand, beckoned angrily to some one invisible. There was a murmur, a reluctant shuffle, and a man appeared in the doorway and stood lowering, his eyes fixed on the ground; a tall, slight man, with stooping shoulders, ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... "He was very cantankerous; but that wouldn't be a reason for shooting him in his sleep—whatever I may have said when ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... of godless education,' and a large majority of Irish Roman Catholic Prelates have solemnly pronounced it 'dangerous to faith and morals,' Neither ministerial allurements, nor ministerial threats can subdue the cantankerous spirit of these bigots. They are all but frantic, and certainly not without reason, for the Irish Colleges Bill is the fine point of that wedge which, driven home, will shiver to pieces their 'wicked political ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... his strength; in his old age they feared his wit. "Let Owd Sammy tackle him," they said, when a new-comer was disputatious, and hard to manage; "Owd Sammy's th' one to gi' him one fur his nob. Owd Sammy'll fettle him—graidely." And the fact was that Craddock's cantankerous sharpness of brain and tongue were usually efficacious. So he "tackled" Barholm, and so he "tackled" the curate. But, for some reason, he was never actually bitter against Grace. He spoke of him lightly, and rather sneered at his ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... things he has done for me. For years he has been missing; that wretched Overend and Gurney smash broke him, and he disappeared. And, Frank, you foolish fellow, I have been searching for you high and low to tell you that that cantankerous old lady, your aunt, was dead, and had changed her mind at the last moment, quarrelled with that lot who had got hold of her, sent for her solicitor, and left Greylands and every farthing she had to you. Thank goodness I have found ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... gen'lemen," he declared, "it's no small b'y's job to keep that fahmily in arder!" and he proceeded to describe them as a cantankerous lot, to be ruled only by that ideal justice tempered by mercy which he was apparently a ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... chattered for an hour or more about the extra three dollars on his trousers. If he had been less abusive the tailor might have overlooked the matter; but even a tailor has a soul, and this time the man swore to have the law on his cantankerous customer. ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... cantankerous old party, they're coming, I can tell you!" said Tom in great delight. "The Captain just sent me to break ground, and will be here directly himself. I say now, Hardy," he went on, "don't you say no. I've set my heart upon it. I'm sure we shall bump ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... was not quite so soothing as the cut of her costume; anything more cantankerous I have seldom seen; she would scarcely reply to my inquiry after Madame Walravens; I believe she would have snatched the basket of fruit from my hand, had not the old priest, hobbling up, checked her, and himself lent an ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... that a little chopped cheek-meat at two cents a pound was a blamed sight healthier than chopped pork at six. Reckoned that by running twenty-five per cent. of it into his pork sausage he saved a hundred thousand people every year from becoming cantankerous old dyspeptics. ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... travellers, cantankerous people, who complain that Irish railway officials are not civil. Perhaps English porters and guards may excel them in the plausible lip service which anticipates a tip. But in the Irishman there is a natural delicacy of feeling which expresses ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... attractive feature of his new life was the friendship of the bluff, cantankerous, but kind-hearted contractor, his sunny daughter, the manly foreman, and the talkative Murphy. Of Tressa he had so many glowing things to write in his letters to his wife that Helen threatened to rush north ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... something very like the unravelling of a tangled skein; and still more often, perhaps, is it brought about through the loosening of some knot in the mind of one or more of the characters. This was the characteristic end of the old comedy. The heavy father, or cantankerous guardian, who for four acts and a half had stood between the lovers, suddenly changed his mind, and all was well. Even by our ancestors this was reckoned a rather too simple method of disentanglement. Lisideius, in Dryden's dialogue,[1] in enumerating the points in which the French ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... tyrannical, an' perverse, an' cantankerous a critter ez ever lived, with no feelin's, nor softness, nor perliteness in him—but he's a square man. He'll do the fair thing—every time," the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Fletcher, his great eyebrows overhanging his eyes like a mustache grown out of place. "Well, you didn't hear anything to tickle your ears, I reckon. I've been having a row with that cantankerous fool, Blake. The queer thing about these people is that they seem to think I'm to blame every time they see a spot on their tablecloths. Mark my words, it ain't been two years since I found that nigger Boaz digging in my asparagus ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... character, Warren was slow to suspect a fellow-soldier of disloyalty. The campaign had gone on without special friction, though he remembered that he had heard Hastings swearing sotto voce more than once at Devers's cantankerous ways, and he recalled now two or three incidents—little things—in which Devers claimed to have misunderstood instructions; but this was so glaring, so gross a departure from both the spirit and letter ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... of the Spanish como esta usted muy bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten it all I thought I had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any person place or thing pity I never tried to read that novel cantankerous Mrs Rubio lent me by Valera with the questions in it all upside down the two ways I always knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the Spanish and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant what a pity he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead tired ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... to hear you," replied the other angrily, "for a more bad-natured, cross-grained, cantankerous person than yourself I never met among womankind. It's what I said to a man only yesterday, that thin ones are bad ones, and there isn't any one could be thinner than you ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... caviling, carping, crabbed, contentious, cantankerous chap. Hoot mon! an' why shouldna I drap into Scotch gin I choose? An' I with a ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... clerk is that we want somebody who knows how to deal with men, and especially young men on the one hand, and especially cantankerous (more or less) old scientific ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... that he mustn't be impatient. This, after all, was only the second day of Helen Brabazon's stay at Wyndfell Hall. Perhaps it was a good thing that her cantankerous old uncle had betaken himself off. Misfortune had a way of turning itself into good fortune where Lionel Varick was concerned; for he was bold and brave, as well as always ready to seize opportunity ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... saw the glint in his eyes, laughed. "I merely meant that spring is coming, and it would be a trifle warmer then. I'm inclined to be a little cantankerous to-night, but, of course, it is not my business how long ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... outbreak of war there lived in a certain German town, now frequently raided by air squadrons, an old Englishwoman. She was a semi-invalid; difficult and cantankerous. Subject to illusions, she imagined that the good nuns, who received her as an unremunerative paying guest, were in league against her mangy, but beloved dog. Yet both she and her dog continued to receive the half-humorous tolerance of ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... wretched now, but with an air of bygone superiority. This was chiefly shown in the Renaissance doorway, a rather elaborate piece of work, over which was the date 1602. I ascended the steps with a little misgiving, for I thought that perhaps some cantankerous person whose family had seen better times might be living there, and that my questions as to food and drink might meet with surly answers. I knocked, nevertheless, with my stick upon the old door studded with nail-heads. It was opened, and before me stood a woman who looked old, but who was ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Hertford Assizes, with Peter Ryland as my leader, to prosecute a man for perjury, which was alleged to have been committed in an action in which a cantankerous man, who had once filled the office of High Sheriff for the county, was the prosecutor. Wealthy and disagreeable, he was nevertheless ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... breaks her back for her," was his unholy wish; for he hated Sara intensely, desiring to be with the lions or elephants rather than dancing attendance on a cantankerous female monkey there was ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... school, accompanied by Miss Archer, went to have tea with the Singletons. Even Rosamund was interested in this visit. She did not say much about it. She had been rather silent and, as Jane Denton said, "off color" for the last few days. She had forgotten to be wild or cantankerous. She had even ceased to notice Lucy; and as to her lessons, she had gone through the tasks assigned to her with sufficient promptitude and sufficient correctness to win fairly good remarks from the two governesses and from the different teachers ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... that cantankerous creature, Who paid, as all must pay, the debt of nature; But, keeping to his general maxim still, Paid it—like ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... walking, but merely for occupation and companionship. He did not delude the villagers by these sorrowful deceptions, but they made believe he did. There were a few people who did not like him; but they were of that cantankerous minority who put thorns in the bed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that a little dog with such a very bad name as Hoodie was really not to be envied. She loved her own god-daughter Maudie dearly, and she knew it to be true that she was a very nice child, but her heart was sore for poor cantankerous Hoodie. You see her patience had not yet been tried by her as had been the patience of all those about the little girl, so after all she could not consider herself ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... says you? Son, I once attends where a lecture sharp holds forth as to Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. As was the proper thing I sets silent through them hardships. But I could, it I'm disposed to become a disturbin' element or goes out to cut loose cantankerous an' dispootatious in another gent's game, have showed him the French experiences that Moscow time is Sunday school excursions compared with these trips the boys makes when on the breath of that blizzard they swings ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... aware that there is a Sicilian in fabula who is not "mafioso"; that the crude banditism which sits in every Corsican's bones has raised him to the elysium of martyrs and heroes and not, where he ought to have gone, to the gallows; that the Maltese are not merely cantankerous and bigoted (Catholic) Arabs, but also sober, industrious, and economical. I have lived with all these races in their own countries and—apart from a fatal monkey-like apprehensibility which passes for intelligence but, as a matter of fact, precludes it—have found chiefly ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... woman we learnt something of the former tenants. She was a good-natured old soul, with an aggrieved tone of voice, due probably to the depressing effects of keeping an empty house for a cantankerous landlord. The former tenant's name was Smith, she said (unmistakably English this!). But his lady was a Roosian, she believed. They had lived in Roosia, and some of the children, having been born there, were little Roosians, and had Roosian ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... fortune large enough to enable him to laugh at half a dozen elective grand duchies. Indeed, de Mersch's own portmanteau was reported to be packed against the day when British support of his Greenland schemes would let him afford to laugh at his cantankerous Diet. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... "You're a contumacious, cantankerous old barnacle," retorted Sartoris, "that's what you are. It'd serve you right if your daughter was to cut the painter and cast you adrift, and leave ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... in a rage, and as she was not allowed to vent it on the proper object, she turned upon Sheila herself. "The Highlanders are a proud race," she said sharply. "I should have thought that rooms in this house, even with the society of a cantankerous old woman, would have been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Oliver. 'Too late now. Drink as he has brewed. He should have thought twice before he broke my poor mother's heart with his cantankerous ways. Cheveleigh beneath him, forsooth! I'm not going to have it cut up for a lot of trumpery girls! I've settled the property and whatever other pickings there may be upon my little Clara—grateful, and worthy of it! Her husband ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though what on earth there was to guard against was more than I could have said just then. Some cross-grained streak in my nature made me both cantankerous and suspicious, and while the mood was on me I would have contradicted or queried the word of ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... Who reignest where The weather's seldom bleak and snowy, This boon I urge: In anger scourge My old cantankerous sweetheart, Chloe! ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... references, and I cannot therefore verify his quotations. But they hardly require it. The volte-face of The Times sufficiently well known. And only too well known is the way in which the British nation allows its sentiments for other nations to be dictated to it by a handful of cantankerous journalists.] ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... is printed in the Fundgruben of Hoffmann von Fallersleben, 1837. The 'Personen' are the three Marys, who go at break of day to anoint the body of the buried Christ. On the way they are taken in by a peripatetic quacksalver who has a cantankerous wife and ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... exactly," said the barkeeper. "He's the most cantankerous crank in the township. And say, let me give you a pointer. If the subject of 1812 comes up,—the war, you know,—you'd better admit that we got thrashed out of our boots; that is, if you want to get along with Hiram. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... I cannot but think that all the characters of a region help to modify the children born in it. I am fond of making apologies for human nature, and I think I could find an excuse for myself if I, too, were dry and barren and muddy-witted and "cantankerous,"—disposed to get my back up, like those other natives ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... course, you don't get too near him. He is healthy, and has a good appetite, and he draws a good salary, and has no one except himself to look after. And yet that Dwarf ain't happy! On the contrary, he is the most discontented, cantankerous, malicious little wretch that was ever admitted into a Moral Family Show. And he ain't much worse than an ordinary Dwarf. Now, the other Freaks, as a rule, are contented so long as they draw well ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... I think she isn't cantankerous. Quite selfish people never are; they just grab everything in sight, with a total serenity and regardless of any consequences. That is the reason Mrs. Brenton is such a good subject for ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... so Con. For in the presence of woman he was tongue-tied and scarlet. He who would quell with his eye the sonorous youth whom the claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... head of our old firm, and the one celebrity I had ever seen or spoken to, a novelist and lecturer with record-breaking best sellers to his account. He once had some business dealings with our firm, and I attended to the details, thereby winning his cantankerous approval. He had very bad manners, of which he was totally unashamed, and very good morals, of which he was somewhat doubtful, as they didn't smack of genius; a notion that he was a superior sort ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... in which he assured her of his love, could not counterbalance the harshness of its contents. Madame Balzac, be it granted, was cantankerous; but how many sons who have never sponged on their mothers have supported them cheerfully, gladly, for long years out of meagre resources, and have borne with a smile the natural peevishness of old age, not ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... were conducted in a petty spirit. The popular assembly described itself as "the Commons House of Assembly in Parliament assembled"; whereupon it was ordered forthwith to strike out the word "Parliament." The Legislative Council appears to have been the more cantankerous, and the less prone to compromise. At last matters reached an impasse, for the Council began to throw out Supply and Revenue Bills. In the first year of the Queen's reign, when Canada was already full of trouble, delegates from the Newfoundland House of ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... promised to come to Queen Anne's Court at a quarter past six next morning, to escort his daughter to the station, an act of parental solicitude she had not expected from him. He took his departure immediately afterwards, being let out of the shop-door by Luke Tulliver, who was in a very cantankerous humour, and took no pains to disguise the state of his feelings. The lawyer Mr. Medler had pried into everything, the shopman told Percival Nowell; had declared himself empowered to do this, as the legal adviser of the deceased; and had seemed as suspicious as if ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... in the open, finally. She took that place for a month with one express object—to get him there, paint or no paint. She's fretful and cantankerous over every day of delay, and soon she'll be in an ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... what an amount of harm you do yourself by your impetuosity. You complain of the authorities, you even complain of the government—you are always pulling them to pieces; you insist that you have been neglected and persecuted. But what else can such a cantankerous man ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... his resentment against the elder was over, John Egerton was not sorry that the disagreeable affair had occurred. The quarrel had not been of his seeking, everybody knew that; and the knowledge that he did not need to be on friendly terms with the cantankerous old man was a distinct relief. He realised now that the ruling elder had been something of an encumbrance to him ever since he came to Glenoro. He represented everything unprogressive in the church, and he, the minister, had always ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... he always is; but Mr. OWEN NARES could hardly hope to satisfy the exigent demands of adoration in the part of young Carrington. Who, indeed, could sustain his reputation as a figure of romance when addressed as "Arthur-John"? Mr. FRED KERR, who played Martin Carrington, the cantankerous uncle, cannot help being workmanlike; but he was asked to repeat himself too much. The best performance was that of Miss MARION LORNE, in the part of the hero's one devout lover, Fancy Phipps; her quiet sense of humour, salted with a slight American ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... great triumph for him had Glory Goldie stood on the boat that day in all her pomp and splendour, so that Praestberg could have seen her. However, since she had not come, there was nothing for him but to go back home. As he was about to leave the pier cantankerous old ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... this cantankerous contraption isn't going wrong again! I wonder if it's going to have a fit here in this lonely place. It acts just as if it was. Bless my very existence! Hold on now. ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... to give you, Sergeant, until I count three. Then, if you haven't started, we'll simply have to bring you down like a cantankerous grizzly. Or, if you start and then stop again, we'll shoot just the same. We can't afford to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... stories which would make him break out in yawns, were they uttered by any one but papa; he drinks sweet port wine for which he would curse the steward and the whole committee of a club; he bears even with the cantankerous old maiden aunt; he beats time when darling little Fanny performs her piece on the piano; and smiles when wicked, lively little Bobby upsets the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old. But still, more material interests come in, and the old affection is crowded out of its old place in the heart. And so those comparatively fanciful disappointments sit lightly. The romance is gone. The mid-day sun beats down, and there lies the dusty way. When the cantankerous and unamiable mother of Christopher North stopped his marriage with a person at least as respectable as herself, on the ground that the person was not good enough, we are told that the future professor nearly went mad, and that he never quite got ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... a great clumsy, cantankerous animal. Now if I could only talk as Felix can, I wouldn't mind interviewing the pater to-morrow; but just as sure as I undertake to say anything to him, I get so nervous and confused that I act like a fool, and that provokes him. He seems to paralyse me. But, all the ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... Office to give his opinion respecting that letter from Frank Greystock demanding a written explanation. The letter had been sent to him; and Mr. Hittaway had carried it home and shown it to his wife. "He's a cantankerous Tory, and determined to make himself disagreeable," said Mr. Hittaway, taking the letter from his pocket and beginning the conversation. Lord Fawn seated himself in his great arm-chair, and buried his face in his hands. "I am disposed, after much consideration, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... is well enough, and she has the Abbey House and gardens for her life, but Violet will be sole mistress of the estate when she comes of age. As Violet's husband, your position would be infinitely better than it could be as her stepfather. Unhappily, the cantankerous minx has taken it into ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... Now, I know that cantankerous person, the universal objector, has all along been bursting to interrupt me and declare that he himself frequently finds no end of caterpillars, and has not the slightest difficulty at all in distinguishing them with the naked eye from the leaves ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... known Love-a-la Mode (1759) and The Man of the World (1764). His recognition that tragedy was not his forte and his self-criticism in THE COVENT GARDEN THEATRE, where he exhorts the audience to "explode" him when he is dull, reveal the comic spirit operative in his sometimes cantankerous personality. It is that strain, here seen in genesis, which develops full-fledged in ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... the couple of years spent by Lady Purbeck with her father can have been very pleasant ones. He was bad-tempered, ill-mannered, cantankerous and narrow-minded, and he must also have been a dull companion; for beyond legal literature he had read but little. Lord Campbell says: "He shunned the society of" his contemporaries, "Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, as of vagrants who ought to be ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... said the lawyer to himself, as he watched her driving away. "She looks well, too, when her eyes flash, and she puts on that haughty air. Odd that she should be so fond of that cantankerous old father. I wonder if the report is true which I heard of an Australian lover turning up for her. Well, there are worse-looking women than Frances Kane. I thought her very much aged when she first came into the office, but when she told me that she didn't much like me, she looked handsome ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... assented Uncle Enoch, "'Specially when ye don't want 'em to be. The off one's stiddy enough. It's this cantankerous skewbald that started the tantrum. Whoa now, blame ye!" Calico's nose was in the air again and ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... those who were so happy as to eat his salt, instead of taking to himself a madam, under whom there is no peace night or day? As he sits with his unemployed friends seeking the consolation of the never-failing beeree, the ex-butler narrates her ladyship's cantankerous ways, how she eternally fidgeted over a little harmless dust about the corners of the furniture, as if it was not the nature of dust to settle on furniture; how she would have window panes washed ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... "that's good in you. We've tried one another, haven't we? You're a brick! And I don't need you to tell me what you think of me. But if you could get a word into the ear of that cantankerous old lady, and just let her know what you know about me, it might move her. You see you're after her style, and I'm not; and she can't see any thing but a man's manner, which, after all, varies in all countries. Now if you could speak ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... "Well! of all the cantankerous,—here! come in, you! She wants to see you," and a man appeared in the doorway—he was shabbily dressed, but it was noticeable that the threadbare clothes were clean. Mrs. Tree looked at ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... of morbid discontent do they testify! Considering the recent progress of these regions that has led to a security and prosperity formerly undreamed of, one is driven to the conjecture that these words can only have been penned by some cantankerous churl of an emigrant returning to his native land after an easeful life in New York and compelled—"for his sins," as he would put it—to reside ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... reviewers—whom he once styled "those asses the critics"—were so unfriendly toward him. He was not of their set, and some of them regarded him as a sort of literary Ishmael, who had his hand raised against all his contemporaries, a quarrelsome and cantankerous although very able man, and therefore to be ignored or sat down upon whenever possible. He once said, "I don't know a man on the press who would do me a favor. The press is a great engine, of course, but its influence is vastly overrated. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... these untravelled critics and mischief-makers on both sides of the Atlantic. In most cases they have no definite desire to work harm, but they have inherited cantankerous prejudices which date back to the American Revolution, and they lack the vision to perceive that this war, despite its horror and tragedy, is the God-given chance of centuries to re-unite the great Anglo-Saxon ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... you've come back, dearie—and I won't ask you any more questions. I'm a cross-grained, cantankerous old thing, but you'll stop along of me a bit, ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... holy terror an' I stood it jest as long as I could. All thets left of my farm is on this ere boat an' I don't reckon its goin' to cost me much trouble to take care of it an' locate anywhare outside of this country. This ere cantankerous river has done me up, done me ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... troublesome, and everybody is so cantankerous. If he wanted to set up some pernicious manufacture, it could not be worse! The Osbornes, after having lived with Tibb's Alley close to them all their lives, object to the almshouses! Mr. Baron wont have the new drains carried through his little strip of land. The Town Council think we ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cantankerous Serb, Whom even the Turk couldn't curb, In having a go With Emperor Joe, Will the plans of the ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... "Humph!" grunted the cantankerous old agriculturist, not quite sure if he was being made fun of or if his resolution was being admired; "all I got to say is thet ef you want to ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... he has seen his dramatis personae from without and—doubtless for that reason—has apparently felt as free to saw and fit them to his argument as he has felt with his plots. Something preposterous in the millionaire reformer Mr. Crewe, something cantankerous and passionate in the Abolitionist Judge Whipple of The Crisis, above all something both tough and quaint in the up-country politician Jethro Bass in Coniston resisted the argumentative knife and saved for those particular persons that look of being entities in their own right which distinguishes ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... a mighty cantankerous, quar'lsome, aggervatin' critter!" Byers broke out irritably. "Ain't ye 'shamed o' this hyar hurrah ye hev kicked up fur nuthin'? accusin' o' ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... Oolong was McAllister, petty trader and unintermittent guzzler; and he ruled Oolong and its six thousand savages with an iron hand. He said come, and they came, go, and they went. They never questioned his will nor judgment. He was cantankerous as only an aged Scotchman can be, and interfered continually in their personal affairs. When Nugu, the king's daughter, wanted to marry Haunau from the other end of the atoll, her father said yes; but ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... herself, save in some secondary way!" the big King said. "In part I comprehend, madame. Now I too hanker after this same happiness, and my admiration for the cantankerous despoiler whom I praised this morning is somewhat abated. There was a Tenson once—Lord, Lord, how long ago! I learn too late that truth may possibly have been upon the losing side—" Thus talking incoherencies, he took ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... admitted, were these. I break no confidence. Yorke-Bannerman had a rich uncle from whom he had expectations—a certain Admiral Scott Prideaux. This uncle had lately made a will in Yorke-Bannerman's favour; but he was a cantankerous old chap—naval, you know autocratic—crusty—given to changing his mind with each change of the wind, and easily offended by his relations—the sort of cheerful old party who makes a new will once every month, disinheriting the nephew he last dined with. Well, one day the Admiral was taken ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... however, he was sullen, cantankerous, abusive. They were all compassionate to him, treating him like a spoiled, but not the less in reality a sickly child. Arctura thought her grandmother could not have brought him up well; more might surely have been made of him. But Arctura had him after a lifetime fertile ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... of Duke. After the usual fighting, Boleslav III was restored to his country for a short period in which he distinguished himself by wholesale assassination of his opponents. He eventually died in Poland as prisoner of Boleslav the Brave. Meanwhile, what with his cantankerous brothers, with Polish ambitions and German ill-will, Bohemia was having a ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... "You cantankerous old tyrant," she drawled in a whisper, "you do love to haze me around, don't you? Just to spite you, I'll do it!" She went in and left him standing there, smoking and leaning against the post, calm as the stars above. But under that surface calm, the heart of Lite Avery was thumping violently. ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... really liked her. And then Fawn will be always afraid of her,—and won't be in the least afraid of us. We shall have to fight him, and he won't fight her. He's a cantankerous fellow,—is Fawn,—when he's not ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... she had worked with even increased energy and devotion. This kissing of the rod, this irrational instinctive humility, was a strange and sweet experience for her. Such was the Hilda of the office; but Hilda at home, cantankerous, obstinate, and rude, had offered a remarkable contrast to her until the moment when it was decided that her mother should accompany Miss Gailey to London. From that moment Hilda at home had been an angel, and the Hilda ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... charge you to be careful, woe's me, that ever I be going to leave you. My heart is just broke, but do, master Oscar, be good to your little brother, and don't put on him. He has a high spirit, and it is no doubt cantankerous, but he must be honourably treated, and there's never a finer temper to ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... BOOTH) Now, I suppose my cantankerous daughter wouldn't have you, Piercy; not if I said anything to her about it. But if ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... who only used her full name when he was serious, "I've never known you to act so before. I've thought you were a nice, sweet-tempered little girl, and here you are acting like a cantankerous catamaran!" ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... his feelings or obtain his friendship, have often been misled by his quiet phlegmatic demeanour, which at times verges on stolidity. They have described him as being sour, morose and unkind. To such he appeared a sort of obstreperous, cantankerous being, who simply delights to quarrel with every man he meets—especially if an Englishman came in his way. Needless to say he is nothing ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... have the right to rouse most cities with their interpretation of the day's meaning. Then, less melodiously, dissenters of different sects issue a cantankerous emendation. The steamers, resounding like gigantic tuning-forks, state the old old fact—how there is a sea coldly, greenly, swaying outside. But nowadays it is the thin voice of duty, piping in a white thread from the top of a funnel, that collects the largest multitudes, and night is nothing but ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... I may say that the caracal differs very much from the European lynx, who, according to Tschudi, betrays his presence by horrible howlings audible at a great distance. Professor Kitchen Parker writes that the specimen now in the Zoological Gardens is a most cantankerous beast.[16] "If the American lynx, who is unfortunate enough to live in the same cage with him, dares to come betwixt the wind and his nobility, or even if he, in the course of his peregrinations, should, by chance, get sufficiently near his companion to be annoyed with the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... It is "Mr." "What gif you se informations;" and what questions! The seasoned Pensionnaire wants to know how she can get to that lovely valley where the Tiger-lilies grow, without taking a carriage. The British Matron, where she can buy rusks, "real English rusks, you know." A cantankerous tripper asks "why he never has bread-sauce with the nightly chicken." And we all troop to "Mr." after breakfast, to beg him to affix postage-stamps to our letters, and to demand the precise time when "they will reach ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... throw up the wardenship, and to relinquish the preferment which is your property, with the vain object of proving yourself disinterested, you would fail in that object, you would inflict a desperate blow on your brother clergymen, you would encourage every cantankerous dissenter in England to make a similar charge against some source of clerical revenue, and you would do your best to dishearten those who are most anxious to defend you and uphold your position. I can fancy nothing more weak, or more wrong. It is not that you think ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Pelton found out that his kids are Literates—Woooo!" Cardon grimaced. "Or what we've been doing to him. I hope I'm not around when that happens. I'm beginning to like the cantankerous ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... no doubt, that I kept such a cantankerous servant. I could get no other. Dear "Mother Monroe," as wise as she was good, and as tender as she was strong, who had nursed two generations of mothers in our village, was engaged at that time, and I was compelled to take an exotic. I had often watched "Mother Monroe" with admiration, as she ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... comparative ease and superlative enjoyment where she had left it off, but "Bob" said nothing to her father. She knew every one of his shortcomings, and they endeared him to her, quite as a son's faults and failures deepen a mother's love, but she knew, too, that he was cantankerous and required careful handling. Tom's toes were tender, and he forever exposed them where they were easily trodden upon, therefore the girl stepped cautiously and never even referred to his sacrifices, which would have cruelly embarrassed ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... down by his mere bearing when he came to apply for his room and board. She had a touch of grippe, and had just emerged from a heated affray with a dirty cook, and was inclined to battle when he presented himself. In a few minutes she was inclined to battle no longer. She let him have the room. Cantankerous ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... resume work, they would simply sulk, he said; and die out of sheer disappointment and pettishness. So the captain was compelled to treat them more amiably than usual. At the very outside their contract would only be for nine months. Sometimes when he showed signs of being in a cantankerous mood because the haul of shells did not please him, the serang would say to him defiantly, "Come on; take it out of me if you are not satisfied." But Jensen never accepted the challenge. As the days passed, I thought the weather showed indications of a change; for one thing, the aneroid began ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... a rather cold farewell of each other. The kind-hearted Maksim Maksimych had become the obstinate, cantankerous staff-captain! And why? Because Pechorin, through absent-mindedness or from some other cause, had extended his hand to him when Maksim Maksimych was going to throw himself on his neck! Sad it is to see when a young man loses his best hopes and dreams, ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... Jack replied, taking his hands from her shoulders and stepping back from her. "She is there with her grandmother, a cantankerous old woman, who leads Flossie a sorry life, or would if she were not so light-hearted that ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... outspoken words seemed to burn through her body. "But how could I know where to wear my rose? I have read in English books that gentle ladies wear them there." And these lines of Tennyson [Footnote: I must say here for the benefit of the drivelling, cantankerous critic, with a squint in his eye, who never looks for anything good in a piece of writing, but is always in the search for a flaw, that I send passages from Tennyson floating through Annette's brain with good justification. She had received a very fair education at a convent in Red River. She could ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... who wore a grey uniform and white cap and apron, disapproved of Philip to the depths of her well-disciplined nature. 'Cantankerous little pig,' she called him ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... were also first-rate. But the third, McClernand, here began to follow those distorting ideas which led to his dismissal later on. The three chief Confederates ranked in reverse order of efficiency: Floyd first and worst, cantankerous Pillow next, and Buckner ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... raised a hand. Jones finished his business with the gate, and then, with it between him and the stranger, waited. He was well dressed in a rough way, evidently a superior sort of farmer, and physically a person to be reckoned with. He was also an exceedingly cantankerous looking individual. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... turned up with ermine, addresses another sinner in a wooden pew, and bids him be taken away and hung by the neck until he is dead; and how the sinner in the pew, instead of indignantly remonstrating with the sinner on the bench, 'Why, you cantankerous old absurdity, what are you about taking my life like that?' usually exhibits signs of great depression, and meekly allows himself to be conducted to his cell, from whence in due course he is taken and throttled according ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Countess herself, for I would have a servant to wait on you. And your father would come and live with us and we would make him happy and comfortable too, and your mother . . . well! your mother would be happy too, and therefore not quite so cantankerous as she ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... would rush near they would make a breaking roar on the surface. Of me they evinced no fear whatever. But no bait, natural or artificial, that I could discover, tempted them to bite. This roused my cantankerous spirit to catch some of those little fish or else fall inestimably in my own regard. I noted that whenever I cast over the school it disintegrated. A circle widened from the center, and where had been a black mass of fish was only sand. But as my hook ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... shrieks at the enthusiastic humanitarian Socialist, whom he would fain send to Anticyra,—or further; the headlong humanitarian Socialist howls at the high and dry Economist, whom he would like to despatch finally to Saturn, or "haply to some lower level," as BOB LOWE's epitaph had it. The result is cantankerous charivari! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... are, you cantankerous little fabrication of nothings!" Belle said aloud, in a low, throaty, gloating voice. "Take that—and that! And now behave yourself. If you don't, mama spank—but good!" Then, breaking connection, "Thanks a million, Clee; you're tall, solid gold. ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith |
