"Contrariness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how very vexing, to be sure!" he observed. "This is certainly another instance of the contrariness of Fate." ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... months by the efforts of countless skilled workmen, hailing from every conceivable corner of Asia and Egypt, and regardless of expense and labour, had been built for one beautiful English girl, who, in a moment of ever regretted contrariness, had refused to participate in the planning and devising of the work, thereby shutting herself off from that most fascinating pastime, house-building; leaving everything down to the minutest details to ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... sir, for being a gabbler," said Deborah, witheringly, "but know what he is we do—a fine young gent with long descents and stone figgers in churches, as Bart knows. Beecot's his par's name, as is fighting with Mr. Paul by reason of contrariness and 'igh living, him being as stout ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... ever seem to you strange that our contrariness began within the year of our legendary creation, when Eve came to misery not by gazing in a bonnet shop, but when innocently wandering in her garden, the most beautiful of earth? By which we women gardeners should all take warning, for though ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Jest contrariness that's all. Hit my shack once, and 'cause 'twas raining, bored holes in the roof so the place ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... favour Mr. Carson the less because he was rich and a gentleman. The old leaven, infused years ago by her Aunt Esther, fermented in her little bosom, and perhaps all the more, for her father's aversion to the rich and the gentle. Such is the contrariness of the human heart, from Eve downwards, that we all, in our old Adam state, fancy things forbidden sweetest. So Mary dwelt upon and enjoyed the idea of some day becoming a lady, and doing all the elegant nothings appertaining to ladyhood. It was a comfort to her, when scolded by Miss Simmonds, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... away from you," she said, "any more than I am slipping away from my old self. I don't understand it, Porter. I only know that what you call contrariness is a force within me which I can't control. I wish that I could do the things which you want me to do, I wish I could be what Gordon and Constance and Barry and even Aunt Frances want—but there's something which carries me on and on, and seems to say, 'There's ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... mechanical ability, and was on the point of giving up the scheme when he met Smith. He was instantly impressed by the engineer's highly commonplace face; he had had considerable experience with human contrariness, and felt sure that Smith must be an absolute wonder, since he ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... I knew nothing, as if I had not heard of his duplicity, as if the whole house and grounds were not ringing with accusations of his unworthiness. Such are the phenomena of the philosophy of middle life, I insisted that he should remain for the evening, and, after dinner, with that contrariness accountable only in a true student of psychology, I made a trifling excuse and walked down to ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... should say the world was full of them!" exclaimed Helen. But her beauty, which was radiant in the morning light, took the contrariness from ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... climbing hills is good if the top is reached, but if you fall back, you will have much envy and contrariness to fight against. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... profession had shown her at all events something of the complexity of human nature; and she was no infallibilist; she would bow unquestioningly to no man's authority, not even to Alec's, much as she liked and admired him. There was even a streak of contrariness in her; what she might have said to herself she was prone to criticize or contradict, if it were too confidently or urgently pressed on her by another; perhaps, too, Cynthia's claim to be the Captain's mouthpiece stirred up in ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... maybe two, before we could hope for that," Ross cut in. "Then we'll have to depend on whether the Council believes this important enough." The contrariness which spiked his tongue whenever Karara was present made him say that without thinking. Then the twitch of Ashe's lip brought home Ross's error. Gordon needed reassurance now, not a recitation of the various ways their mission could ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... made his final choice, and, out of pure contrariness, it was the bowl of hot bread and milk prepared for Jinty's breakfast from which he flatly refused to be ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... lays their course well inshore, and it was just mebbe a toss up if the vessel clawed off the reef at all! And ez to the child keepin' up, why, dog my skin! that's just the contrariness o' things," continued Joe, in sententious cynicism. "Ef an able seaman had fallen from the yard-arm that night he'd been sunk in sight o' the ship, and thet baby ez can't swim a stroke sails ashore, sound asleep, with the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... what letters!—I tell you, Monsieur le Comte, prostitutes, when they write letters, assume a style of sentiment; well, sir, fine ladies, who are accustomed to style and sentiment all day long, write as prostitutes behave. Philosophers may know the reasons for this contrariness. I do not care to seek them. Woman is an inferior animal; she is ruled by her instincts. To my mind a woman has no beauty who is ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... as the boy comprehended that the eagle had not carried him off in a spirit of contrariness, he felt kindly ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... sleep in this happy glamour of assured success, and, by the inevitable contrariness of things, dreamed that he was falling over a steep precipice on The Dutchman's back, and that at the bottom Mortimer and Allis were holding a blanket to catch him in his fall. Even in his imaginative sleep, he was saved from a dependence ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... a certain morning with a distinct and well-defined grouch against the world as he had found it; a grouch quite different from the sullen imp of contrariness that had possessed him lately. He did not know just what had caused the grouch, and he did not care. He did know, however, that he objected to the look of Cash's overshoes that stood pigeon-toed beside Cash's bed on the opposite ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... emphatic affirmative. So sure was the young artist that this could not be true that he gave it up in disgust and abruptly left. A few weeks later Stillman was calling upon Ruskin and related the experience. Ruskin, who had known the celebrated dead artist intimately, declared that the contrariness of the medium at the beginning of the seance was remarkably characteristic of Turner. But what was much more to the point, in the way of evidence, was that the drawing in question was in Ruskin's possession and eagerly ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... Jim Halloween. With three good able-bodied lovers at yo' beck an' call, it's a downright shame to die an old maid just from pure contrariness. It's better arter all, to eat dough that don't rise than ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... little inn this tale would have come to an end. That it did not so end then and there is the fault partly of a crop of conventions, which have in so many years increased out of all belief and now stand bristling between Impulse and Action, and partly of the contrariness of women, which is, we know, very ancient, but not so old as all that. It is these two marplots, which you must bless or curse, gentlemen, as the fancy ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... fitted to burn anthracite. It looks well, with its highly polished brass casing and funnel reaching up through the deck above, but it has a very decided will of its own. Sometimes, in a fit of contrariness, it persists in blazing like a blast furnace on muggy days until its sides are nearly red-hot and the heat of the wardroom is well-nigh intolerable. But on chilly mornings it occasionally rings a change by refusing to burn ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... he said, half really to soothe Denny, half deliberately to draw him out, "why get all boiled up about the contrariness of ordinary little bugs?" ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... kind might come too high, you know; but she's apt to be sensible. You hadn't ought to said that about her age, though, Oscar. I'm afraid that hurt her feelings; and the worst thing we can do is to make her sore at us. She'd marry him out of contrariness." ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... A dispute between Blunt and Coffin had been going on for some time. In August, Coffin wrote to Mix that "The contrariness ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... much, only in gusts, but great leaden clouds chased each other angrily across the sky. It was very quiet there in the little house on the prairie, except when the wind came and shook the windows and rattled at the doors. The morning seemed to drag and wouldn't pass, just out of contrariness; and I wanted it to go fast because in the afternoon my sister was to take me somewhere, but where I did not know, but that we should go somewhere ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Pembroke for clothes and such-like for him. The girl's mother has always nursed in Pembroke, and they sent for her to help. But she was that minute home from the burial, and would not go. Then up steps the girl and "I'll go," says she—heaven knows why or what took her, except the contrariness of woman. However, there she is! D'ye see?' And ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... there, so she could walk slowly and look at the wall, or, rather, at the ivy growing on it. The ivy was the baffling thing. Howsoever carefully she looked she could see nothing but thickly-growing, glossy, dark green leaves. She was very much disappointed. Something of her contrariness came back to her as she paced the walk and looked over it at the tree-tops inside. It seemed so silly, she said to herself, to be near it and not be able to get in. She took the key in her pocket when she went back to the house, and she made up her mind that she would always ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
