"Nagging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the nagging kind. I don't intend to rub it in, but I'll own it, once and for all. Go on, ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... that the one I saw was a country wench, and I set her down to be a country wench; and if that was Dulcinea it must not be laid at my door, nor should I be called to answer for it or take the consequences. But they must go nagging at me at every step—'Sancho said it, Sancho did it, Sancho here, Sancho there,' as if Sancho was nobody at all, and not that same Sancho Panza that's now going all over the world in books, so Samson ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... been nagging me ever since last camp. Why'n thunder can't you see I'm doing my best? Other men don't row me as you do, or stand up for the 'tacks.' I tell you that fellow Lee never loses a chance of skinning me: he takes chances, by gad, and ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... which, in Weary's opinion, was a bit of guile upon the part of Dunk. If trouble came—trouble which it would take a jury to settle—the fact that the sheepmen were unarmed would tell heavily in their favor; for, while the petty meanness of range-stealing and nagging trespass may be harder to bear than the flourishing of a gun before one's face, it all sounds harmless enough in ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... and temper were exhausted and his much-tried endurance broke down under the petty gnatlike irritations of Fonseca and his myrmidons. It was on the deck of his own ship, in the harbour of San Lucar, that he knocked down and soundly kicked Ximeno de Breviesca, Fonseca's accountant, whose nagging requisitions had driven the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... twiddled his thumbs as he contemplated this latest evidence of earthly difficulty and uncertainty. Time and chance certainly happened to all men, and here was one opportunity of paying out those who had been nagging him. To take this stock at one-fifty on loan and peddle it out swiftly and fully at two-twenty or less would bring American Match crumbling about their ears. When it was selling at one-fifty or less he could ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... it was so absolutely true. Then his wrath rose. What business had Jack Turner to be singing that ditty under his window? He supposed all the neighbours laughed behind his back at the way his small wife ruled him. If they only had a taste of her nagging tongue they would not, perhaps, laugh so much. He would let them see he was not ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... said, "and after that, jump into the lake; were you once there, your virtues would float, and your husband would love them; but alive, your virtues are beneath water, and your nagging is always on top." ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... five miserable years, of which his own record is: "I was without friends, experience, or connection in the sphere of human business, was of sly humor, proud enough and to spare, and had begun my long curriculum of dyspepsia." This nagging illness was the cause of much of that irritability of temper which frequently led him to scold the public, and for which he has been ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... he admire her liveliness; he could not even see that she was good-looking now. "She's nothing but chaff, chaff, chaff!" he thought. "Thank goodness, Matilda isn't given that way. Chaff before marriage means nagging after!" ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... thing was over, whatever had happened, the cashier reflected with relief. Nevertheless, curiosity was nagging at him; he felt an impulse to go in and inspect the condition of Tasper Britt by way of ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... enlisted over his proposed strike more than over Pierre's artful suggestion of covert nagging. Not that she considered an ambushed attack, under the circumstances, as reprehensible, but rather because open attack revealed one's personality as much as the other course concealed it. The first year only of humanity is wholly satisfied, barring colic, with the consciousness ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... perfectly adorable," said she, and was at once aware of a guilty, nagging impression that she would not have said it to him half an hour earlier for ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... she said, 'Mr. Freeland and I will take Tryst and the little ones in at present.' Good-hearted people, do a lot for the laborers, in their way. All the same, she's a bit of a vixen. Picture of a woman, too, standin' there; shows blood, mind you! Once said, all over—no nagging. She took the little girl off with her. And pretty small I felt, knowing I'd got to finish that job, and the folk outside gettin' nastier all the time—not sayin' much, of course, but lookin' a lot!" The agent ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it? Can we believe that on the 30th of September, 1686, Defoe, provoked by his wife's nagging tongue, made a vow to live a life of complete silence; that for twenty-eight years and a month or two he never addressed a word to his wife or children; and that his resolution was only broken down by a severe illness ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a privilege by the expert teacher, school procedure becomes well-nigh automatic and there is never any occasion for nagging, hectoring, or badgering. Such things are abnormal in life and no less so in the vitalized school. They are a confession on the part of the teacher that she has reached the limit of her resources. She admits that she cannot do what Tom Sawyer did so well, and so proclaims her ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... organs, association and summation may play a large role. On this hypothesis many cases of neurasthenia may well be explained. From the behavior of the individual as a whole we may well conclude that summation is but a scientific expression for "nagging." Many other pathologic phenomena may be explained in a similar manner. Thus we can understand the variations in the gastric analyses in a timid patient alarmed over his condition and afraid of the hospital. He is integrated by fear, and as fear takes precedence ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... he explained. "No good nagging your people, particularly when they've been at the job for years and you're a new-comer. . . . Some of my spoiled darlings find that a little Eric goes a long way. You're sure you're not ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... the Power Section that afternoon with a worry nagging at the back of his mind. He couldn't exactly put his finger on what was bothering him, and he finally put it down to just ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... When not even this sufficed, he hit upon the following third means of raising money. There was a senator, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, who had noticed that the roads during the reign of Tiberius were in bad condition and was always nagging the road commissioners about it and furthermore kept making a nuisance of himself before the senate regarding the matter. Gaius took him as a confederate and through him attacked all those, alive or dead, who had ever been road commissioners ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... nagging at him for two hours past. He always contended that the Missing Link's skin was provocative of a great drought. He pleaded with Matty, the bone man, appealing artfully to his professional pride, for Bonypart ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... you to put them together?" asked she. "They are impossible people; so, naturally, you have selected the very mildest and most Christian women to endure their nagging. They can't live with the saints of the earth. Experience has proved that. Put them into one room, and let them fight ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... (slave of Amphitryon), in the service of Alcmena. A nagging termagant, who keeps her husband in petticoat subjection. She is not one of the characters in Moliere's comedy of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... generality of mankind with esteem; but it must have been otherwise with his employers. He had the reputation of being an uncomfortable commander, meticulous in trifles, always nursing a grievance of some sort and incessantly nagging. He was not a man to kick up a row with you and be done with it, but to say nasty things in a whining voice; a man capable of making one's life a perfect misery if he took ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... husband, sternly; "I don't want any of your back answers. It goes on all day long up to bedtime, and last night I laid awake for two hours listening to you nagging ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... life, the early years of which she was living so abundantly. At any rate, she never lost an opportunity to harass or annoy the pretty freshman, and it was only by keeping up an eternal vigilance that Marjorie managed to escape constant, nagging reproof. ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... of the company, whatever quarrels they indulged in among themselves, stood loyally by Byram in his anxiety and need. Miss Crystal and Miss Delany displayed edifying optimism; Mrs. Horan refrained from nagging; Mrs. Grigg, a pretty little creature, who was one of the best equestriennes I ever saw, declared that we were living too well and that a little dieting ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... intimacy of the engagement period may indeed be trying. Tact is required to avoid fault-finding, nagging, and jealousy. A few "lovers' quarrels" do not matter—they give flavor to a romance—but scolding and criticism do. Romance dies when thoughtless quarreling enters. An engaged man should be even more of a gentleman than the courting swain; the girl ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... part of the Princess, and I am sure no one else can sing it half so well. Try to think that, all the time you are rehearsing. Remember, Laurie believes in you, and so do we. When the great night comes you won't have to listen to that horrid Mr. Atwell's nagging, or say your lines over and over again. You will truly be the Princess, and that will make you forget everything else. If you believe in yourself, nothing can make you fail. For your own sake, don't think for a minute of ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... having twenty thousand a year. The full enjoyment of these luxuries, on Ambrose Tester's part, was dependent naturally, on the death of his father, who was still very much to the fore at the time I first knew the young man. The proof of it is the way he kept nagging at his sons, as the younger used to say, on the question of taking a wife. The nagging had been of no avail, as I have mentioned, with regard to Francis, the elder, whose affections were centred (his brother himself ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... tons of turkeys not only to voters, but to families who are represented by no vote. By a judicious management some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of that, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable societies, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys for Christmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be allowed to eat turkey again. As he does not distribute his Christmas favors from any ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... desired pace; but as soon as we attempt to assert ourselves in this matter, they display their sullen tempers in various ways, either by plunging, pulling, or setting up other defences against our authority. If we insist on our orders being obeyed, they show fight, or more usually a sullen nagging resistance that continues the whole time we remain on their backs, and they carry out the same programme every time we ride them. With such nasty tempered brutes, breaking is of no avail, for they are quiet as long as we allow them to set the pace and carry us as they like. A breaker ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... possible way, to bear with his infirmities, to endure hardships, toil, ingratitude in the Church and in the world, and on the other hand to obey government, to honor one's parents, to be patient at home with a nagging wife and an unruly family, these things are not at all regarded as good works. The fact is, they are such excellent works that the world cannot possibly estimate them ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... maternal compassion for this helpless dear with her double chins and self-sacrificing past, and she wondered whether her father had not had the same attitude during the years of nagging reproach at his lack of material prosperity. She resolved to come home that night with a budget of news items concerning Steve's return, even bringing a rose from the floral offering that was to be placed ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... spend the night here—at the Belle Etoile——" he went on, addressing the travelers, "here is the book, and please to put your names down. We have an officer in this town who has nothing to do, and spends all his time in nagging ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... week or two the moulting season comes. At this time the old crows are usually irritable and nervous, but it does not stop them from beginning to drill the youngsters, who, of course, do not much enjoy the punishment and nagging they get so soon after they have been mamma's own darlings. But it is all for their good, as the old lady said when she skinned the eels, and old Silverspot is an excellent teacher. Sometimes he seems to make a speech to them. What he says I cannot guess, but judging by the way they ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... awful land of the grasshopper,—he is the limit. He never lets a day go by without some slur about my grandfather or some other member of the family who existed long before I was born. Thinks he's witty. He is always nagging at me about cigarette smoking. I wish you could see the way he mishandles a cigar. As you know, I seldom smoke more than a half dozen cigarettes a day, but he swears to God I am everlastingly ruining my health, and it has got on my nerves so ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... had dragged along until everybody looked drowsy and tired but Joan, Brother Seguin, professor of theology at the University of Poitiers, who was a sour and sarcastic man, fell to plying Joan with all sorts of nagging questions in his bastard Limousin French—for he was from Limoges. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... when she came downstairs on this morning. The nagging of Betty Gallup, the gossip of the other neighbors, the wild suspicions whispered from lip to lip did not influence her so much. It was what she had herself discovered the evening before in the captain's "cabin" ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... you've proved that you've got the goods," declared Campbell, senior. "If you do as well in the big game I might be favorable toward giving you that racy runabout you've been nagging ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... with a level plank floor could have a keystone I don't know—and they were too much impressed by the event of the evening to inquire. And so, with a few cases of hysterics to occupy the attention of the younger women, some whimpering of frightened children and comforting or chastened nagging by mothers, some unwonted prayers muttered secretly and forgettingly, and a good deal of subdued blasphemy, Cunnamulla sank to its troubled slumbers—some of the sleepers in the commercial and billiard-rooms and parlours at the Royal, to start up in a cold sweat, out of their beery and ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... been able to glean but the bare outlines of the story, because Ebenezer and Helen had been abroad most of the time, and his impatient spirit chafed to know the intimate particulars of Tessibel's life. Jealousy of Young tormented him. Hopeless brooding over his situation, and Madelene's continual nagging had made him a neurasthenic wreck. Worn by insomnia and almost starved by a nervous dyspepsia, he could no longer maintain even a pretense of usefulness in the business. Madelene, thoroughly disillusioned, herself worn out by his ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... not to be read in a fierce, nagging spirit which demands, What is the good of this? or, Who cares for that? His talk, it must be admitted, is not of masterpieces. The books he takes down are—in some instances, at all events—sad trash. Smart's poems, for example, in an edition of 1752, which ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Fourth Avenue, Harry was beset with one nagging question. Why had Paula Ralston never brought any of her clients to see him before? He was the dispenser of over a hundred good jobs that offered high salaries. The answer was just as persistent as the question. Lab Technician was the only security job he handled. She was determined ...
— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg
... has eluded all screens and nettings comes singing its way about your face. It is just one. It seems so small. If it were only big enough to hit, something worthy of one's strength. But the mean little nagging specimen seems to elude every effort of yours. Maybe you take calm, deliberate measures to end its existence, but meanwhile you are thoroughly aroused and lose quite a bit of the ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... easily won conquest and David's apparent lack of prowess, Jud continued his jeering and nagging, but David set his lips in a taut line of finality and endured in silence until there came the ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... about the lightning," he said placatingly, just as he was accustomed to do, during the nagging period. "I was ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... wrong to punish or to crush the spirit of these children. Constant nagging and taunting, even if done in the hope of shaming the child into a cure, will simply make a coward of him and will not aid in improving matters, but will be ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... can stand without becoming a drone. Criticism? Yes, but no quibbling, no nagging. Criticism is something more than fault-finding. The teacher exalts his profession, ennobles his art, and begets consideration for himself when he maintains the highest standards for himself and ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... he had escaped the sin of despising the physically strong—a sin against which the physically weak must guard. But here was Dawes returning again and again to the subject of the University, full of transparent jealousy and petty spite, nagging, nagging, nagging, like a maiden lady who has not been invited to a tea-party. Rickie wondered whether, after all, Ansell and the extremists might not be right, and bodily beauty and strength be signs ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... was her father's custom to spend long hours in his library, sometimes far into the gray dawn. He found this preferable to the presence of his sharp-tongued second wife, who was always nagging him for more money, or to put his property into her name as proof positive of his ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... was much inclined to pity her when I saw her disagreeable face at first, especially as she was condemned to live with a man as greedy as her father; but when I saw that red-nosed creature eternally nagging and growling at those two unhappy servants, measure their food, and rival with her father in avarice, my first impulse of compassion was immediately turned to aversion for that wicked red-nose. Notwithstanding ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... matters, had never been exacting; he had come and gone without explanation, as it pleased him. But a half-hour unaccounted for came, with Vera, to mean a sulk, to mean tears, to mean, eventually, a nagging such as in all his life Lucilla had never given him. Certainly, if he had prized Vera Butt's society in the days when he could get very little of it, he had his ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... think your speaking mere nagging. Preserve an ominous silence if he speaks. His school-fellows ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been many moments without my senses. When I recovered them there was a great to-do in the garden, but I had the drawing-room to myself. I sat up. Rosenthall and Purvis were rushing about outside, cursing the Kaffirs and nagging at ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... and Archie went oftener than ever to San Francisco, frequently staying in the city for days at a time, which was bad for Adelle's fortune, had she but realized it. But, as has been shown, she had come now to the time when she felt relieved if Archie was not at home, glum and sulky, or nagging and fighting her will. With the place and her boy she had enough to fill her mind, and easily forgot all money troubles when Archie was not there to remind her of them. Somehow they raised the money for the workmen, and the building went ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... perfectly true; Mrs. Melcombe and Laura were not of the nagging order of women, they never said sarcastic or ill-natured things to one another, the foibles of the one suited the other; and if they had a few uncomfortable words now and then between themselves, they had enough esprit de corps to hide this from ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... persistence—a combination which the Jesuits on a larger scale have turned into the characteristic of their order. It is especially remarkable when it breaks the bonds of silence, and takes the form of what in vulgar language is called "nagging." No form of torture which has as yet been invented, save, perhaps, the slow dropping of water on some highly sensitive part of the frame, can afford a parallel to this ingenious application of ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... of the picket to enforce this order. One of their sentries would hail one of ours with some friendly remark, and it was difficult to suppress the desire to reply. If a reply was not forthcoming, a nagging ejaculation, calculated to provoke, would follow, such as, "What's the matter, Yank, are ye deaf?" "Maybe ye are afeared o' those d——d officers." "We 'uns don't give a d—— for our officers," and so volley after volley would follow, whilst poor Yank had to continue silently walking his ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... temper is not as destructive to household peace and comfort as the nagging, carping, fault-finding spirit that sees good in nothing. A temper that is like a tornado in its violence at least clears the air as it passes, and is usually followed by quick repentance and ready reparation. But the fault-finding, nagging, suspicious temperament is a veritable foe ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... only wise man in the county," he returned. "If your sanity doesn't make you happy, I can tell you it's worth a great deal less than my craziness. Look at that dandelion, now—it has filled two hours chock full of thought and colour for me when I might have been puling indoors and nagging at God Almighty about trifles. The time has been when I'd have walked right over that little flower and not seen it, and now it grows yellower each minute that I look at it, and each minute I see it better than I did the one before. There's nothing in ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... am, I tell you. I'm not grumbling, am I? I know as well as you do she's miles too good for me. Haven't I said so? Then what the devil do you keep on nagging at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... often came home in a very lively condition, but his wife did not mind, for she thought that a man must have his glass. Women of the lower and middle classes have a great deal to do with supplying customers to the public-house. Some of them drive their men there by nagging, but more of them lead a man on to drink by sheer indulgence. They encourage him to enjoy himself without thinking of the day when enjoyment will be impossible, and when they and their children will reach the lowermost rung of the ladder of shame and penury. The Wanderer went merrily ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... set himself to the finishing of Brian's winter task. That sacrifice, at least, he decided, nagging Don into hours of study that were a godsend to them both, should not become an anticlimax. He had paid once—in ragged money. For Joan's sake he would pay willingly again in time. Brian and Joan and Don—and ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... over her cheeks. "Oh, you poor lamb—please don't look so awful! It was my fault. I put you up to this with my nagging about Gramps." ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... which the Little Colonel was more embarrassed than ever. She could not tell Fidelia that it was because a little poodle received the fondling and attention that belonged to them, and that it was Fidelia's continual faultfinding and nagging that made the boys tease her. So after a pause she changed the subject by asking her what she wanted most to ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of constant sparring and unhappiness, for which Mrs. Holt blamed Kate. Her son had returned expecting to court Kate Bates strenuously; his disappointment was not lightened by his mother's constant nagging. Monday forenoon she went to market, and ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... sure whether this repartee was friendly good spirits or a nagging feud. Like all the ungrateful human race, she considered whether she ought to have identified herself with the noisy Esther Lawrence on entering the Home. So might a freshman wonder, or the guest of a club; always ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... to rain, and she had not let him have a nickel for car fare—she who had five thousand dollars. She let him walk the streets in the cold and in the rain. "Miser," he growled behind his mustache. "Miser, nasty little old miser. You're worse than old Zerkow, always nagging about money, money, and you got five thousand dollars. You got more, an' you live in that stinking hole of a room, and you won't drink any decent beer. I ain't going to stand it much longer. She knew it was going to rain. She KNEW it. Didn't I TELL her? And ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... devious ways—and, to do him justice, he did not attempt to deny it: he ventured only to EXPLAIN it.) According to his version of the affair, the trouble began long before he took to wine and women. It began with his wife's propensity for nagging. Being a high-spirited, intelligent person with a mind of his own, Mr. Hooper didn't like being nagged, and as he rather harshly attempted to put a stop to it just as soon as it dawned upon him that he was being hen- pecked, his wife, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the retired collegiate assessor Plemyanikov, was sitting on the back-door steps of her house doing nothing. It was hot, the flies were nagging and teasing, and it was pleasant to think that it would soon be evening. Dark rain clouds were gathering from the east, wafting a breath of moisture ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... and earnest than when it dribbles into vague exhortations. Many a man has been worried into vice by well-meant but wearisome admonitions to be virtuous. A single word of true friendly warning or encouragement is more eloquent than volumes of nagging pertinacity, and may safely be spoken and left to do its work. After all when we are anxious to help a friend into the right path, there is not much more or better that we can say than what Sir Walter Scott said, when he was a-dying, to his son-in-law Lockhart: 'Be a good man, my dear, be a ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... bruises, and dirt. At that time I was wearing a necktie and had my shoes polished but, even so, I yearned to join with them in their debauch of sand, mud, and general indifference to convention. They are fine, upstanding young chaps now, and of course their mother thinks that her scolding, nagging, and baiting made them so. They know better, but are too kind and considerate to reveal the ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... may divorce his wife for one of the seven following reasons:—Want of children, adultery, neglect of his parents, nagging, thieving (i.e. supplying her own family with his goods, popularly known as "leakage"), jealous temper and leprosy. To the above, the humanity of the lawgiver has affixed three qualifying conditions. He may not put her away on any of the above grounds ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Corporal punishment must be done away with not because it is painful but because it is profoundly immoral and hopelessly unsuitable. Repress the egoistic demands of the child when he interferes with the work or rest of others; never let him either by caresses or by nagging usurp the rights of grown people; take care that the servants do not work against what the parents are trying to insist on in ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... of what answers to the Lower Sixth of a boys' school rocking and whooping together. Given a week of warm weather, two stately promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice meal in the middle of the day, a certain amount of nagging from the teachers, and a few other things, some amazing effects develop. At least this is what folk say who have ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... in my eyes, and I knew that Madame Renard was boiling with rage, for she kept on nagging at me: 'Oh, how horrid! Don't you see that he is robbing you of your fish? Do you think that you will catch anything? Not even a frog, nothing whatever. Why, my hands are tingling, just ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... his story in his own way. Without paying any attention to this nagging on the part of the tall chum, he kept facing ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... to the window, stooping to peer at the machine. "What's the good of that?" he demanded, disdainful; and without waiting for her response went on nagging. "Foolishness! That's what it is. Why don't you tell him not to waste ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... which revolved over visitation and care of their son. But Kelly had grit! While fasting, she confronted these tough issues in her life and unflinchingly made the necessary decisions. When she returned to Canada she absolutely decided, without any nagging doubts, reservations or qualifications, to make any changes necessary to ensure her survival. Only after having made these ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... equipment. He had added a bedroom here, a cool summer kitchen there, an icehouse, a commodious porch, a washing machine, even a bathroom. But Bella remained unplacated. Her face was set toward the city. And slowly, surely, the effect of thirty years of nagging was beginning to tell on Ben Westerveld. He was the finer metal, but she was the heavier, the coarser. She beat him and molded him as iron beats ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... Aunt Matilda had been annoyances to her ever since she could remember. Their continual nagging had fretted her, their constant restraint had chafed her, their narrowness had cramped her. To-day she saw them from a new ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... of us can count a "Charles Robert" in our environment. Someone whose "worm i' the bud" of their character has so completely spoilt its early flower on account of the "one ruinous vice" of "censoriousness," of perpetual nagging, and fault-finding developed to such a pitch that it has eaten out at last the fair heart of human forbearance and kindness which is the birthright of everyone. Such a person makes the true, free development of others in his proximity a harder task than God intended it to be, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... he was beset by a curious, uncommon restlessness which made it hard for him to linger long in any one spot. He idled about the streets of the town; twice he wandered aimlessly miles out along roads beyond the town. All the while, without cessation, there was a tugging and nagging at his nerve-ends, a constant inward irritation which laid a hold on his thoughts, twitching them off into unpleasant channels. It kept him from centering his interest upon the casual things about him; inevitably it turned his mind back to inner contemplations. The sensation was mental ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... knows what I mean. "With all my heart," says she. So I read although it be on a Sunday, so good are your letters; and you must know, I have copies of many, and after a little while we are as much alive and brisk, as if we had no nagging at all, and return to the duties of the day with ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... is because for a child you certainly have crazy ideas. Why don't you nag your father a little with what you've been nagging me all week?" ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Rwanda. Despite substantial international assistance and political reforms - including Rwanda's first local elections in March 1999 - the country continues to struggle to boost investment and agricultural output and to foster reconciliation. A series of massive population displacements, a nagging Hutu extremist insurgency, and Rwandan involvement in two wars over the past four years in the neighboring DROC continue ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... what they should say or do. They have a great gift, but they lay down their price for it, and suffer for others as well as in themselves more than their share. But in general, the average boy and girl needs a "daily exercise" which in most cases amounts to "nagging," and in the best hands is only saved from nagging by its absence of peevishness, and the patience with which it reminds and urges and teases into perfect observance. The teasing thing, and yet the most necessary one, is the constant check upon the preoccupying interests of children, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... ballyhoo; later, the manager of the side show, and, soon after, the proprietor of a second-class vaudeville house. Just when the moving picture had passed out of the stage of a curiosity and become a promising industry he was an ambitious young man of twenty-six with some money to invest, nagging financial ambitions and a good working knowledge of the popular show business. That had been nine years before. The moving picture industry had borne him up with it where it threw off dozens of men with more financial ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... are I guess I am too, Anne, for Rachel often has that very effect on me. I sometimes think she'd have more of an influence for good, as you say yourself, if she didn't keep nagging people to do right. There should have been a special commandment against nagging. But there, I shouldn't talk so. Rachel is a good Christian woman and she means well. There isn't a kinder soul in Avonlea and she never shirks her share ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... get the old man started on me, ma, too. When a fellow travels six months out of the year in every two-by-four burg in the Middle West, nagging like this is just what he ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... been successfully turned from his purpose here. Yet now as he swung around and walked away down the alley Drew was left with a nagging doubt, a feeling that in some way or other Shannon had come off even in this encounter.... But ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... we do is to go on nagging in this way," Pao-y remarked smiling, "will I any more be afraid to die? on the contrary, it would be better ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... a certain mother with several unconverted children. She was a fretting, chafing woman, and by her impatience, fault-finding, and nagging she fretted and vexed the whole family. When she got the blessing she became so even in her disposition that she was kept in such 'perfect peace' that, by the power of the Holy Ghost, the domestic circle became like a ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... routine. Sergeant Madden had the traffic desk that morning. He would reach retirement age in two more years, and it was a nagging reminder that he grew old. He didn't like it. There was another matter. His son Timmy had a girl, and she was on the way to Varenga IV on the Cerberus, and when she arrived Timmy would become a married man. Sergeant Madden contemplated ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... over, one of the committee said to me, "Do you know I am ashamed of the way I have always talked about 'dagos,' they are quite like other people, only one must take a little more pains with them. I have been nagging my husband to move off M Street because they are moving in, but I am going to try staying awhile and see if I can make a real acquaintance with some of them." To my mind at that moment the speaker had ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... have made an excellent drillmaster had he possessed the patience and the human decency of Sergeant Brimmer. But this corporal made his work doubly hard, and hindered the rookies from learning, by his persistent nagging and bad temper. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... you can help it, but you know—yes, you must know that parsons are as jealous of each other and as nasty to each other as actors, singers, writers, or any other 'professional' persons in the world. In fact, I believe if you were to set two spiteful clergymen nagging at each other, they'd beat any two 'leading ladies' on the operatic stage, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... mothers are not sympathetic," you say. "They are often nagging, and use the confidences of the daughter to make her uncomfortable." Well, if this be so, you, at least, can learn the lesson, and by your habits of thought fit yourself to be the wise, loving, companionable, sympathetic confidante of your daughter, for you will be anxious that she should have ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... not improved on connubial acquaintance. He was lazy and sloven of mornings, and since he had no office to go to he grew more neglectful of his appearance than ever. His end-to-end cigarettes got on Kedzie's nerves and cost a nagging amount of money, especially as she could not learn to like ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... making such an admission—that the suffragettes are justified in regarding politicians as the obstacles in the way of their demands, there still remains the question of the disadvantage of their method. This method is by some euphemistically described as the introduction of "nagging" into politics; but even at this mild estimate of its character the question may still be asked whether the method is calculated to attain the desired end. One hears women suffragettes declare that this is the only ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... as I should in his difficulty with Sydney and Amelia. I'm so sorry! George is more upset than I've ever seen him—they've got what they wanted, and they're sailing before long, I hear, to live in Florence. Father said he couldn't stand the constant persuading—I'm afraid the word he used was "nagging." I can't understand people behaving like that. George says they may be Ambersons, but they're vulgar! I'm afraid I almost agree with him. At least, I think they were inconsiderate. But I don't see why I'm unburdening myself of all ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... "Again on your hobby-horse, nagging at talent whenever you find it in others! " cried the young prince with a pun, which would have delighted Padmavati. "Surely you are jealous of her!" he resumed, anything but pleased with the dead silence that had received his joke; "jealous ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... for him to comply with his father's wishes. They could easily do that, or thought they could, by making life at the ranch unbearable for him. That, he was convinced, was the reason that Betty had adopted her cold, severe, and contemptuous attitude toward him. She expected he would find her nagging and bossing intolerable, that he would leave in a rage and allow her and Taggart to come into possession of the property. Neither she nor Taggart would dare make off with the money and the idol as long as he was at the ranch, for they ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... comment that indicates that the comment is only approximately true. The remark "To a first approximation, I feel good" might indicate that deeper questioning would reveal that not all is perfect (e.g., a nagging cough ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... smiled down into her tense, suffering face, and paid no attention to her objections. As soon as he carried her off, Jim Edwards glumly took out that one of the twins I had at first supposed to be the elder, the remaining Thornhill girls moved on Dr. Bowman and began nagging him to hunt partners ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... conscience buzzed nagging little reminders of his real duty, Johnny's imagination and his ambition were fed a full meal of anticipation, and he had the joy of being actually at work on an airplane that he could proudly speak ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... sponges, every morning. Fix your mind upon having a sound and energized body and you will attract it. Exercise, walk, run, play, work, and learn to rest. Change your habits of living. Cut out the grouch. Stop nagging. You're sour because your pores are stopped up; get a buck-saw and take a sweat. You're morbidly blue because your solar plexus has gone to sleep; give it half an hour of internal vibration. Don't ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... a lot of us. The principals in a company generally stick together. It's extraordinary how you women will keep on nagging at a thing. I swear to you that I'm as certain as I stand here there was never anything between them. Do let us talk of ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... up all these preliminaries, but inwardly resolving to gain each point by a nagging persistence of which she was a mistress, she finally declared that she "must have writings about one thing which couldn't be left to any man's changeful mind. He must agree to give me the monthly salary he names for at ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... useless to say anything. She had a wholesome horror of being one of those women who nagged; and she felt that to complain again would amount to nagging. She tried to put the thing out of her mind, but it insisted on staying there. In a way she understood his feelings. He loved her so much, she supposed, that he hated the idea of her exchanging ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... call it an accomplishment," retorted Hamilton. "We cannot go through life successfully with the bare gifts of the Almighty, generous though He may have been. If I find that I have need of cunning, or brutality,—than which nothing is farther from my nature,—or even nagging, I do not hesitate to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... one very good point in her character: she was not of a nagging disposition. When she scolded she did it thoroughly, and was perhaps a long time doing it, but she never carried it into the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... point he was very positive: the Cherokees, he insisted, would not join the Ohio tribes, despite the murder of Oconostota's brother. Could the people of the Clinch and Holston have felt the same confidence, they would have spared themselves much nagging. ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... round, like a squirrel in a cage. A change of surroundings and scene, or a spice of adventure, was what he longed for—as eagerly and as hopelessly as some fallen wayfarer in a desert land. His mother's flinty attitude and hostile nagging had frozen a naturally affectionate disposition, and Shafto passed several years of his youth without one single ray of woman's love, until generous Mrs. Malone had come forward and installed him in her heart. His usual routine was breakfast ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... nagging woman, Constance," he went on in a somewhat softened tone. "In fact you have been a good wife; you have never thrown it up to me that I was unable to make good to the degree of many of our friends in purely ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... it without complaint. Here is practical wisdom. But to worry over a thing that can be changed, instead of changing it, is the height of folly, and if a matter cannot be changed why worry over it? How utterly useless is the worry. Then, too, worry is the parent of nagging. Nagging is worry put into words,—the verbal expression of worry about or towards individuals. The mother wishes her son would do differently. Can the boy's actions be changed? Then go to work to change them—not to worry over them. If they cannot be changed, why nag him, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... ever be a most reverent servant to the soul. But in fact, and particularly in hours stately with momentous things, what a sacrilegious trick it has of nagging its holy mistress with triflet light as air—small as gnats yet ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... started with a bump that swayed her toward him, and when she caught the seat with one hand, it checked as suddenly, throwing her the other way, and then with a leap it sprang ahead again, giving a nagging snap to her head. Her whole face grew red with vexation and shrinking distaste, and all the while, when the little train steadied into its creaking, puffing, jostling way, one gloved hand on the chased silver handle of her ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... believe, as a general thing, more children are spoiled by what the Scotch graphically call 'nagging' than by indulgence. What do you think Josey would have been, if Mrs. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... he wished himself well out of the whole business. Here and there a man sighed or fidgeted in the darkness. Basil was quick to notice the signs, and equally quick to combat them. He whispered words of hope and promise, and stimulated the nagging ones ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... weak and defenseless. Not always had his treatment at the hands of children encouraged this feeling of loving chivalry and devotion. But Sonya was an exception. Whenever she could steal a minute of time, away from her father's glum eyes and nagging voice and ready fist, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... were half-way to Saturn and three-quarters of the way to murder. At least, I was. I was sick of the feuding, the worries and the pettiness of the other nineteen aboard. My stomach heaved at the bad food, the eternal smell of people, and the constant sound of nagging and complaints. For ten lead pennies, I'd have gotten out into space and tried walking back to Earth. Sometimes I thought about doing it without ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... leader plods steadily, stopping from time to time to rest on the steep slopes. The others string out in a leisurely procession. It does no good to hurry. The horses will of their own accord stay in sight of one another, and constant nagging to keep the rear closed up only worries them without accomplishing any valuable result. In going uphill especially, let the train take its time. Each animal is likely to have his own ideas about when and where to rest. If he does, respect them. See to it merely ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... Lucy," said Margaret. "I don't mind their nagging, but I do mind standing in your way. And they'll keep you back as long as ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... and seemed dejected, but, as usual, polite and charming. She was smilingly cruel; regaled him with Lord Uxmoor's wealth and virtues, and said he was an excellent match, and all she-Barfordshire pulling caps for him. Severne only sighed; he offered no resistance; and at last she could not go on nagging a handsome fellow, who only sighed, so she said, "Well, there; I advise you to join us before the opera ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Black Hill country. She felt that it knew too much about her. The neighborly inquisition had fallen like a blight on the family fortunes. A vague migratory impulse was on her. She wanted to go somewhere and begin all over again. By dint of persistent nagging she persuaded her husband to move to Wyoming, then in the golden age of the cattle industry. Those were days when steers, to speak in the cow language, had "jumped to seventy-five." The wilderness grew light-headed with prosperity. Wonderful are the tales still told ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... radiant red hair and a thin skin which hinted of too much candy and too many ice cream sodas. Babbitt did not show his vague irritation as he tramped in. He really disliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging was as meaningless as it was frequent. He shouted at Tinka, "Well, kittiedoolie!" It was the only pet name in his vocabulary, except the "dear" and "hon." with which he recognized his wife, and he flung it at Tinka ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... hitherto displayed separately.... Ezra Barrasford and his sons appear, amidst the wreck they have made, wonderfully convincing characters.... The women are no less convincing—good-hearted, toil-worn Eliza, driven to "nagging" by her husband and sons; Bell Haggard, a truly wonderful study; Judith, who has learned much wisdom from bitter experience. As to the language, it is wonderfully true to country ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... only a tiny, nagging disturbing thought in his mind. It had to do with Mike Fueyo and the Silent Spooks, and a lot of red Cadillacs. But he pushed it resolutely away. It had nothing to do with the evening he was about to spend. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... when a girl's happy at home, I do think it's a pity for her to jump into being a woman at eighteen. More'n one I've coaxed into waiting. But when a girl's disposition is wearing thin through bickering and nagging day in and day out, the sooner she's in a home ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... looks good to you. I don't want a thing. We had tea after the matinee. That's what made me so late. I'm always nagging the girls to go home. It's getting so they ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... to that. The press is always prating about the power of the press, always nagging about pitiless publicity being potent to destroy an evil thing or a bad man, and all that sort of rot. And yet every day the newspapers give the lie to their own boastings. It's true, Drayton, that up to a certain point the newspapers can make a man by printing favourable things about ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb |
