"Querulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pedius—genuine—such as the singers of Antioch take of mornings to restore the waste of their voices," the dealer answers, in a querulous nasal tone. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... might generally be made but for foolish quarrels, or misunderstandings, as they are well named! It is our own fault if we are querulous or ill-humored; nor need we, though this is less easy, allow ourselves to be made unhappy by the querulousness or ill-humors ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... has anybody got," demanded Brown with querulous ferocity, "to interfere between me and a lady? Eh? Whose compartment was she in? Me in hers or her in mine? Eh? Me. I'm sleeping. Hasn't a gent a right to sleep? Next thing I know she's fingerin' my whiskers. How should I know she's not balmy on red beards an' makin' ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... querulous newborn female infant crying to cause and lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with shocks her moneybox: counted his three free moneypenny buttons, one, tloo, tlee: a doll, a boy, a sailor she cast away: blond, born of two dark, she had blond ancestry, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... in this time of siege that I came to know, as I had not known before, the depth and tenderness of my dear lad's love for me. While the life-tide was at its ebb and I was querulous and helpless weak, he was my leech and nurse and heartening friend in one. And later, when the tide was fairly turned and I had found my soldier's appetite again, he spent many of the nights abroad and never let me guess ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... opportunity for beginning a new and better life, had the queen been so minded; but events proved her to be in a more querulous, treacherous, and discontented mood than ever. "Her Grace considereth now, the honour of England, and the poverty and wretchedness of Scotland," wrote Magnus to Wolsey, "which she did not afore, but in her opinion esteemed Scotland equal with England,"* ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... system now and then vigorously rebels against this chronic condition and an acute bilious attack is the evidence of such rebellion. The whole digestive canal is involved in the rebellion, resulting in the symptoms described and also in a morose, petulant and querulous temper, accompanied by a peculiar, despairing expression,—partly due, perhaps, to regrets of having only one digestive apparatus,—or in some cases, ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... magnificence of phrasing, are things which the present generation vaguely approves in retrospect; but it would titter at a contemporary demonstration of them. While I was reading Pigott's cross-examination, an idea struck me; why do not the managers of our theatres, always querulous about the dearth of plays, fall back on scenes from famous trials? A trial-scene in a play, though usually absurd, is almost always popular. Why not give us actual trial-scenes? They could not, of course, be nearly so exciting as the originals, for the simple reason ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... on the shoulders of Abdul, at whose side I was standing. A few of them examined me in every position their inquisitive eyes could take; displaying all the advantages of their versatile necks, and pretending querulous fear in the midst of ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Supper was cooked but it must be packed properly and the finishing touches put to it. Mrs. Buck was wandering around the kitchen making futile attempts to help. Jeff, who was sitting outside on a bench under the syringa bushes, could hear her querulous drawl and Judith's ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... a patient bread-winner, Gets up from the table with look of despair, And something akin to the growl of a bear; Not the saint he might be, but a querulous sinner— One driven to fasting but not unto ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... infant in arms, was violently ejected from the stage and added to the human pile which was wriggling and weeping upon the gravelled walk. A cub of seven next leaped out, whistling shrilly, then came a querulous, wailing, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... done little but disease their mind and heart. They resorted more and more to those arts which are the weapons of crafty, ambitious, and unprincipled women. They were too apt to be cunning, false, intriguing. They were personally cowardly, as their own chronicles declare; querulous, passionate, prone to unmanly tears; prone, as their writings abundantly testify, to scold, to use the most virulent language against all who differed from them; they were, at times, fearfully cruel, as evil women will be; cruel with that worst cruelty which springs from cowardice. If I seem to ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... the horse whinnying for his corn; And, sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows The cattle shake their walnut bows; While, peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent And down his querulous challenge sent. ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... much negative, too little positive, in child-training; too much querulous reiteration of "don't," too little intelligent teaching how to do. Little children like to be "shown how;" they are fascinated with the games and gifts of the kindergarten, which aims to teach something, not to repress everything. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... (largely expressing an actual change of spirit and point of view) between the manner of Arnold's poetry and that of his prose. In the latter he entirely abandons the querulous note and assumes instead a tone of easy assurance, jaunty and delightfully satirical. Increasing maturity had taught him that merely to sit regarding the past was useless and that he himself had a definite ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... feather'd quiristers] Imitated by Boccaccio, Fiammetta, 1. iv. "Odi i queruli uccelli," &c. —"Hear the querulous birds plaining with sweet songs, and the boughs trembling, and, moved by a gentle wind, as it were ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... querulous, nor malevolent; She loved not the fierce wrangling of women; She was not a backbiting serpent, or a liar; She sold not the Son of God ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... bottle of wine. In the next box I could hear the squeaky laugh of Hard-pan Henry and the teasing tones of his inamorata. The visits of the Black Prince to this box with fresh bottles had been fast and furious, and at last I heard the woman cry in a querulous voice: "Say, that black man coming in so often gives me a pain. Why don't ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... ones to Philip, who had scant patience with the querulous old aunt. But Amanda, since she had glimpsed the girlhood romance of the woman, had a kindlier feeling for her and could smile at the faultfinding or at least run away from it without retort if ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... interview, brief though it was, Janet could not avoid being struck by Lady Chillington's stately dignity of manner. Her tone and style were those of a high-bred gentlewoman. It seemed scarcely possible that she and the querulous, shrivelled-up old woman in the cashmere dressing-robe could be one and the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... large purple rings about her eyes; the mouth was hard and pinched, but the eyelids swollen; while the crossed wrinkles on her brow told the same tale of grief grown petulant, and of pain grown soured, as the thin lip, quivering and querulous, and the nervous hand, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... seen it urged, again, in querulous accents, that the so-called immortality even of the most immortal is not for ever. I see a passage to this effect in a book that is making a stir as I write. I will ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... endless Who shall comfort my distresses? Querulous my soul and friendless In its sorrow shuns caresses. Ye have made me, ye have made me Querulous of you, that care not, Eyes so tristful, yet I dare not Say to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... occupation. If I were a writer, I could still dictate. If I were a business man, I could conduct my business. But I am a soldier, and not a clever soldier. Jealousy, a continual and irritable curiosity—there is no Paul Pry like your blind man—a querulous claim upon your attention—these are my special dangers." And Ethne laughed gently ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... she will; but that's no reason—!" Mr. Touchett let his phrase die away in a helpless but not quite querulous sigh and ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... face of its half-humorous, half-querulous expression. In its place came a grave and courteous eagerness to serve her that was a pleasure, even if it was not altogether sincere. And Mildred could not believe it sincere. Why should he care what became of her, or be willing to put himself ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... correspondent and traveler over the Dawson Trail, such blisters are nothing. To a golf player they are of profound importance. The next day, in our foursome, they affected the war correspondent's game. He became softly querulous. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... half querulous, a whisper old, Feeble and hollow as if shut in a chest: "Take my face on your bosom; I am cold." She bared her holy bosom's truth-white nest, And forth her two hands instant went, love-bold, And ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... creatures with only a veneer of good breeding. I see her almost every day, either here or in her own home, and I know her well. You have seen that she is fitted to shine anywhere, but it is for her home qualities that I love and admire her most. Her father is crippled and querulous; indeed he is often exceedingly irritable. Everything must please him or else he is inclined to storm as he did in his regiment, and occasionally he emphasizes his words without much regard to the third commandment. But his gusts of anger are ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... myself. And now that my whole life is weakness and misery, I writhe and struggle—I turn back always on myself, suspecting myself, blaming myself. I can not lay it to the world, I can not get into the habit—it is such a miserable habit! How many millions there are of them—poor, querulous wretches, blaming their fate, crying out against the world's injustice and neglect—crying out against the need of working, wishing for this and that—discontented, impotent, miserable! Oh my God—and I am ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... sort, whom there was no other way of getting at, when he carried matters quite too high. "Droves of six hundred swine"—I have seen (by reading in those old books) certain noble gentlemen, "of Putlitz," I think, driving them openly, captured by the stronger hand; and have heard the short querulous squeak of the bristly creatures: "What is the use of being a pig at all, if I am to be stolen in this way, and surreptitiously made into ham?" Pigs do continue to be bred in Brandenburg: but it is under such discouragements. Agriculture, trade, well-being and well-doing of any kind, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... do you want?" demanded a rather querulous voice, and at the end of the hall appeared the figure of a slender girl, her abundant yellow hair brought down over her forehead to the eyebrows, and tied in place by a blue ribbon looped up at one side in a flaunting bow. Her frock of cheap blue silk was made in the extreme of ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... induced to accept your proposal temporarily," she said, in a voice of querulous precision, "on account of pressing pecuniary circumstances which would not have happened had my claim against the shipowners for my dear husband's loss been properly raised. I hope you fully understand that I am unfitted both by ill health and early education from doing any ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... wood-pile after braving all other dangers. And yet each night old Vix was there to nurse her baby and bring it fresh-killed hens and game. Again and again I saw her, although she came now without awaiting the querulous cry of the captive. ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... this time come to dislike each other most cordially, insomuch that it taxed their powers to the utmost to treat each other with becoming respect. Sometimes the effort was beyond their power, and they snapped and snarled at one another upon the bench like two querulous old women. They now differed in opinion upon almost every case which came before them, and it is impossible to doubt that their differences were in large measure due to their personal hostility. This was a serious matter, for, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... other. Nothing but an anxious concern which I feel to be furnished with authentic evidences of events, which may be improved to the benefit of our country, has led me to speak of this, which I deem important in the manner I have done, and I presume Congress will not attribute it to a querulous disposition. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... Claridge's, the Millionaire telephoned derisively to the city, so that the Iron King returned home half an hour before his usual time, prepared to deal with the Poet as he dealt with querulous or inquisitive shareholders at General Meetings. The Poet, however, was long and painfully accustomed to combat with enraged editors and lost no time in assuming the offensive, demanding indignantly in a high head-voice, before ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... there was no long peace under the large stars. Desperate stampedes, the scattering of camp-fires, trampling, grunting in the dark; ghostly horsemen looming and vanishing suddenly in the half-light; and in the lull the querulous howling ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... brazen toned roar, which is but seldom heard, out of the question, the lion's ordinary voice seems to be emitted by some being of incalculable immensity. It resembles a series of deep, half-smothered detonations linked together by querulous gruntle. It is difficult to realize that the sound originates from anything less ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... holiday—a general enjoyment of gala dresses and friendly greetings, very different from the silence, immobility, and noli me tangere aspect of an English congregation. Over all drones, rattles, snores, and shrieks the organ; wailing, querulous, asthmatic, incomplete, its everlasting nasal chant—always beginning, never ending, through a range of two or three notes ground into one monotony. The voices of the congregation rise and sink above it. These southern ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... him for the third time in three days. This means that the malady is not yet seriously regarded: once a day is still sufficient. Nevertheless, he is a woeful wreck to look at; and the doctor looks at him with the greatest respect, and listens to his querulous plaint patiently. For that great dome of silence, his brain, repository of so many state-secrets, is still a redoubtable instrument: its wit and its magician's cunning have not yet lapsed into the dull inane of senile decay. Though fallen from power, ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... of about a dozen camels and their leaders, in front of whom stood the figure of the Sheikh, his white robes and turban looking thoroughly in keeping with the strangely formed animals, four of which were keeping up a peculiar, querulous, discontented whining grunt, and turning their heads from side to side in their disgust at being laden with portmanteaus and bags, while their fellows had ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... of bed at half-past five, but even then her simple toilet had been hastened to an untidy half completion by the querulous insistence of her mother's frequent "You know, Helen,—you must know how utterly impossible it is for me to lift my head until I've had my coffee! Are n't you nearly ready?" Mrs. Raymond had wakened earlier than ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... his grandmother, Bertha, and Count Tristan to the residence of the Marchioness de Fleury. Count Tristan's malaise evinced itself by his unusually fretful and preoccupied manner, his querulous tone, and a partial forgetfulness of those polite observances of which he was rarely oblivious. He allowed his mother to stand, looking at him in blind amazement, before he remembered to open the door; was very near passing out of the room before her, and ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... sweet patience of her natural disposition purified by the resignation of her soul, she lay upon her bed through the whole round of changes of the seasons. She lay upon her bed through fifteen months. In all that time, her old cheerfulness never quitted her. In all that time, not an impatient or a querulous ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... kept taking long breaths, and tried to correct herself: but the heart laboured. Yet she seemed to have no thought in her mind; she had no active sensation of pity or startled self-love. She went to smooth Mr. Pole's pillow, as to a place of forgetfulness. The querulous tyrannies of the invalid relieved her; but the heavy lifting of her chest returned the moment she was alone. She mentioned it to the doctor, who prescribed for liver, informing her that the said organ conducted one of the most important ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... out an easy-chair and a cushion, and was followed by two figures—his mother, leaning heavily on the arm of—Betty, her poor head shaking tremulously, and her querulous voice raised in some complaint about the position ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... had possession of all her faculties, was very active for one of her age, and felt unabated interest in the welfare of kindred and friends. She had by no means outlived her usefulness or grown querulous with age, but was ever the same bright, cheerful, happy Christian that she had been ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... mother would not admit. In weary and querulous tones she began expatiating on the merits of her daughter: her fair hair, her graceful neck—until the African, bored and impatient, turned on ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... hour approached for lifting the anchor, the nervousness of the deacon became very apparent to the commander of his schooner. At each instant the former was at the latter's elbow, making some querulous suggestion, or asking a question that betrayed the agitated and unsettled state of his mind. It really seemed as if the old man, at the last moment, had not the heart to part with his property, or to trust it out of his sight. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... packed up?" he asked in a querulous voice. Then his eyes fell on Teddy the elf. He scowled until his little pin-pricks of eyes almost disappeared. "Ugh! there's one of those nasty gamblesome elves," he said. "Now ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... One may cite as characteristic examples the hurried colloquy between Engstrand and Regina in Ghosts; Rebecca and Madam Helseth in Rosmersholm, watching to see whether Rosmer will cross the mill-race; and in The Master Builder, old Brovik's querulous outburst, immediately followed by the entrance of Solness and his mysterious behaviour towards Kaia. The opening of Hedda Gabler, with its long conversation between Miss Tesman and the servant Bertha, comes as near as Ibsen ever ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... a faint muttering in one of the lodges and a reply to it; but both voices were those of querulous age. A moment later the tottering figure of an old man emerged from the lodge, and crouching beside a dying fire threw on a few sticks with shaking hands and drew his blanket more closely about his ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... not be understood to make these things subject for reproach or complaint; I dare not do so; respect for my sister's memory forbids me. By her any such querulous manifestation would have been regarded as ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... guest; and you must treat her with proper respect. She isn't an old lady; I don't believe she's fifty. And she IS ill, and that makes her querulous." "Well, do you want to wait on her, and read to her, and put up with her fussiness ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... of the enemy, but she guessed that he was making a rush from the second to the third terrace and from the outskirts of the town. The engineer's repeated warning unheard above the din, he touched Feller on the leg. Feller looked around with a frown of querulous abstraction just as the breaking of a storm of shell fire obscured Marta's vision with dust and smoke. She felt her head jerk as if it would go free of her neck with each explosion, until she reinforced her nerves with the memory of an old soldier's warning about the folly ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... was the querulous greeting from the old gentleman, when he was admitted to the drawing-room. "You kept me in anguish the entire night, with your silly words. The telephone bell rang at intervals of half an hour until dawn: I may have missed some important business deal by not replying What ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... wandered up the hill road,—the discontented, "traipsing," exasperating things? She started in that direction, when she heard a crash in the Croft kitchen, and then the sound of a boy's voice coming from an inner room,—a weak and querulous voice, as if the ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that was merely the substratum on which was accumulated a host of recollections: it is Auld Lang Syne that walks into your study, when your shaggy friend of ten summers comes stiffly in, and after many querulous turnings lays himself down on the rug before the fire. Do you not feel the like when you look at many little matters, and then look into the Future Years? That harness,—how will you replace it? It will be a pang to throw it by; and it will be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... illustrious writers of Great Britain. I begin, therefore, with Gildas; because, though he did not compile a regular history of the island, he has left us, amidst a cumbrous mass of pompous rhapsody and querulous declamation some curious descriptions of the character and manners of the inhabitants; not only the Britons and Saxons, but the Picts and Scots (6). There are also some parts of his work, almost literally transcribed by Bede, which confirm the brief ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... good-nature, she had the effect of patronising them, as she stood talking about the play with them in her drawl, which she had got back to again. They were admiring her, in her dress of the querulous old nurse, and told her how they never would have known her. But there was an insincerity in the effusion of some of the more nervous women, and in the reticence of the others, who were holding ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... found out from her letters, that they had gone to the continent. Months passed. My poor father fretted sadly at the silence of Ellen, and the supposed rejection of his kind overtures. His unhappy state of mind had evidently an effect upon his body; he grew weaker and more querulous every day. At last a letter arrived from Ellen, which I now blush to say, gave me inexpressible joy. It announced the death of her husband— a trifling wound on the thumb having terminated ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... and its first colony, Jamestown, bear attestation to this loyalty of which mention is made, though the State's name was given by that lover of Queen Elizabeth and lover of America, Sir Walter Raleigh. Berkeley recalls that querulous old loyalistic governor of Virginia, that fast believer in the divine right of kings and of himself; Westmoreland, Middlesex, New Kent, Sussex, Southampton, Surrey, Isle of Wight, King and Queen, Anne, Hanover, Caroline, King William, Princess, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... ignored the querulous words. "You must see your father at once," he said gravely. "At once," he repeated, noting how Walter's ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... little after six the next morning. The air was biting, and smelt of frost. In an open place a score of women wrangled together over the day's market; and the noise of their negotiation sounded thin and querulous like that of sparrows on a winter's morning. The rare passengers blew into their hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to set the blood agog. The streets were full of icy shadow, although the chimneys ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hast pardoned me That I was querulous? But lovers crossed Wrangle with those that love them, as it were, ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... so innocently had two meanings. He might have meant that the cawing of the crows indicated that they were objecting to a rattlesnake sunning on some rock. Also he might have meant to say that their short, querulous cawing betrayed the presence ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... adversaries? Why then do we or they employ, through the press and in rhetorical bombast, opprobrious epithets, fit only for the pot-house or the shambles? Shall we men and citizens, each of us a pillar upholding the crowning dome of our nationality, be taught, like vexed and querulous children, the impotence of personal abuse? Why seek to lay upon the head of this Cabinet officer or that, this Senator or that, the responsibility of temporary military defeats, when we are no more able to command and prevent reverses than are they? Or if in our superior wisdom ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... possess you at Limmeridge, Mr. Hartright," he said in a querulous, croaking voice, which combined, in anything but an agreeable manner, a discordantly high tone with a drowsily languid utterance. "Pray sit down. And don't trouble yourself to move the chair, please. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... is no more, but his portrait hangs over the mantel-piece in the little parlour. Mrs Beazely, the housekeeper, has become inert and querulous from rheumatism and the burden of added years. A little girl, daughter of Robertson, the fisherman, has been called in to perform her duties, while she basks in the summer's sun or hangs over the winter's fire. Edward Forster's ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... weeks in the shining cities of the Mediterranean and in Paris, they re-entered the British Empire by the august portals of the Chatham and Dover Railway. They stood impatiently waiting, part of a well-dressed, querulous crowd, while a few officials performed their daily task of improvising a Custom-house for registered luggage on a narrow platform of Victoria Station. John, Mr. Norris's man, who had met them, attended behind. Suddenly, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... and indistinct: "Tell you—got to have more money 'n that, Mr. Heston. 'Tisn't a question of just gettin' by. A man's got to get ahead." And then there was an unintelligible muttering. And then suddenly the voice rose, clear, querulous, and high-pitched: "Well you can go to hell with it. Needn't think you're doin' us a favour—payin' us a living—just because you've got it all. No, sir! I can go back home. Can live there without havin' to thank you!" ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... no need for you to go to supper with the man!" Jove-like wrath had ebbed away to something deplorably like a querulous grumble. "You should have gone straight home. You must have known how anxious I would ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... overtaken and passed by Arthur H——, one of the two brothers reported to be starting the sawmill; and I afterward remembered that, though we saluted each other, and exchanged impotent criticisms on the weather, I had by this time obtained such ascendency over the meddlesome and querulous part of my nature that I had never once thought of asking him if he had ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... had finished the last morsel of his story and had warmed some of it over for another taste, there came an ominous silence, broken at last by the querulous voice ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... darkness of the woods. No such gatherings-together of the women did I ever see. If one of our neighbors dragged her weary steps to our kitchen, and sat herself down, baby, in lap, on the upturned tub or flag-bottomed chair that I dusted off with my apron, it was to commence the querulous complaint of the last week's chill or the heavy washing of the day before, the ailing baby or the troublesome child, all told in the same whining voice. Even the choice bit of gossip which roused us at rare intervals always had its dark side, on which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Querulous, complaining sounds come from the lodge room. The tenor horns are crooning, and the bass horn blatting gently, while the clarionet players are chasing each other up and down the scale, like squirrels running round and round in a cage. The warming-up exercises are on. They will continue until ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... four o'clock," said Kenrick in a querulous tone, as he halted and pulled out his watch, holding it close to his face to make out the time. "An hour more and all daylight will be gone, and with it all chance of being saved. Surely, we'd better press on. That's uncertain danger, but to stop ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... arm of a library chair which contained pillows and blankets. From the room there came a voice that brought to Lowell a sharp and disagreeable memory of the cutting voice he had heard in false welcome to Helen Ervin a few days before. Only now there was querulous insistence in the voice—the insistence of the sick person who calls upon some one who has proved unfailing in the performance of the ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... of this period had married a woman from Heanor, a daughter of the "Black Horse". She was a slim, pretty, dark woman, quaint in her speech, whimsical, so that the sharp things she said did not hurt. She was oddly a thing to herself, rather querulous in her manner, but intrinsically separate and indifferent, so that her long lamentable complaints, when she raised her voice against her husband in particular and against everybody else after him, only made those who heard ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... sake, has been brought to great perfection in our days; and the ancient Odyssey, which held forth a shining example of the endurance of real misfortune, will give place to a modern one, setting out a more instructive picture of querulous impatience under ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... His querulous question was more of a challenge than a request, and Dick hastened to assure him that he could unroll his blankets in a bunk in the rambling old structure that loomed dim, silent, and ghostly, on the hill beyond where they were seated. His pity and ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... and composed, showing in her face none of the elation she feels. For she is amazed and triumphant that this famous gentleman, whose name is the golden key to the most exclusive portals of society, should choose her faded, querulous Gertrude. How much of it is due to Violet she will never know, nor the professor either; but it is Violet who has raised Gertrude up to a new estate out of her old slough of despond, who in her own abundant sweetness and generosity has so clothed the other that she has seemed charming ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and lay nations waste, out of the wantonness of ambition, or often from still more ignoble passions? In a mood of this kind to-day I recollected the air of "Logan Water;" and it occurred to me that its querulous melody probably had its origin from the plaintive indignation of some swelling, suffering heart, fired at the tyrannic strides of some public destroyer, and overwhelmed with private distress, the consequence of a country's ruin. If I have done anything at all like justice to my feelings, the following ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the losing game before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton—once the strongest of the party—seemed to sicken and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. "I'm going," she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, "but don't say anything about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head, and open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for the last week, untouched. "Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. "You've starved yourself," ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... sorrow, fear, and constraint, who, having nature for her guide, has fortune and pleasure for her companions, that they have gone, according to their own weak imagination, and created this ridiculous, this sorrowful, querulous, despiteful, threatening, terrible image of it to themselves and others, and placed it upon a rock apart, amongst thorns and brambles, and made of it a hobgoblin ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... troubled in spirit. He had spent the whole morning at the Vatican, and the manner of his reception there had been so curiously divided between flattery and reproach that he had not known what to make of it. The Pope had been tetchy and querulous,—precisely in such a humour as one naturally expects so aged a man to be when contradicted on any matter, whether trivial or important. For with such advanced years the faculties are often as brittle as the bones, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... children, if she has them, must be as the perfectly discreet and peaceful, unravished Kore; on the other hand, we have Persephone, as the wholly terrible goddess of death, who brings to Ulysses the querulous shadows of the dead, and has the head of the gorgon Medusa in her keeping. And it is only when these two contrasted images have been [95] brought into intimate relationship, only when Kore and Persephone have been identified, that the deeper ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... old indulgences are now not cricket; Whate'er one does some Minister will cuss; In Tube and Tram young ladies punch one's ticket, With whom one can't be cross or querulous; All things are different, but still we stick it, And humbly hope we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... the devil doesn't he come, Fred?" asked Waller, in a querulous tone. Although the great sheep-painter had lost his sobriquet since the old days, he had never parted with ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to which it has given occasion. But the strength of truth and reason seems to be altogether in its favour. The dogmas of Malthus maybe right or wrong, the statistical propositions of Mr. Sadler, and the philosophical deductions he derives from them may be right or wrong: with these querulous rhetoricians, I have nothing to do. But one thing is certain, that while the fertile earth, in any of its endless divisions, affords the means of sustenance, no human being ought to be suffered to want, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... stalked in, and his high querulous voice was marshaling the party breakfastward. Ford manoeuvered skilfully in the pairing off, and so succeeded in securing Miss Adair for a companion on the short walk across to ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... of Hannah More, a star in the constellation "Virgo." And he loved to transcribe the laudatory notes in which dignitaries acknowledged presentation copies of his three-penny tracts. And he gave forth oracles which would have been more impressive had they been less querulous. But with all these foibles, Sir James was a man of undoubted piety, and it may well excuse a little communicativeness when we remember that of the generation he had served so well, few survived to speak his praise. At all events, there was one benefactor ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... slight man, and short of stature for a soldierly figure when out of the saddle. His gray hair was thinning in front, and his sharp querulous face was seamed in frowning pattern about the eyes. His forehead was fashioned on an intention of massiveness out of keeping with his tapering face, which ran out in a disappointing chin, and under the shadow of that projecting brow his cold blue eyes seemed as ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... of enthusiasm for contemporary art, and find oneself forced immediately into an attitude of querulous hostility is surely a melancholy thing. It is my fate; but it is not my fault. Had I found our native quidnuncs in a slightly less exalted humour, had they gushed a little less over their imperial painters at Burlington House, had they made the least effort ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... are quite altered now," continued she, in a querulous tone. "I always prophesied, that you would cease ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... are querulous creatures! Little less Than all things can suffice to make us happy: And little more than nothing is enough To ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... one till next spring. As Mrs. Herriton had often observed, Lilia had no resources. She did not like music, or reading, or work. Her one qualification for life was rather blowsy high spirits, which turned querulous or boisterous according to circumstances. She was not obedient, but she was cowardly, and in the most gentle way, which Mrs. Herriton might have envied, Gino made her do what he wanted. At first it had been rather fun to let him get the upper hand. But it was galling to discover that he could ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... the water, piping their querulous note as they tugged at something edible, a dozen of them entering into the domestic difficulty: one after another would desert the cause, run a little way over the sea to get a good start, leap heavily into the air, sail about for a few minutes, and then drop back on the sea, feet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... have shared none of Isabella's scruples in regard to bringing the enemy to battle. On the contrary, he indulges in a most querulous strain of sarcasm against the Catholic king for his remissness in this particular. "Quar elucescente die moniti nostri de Gallorum discessu ad eos, at sero, concurrerunt. Rex Perpiniani agebat, ad millia passuum sex non brevia, uti nosti. Propterea sero id actum, venit concitato ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... enterprises, no splendid failures, no passionate affections. Before him lay nothing but his books, his dinner, and a literary reputation. Capable biographers can make pretty pictures of the white-haired scholar surrounded by his favourite authors. They can turn his petulant limitations and querulous prejudices into exquisite foibles, his despotisms into quaint impetuosity, his insensibility to human want and misery into mellow wisdom. But we cannot forget that the last years of those who have never passionately pursued impossible ideals or loved ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... be, to a great extent, what we ourselves make it. The cheerful man makes a cheerful world, the gloomy man a gloomy one. We usually find but our own temperament reflected in the dispositions of those about us. If we are ourselves querulous, we will find them so; if we are unforgiving and uncharitable to them, they will be the same to us. A person returning from an evening party not long ago, complained to a policeman on his beat that an ill-looking fellow was following him: it turned out to be only his ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... London and New York. Mr. Van Druten's new play deals with the women of one family, women so unlike that they set one another off startlingly. There is the tart, querulous old Mrs. Venables, and there are her three daughters—Nellie who is married and whose life has slipped away from her in the provinces; Liz who is divorced and whose life has been brilliant and unconventional ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... it is frequently far from being easy to comprehend his meaning. It is happy for the public that it is never difficult to fathom his design. The apparent intention of this author is to draw the most aggravated, hideous and deformed picture of the state of this country, which his querulous eloquence, aided by the arbitrary dominion he assumes over fact, is capable of exhibiting. Had he attributed our misfortunes to their true cause, the injudicious tampering of bold, improvident, and visionary ministers at one period, or to their supine negligence and traitorous dissensions at ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... this college glories in its associations with Erasmus, who was probably advised to go there by Bishop Fisher. There are certain of his letters extant which he dates from Queens', and it is interesting to find that he wrote in a querulous fashion of the bad wine and beer he had to drink when his friend Ammonius failed to send him his usual cask of the best Greek wine. He also complained of being beset by thieves, and being shut up because of plague, but it need not be thought ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... said my father, addressing himself as much to Ernulphus's curse, which was laid upon the corner of the chimney-piece—as to my uncle Toby who sat under it—it is in vain longer, said my father, in the most querulous monotony imaginable, to struggle as I have done against this most uncomfortable of human persuasions—I see it plainly, that either for my own sins, brother Toby, or the sins and follies of the Shandy family, Heaven has thought fit to draw forth the heaviest of its artillery against me; ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... when I am in this vein; for these are by far the most exacting, eager, self-weighing, restless, querulous, unreasonable literary persons one is like to meet with. Is a young man in the habit of writing verses? Then the presumption is that he is an inferior person. For, look you, there are at least nine chances in ten that he writes POOR verses. Now the habit of chewing on rhymes without sense and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... said a querulous voice, which he recognised as that of Anania, "I never thought to be laid by the heels like this!—not a soul coming in to see a body, and those children that ungovernable—Gilbert, get off that ladder! and Selis, put the pitchfork down this minute! Not a bit of news any where, and if there were, ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... allegiance to the growing family of her young master and mistress, and predominated proudly in gorgeous raiment with her butterfly turban over a rising race of young Marvyns. All the care not needed by them was bestowed upon the somewhat querulous old age of Cato, whose never-failing cough furnished occupation for all her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... birds enliven the forest; they are insectivorous, granivorous, and omnivorous but all are beautiful in their rich and wonderful variety of colour. Amongst these the pheasant for its oriental plumage and the cockatoo for its querulous voice are remarkable ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... from Canal street, by a strange coincidence he caught sight of the man of whom he had been thinking. Mills, with the same querulous, irritable expression he knew well, was making his way up Broadway, led by a boy younger ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... quick high-spirited race, and it is very necessary that we should consider their feelings, and that we should show our sympathy with what they have done, instead of making querulous and unreasonable demands of them. In some ways they are in a difficult position. The war is made by their splendid king—a man of whom every one speaks with extraordinary reverence and love—and by the people. The ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... work. They both came forward to greet the new arrival; and the girl, relieving him of his monstrous burthen, proceeded to display her offerings to her father. Van Tromp's countenance fell several degrees; he became quite querulous. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Don't deny it!" Querulous imperiousness was in the voice. "You hate me—you'll go back to Boston and tell my mother about this. I know—you've got the upper hand now. You'll tell her why I came out here—you'll tell her about the baby, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... have followed all your literary doings step by step since we left Europe, and we never cease wondering at your fertility and rejoicing at your success. But I am grieved to think that all this is at the cost of your comfort. Or is it that you wrote in a querulous mood, when you said those sharp things about your grey goose quill. Surely composition must be pleasant to you. No one who writes so fast and so well can find it actually irksome. I am aware that people sometimes think they find it so. But we may deceive ourselves on the dark as well as on ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... long as Nellie showed no preference for any one of her admirers at Warrener, and unless peevish or perturbed in spirit would have made little allusion to it. As matters stood, however, she was in a most querulous and excitable mood: she could not rail at the real cause of her misery, and so, woman-like, she was thankful for a pretext for uncorking the vials of her wrath on somebody or something else. If the young matrons in garrison who, with the two or three visiting maidens, were disposed to rebel at ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... thus sweetly reproving and as sweetly forgiving the temper of her Horace—for he is her Horace still—and who can wonder at that? She will bear with all—will live, will die with him. I look, Eusebius, upon this ode as a real consolation to your lovers of an ambiguous and querulous age. Seeing what we are daily becoming, it is a comfort to think that, should such untoward persons make themselves disagreeable to all else of human kind, there will be, nevertheless, to each, one confiding loving creature, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Nor'West. A light breeze murmured over the crisping snow, and moaned amongst the pines in the timber-lined spurs of the foothills. High overhead in the sunny, dazzling blue vault of heaven a huge solitary hawk slowly circled with wide-spread, motionless wings, uttering intermittently its querulous, eerie whistle. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... affectation. Some of the Proverbs are good, but not many of them are in common use. Job contains some fine passages, and so do some of the Psalms; but the Psalms generally are poor and, for the most part, querulous, spiteful and introspective into the bargain. Mudie would not take thirteen copies of the lot if they were to appear now for the first time—unless indeed their royal authorship were to arouse an adventitious interest in them, or unless the author were a ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler |
