"Choleric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Shortly afterwards he returned for another burden, and this he repeated several times. I suppose he was building a nest,—at least, I know not what else could have been his object. Never was there such an active, cheerful, choleric, continually-in-motion fellow as this little red squirrel, talking to himself, chattering at me, and as sociable in his own person as if he had half a dozen companions, instead of being alone in the lonesome wood. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... up to that level?... I am very hot, very choleric. Thou hast seen me. Thou shalt not live. I will slay thee. I shall do such things as make ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... take any step that might tend to the disgrace of yourself or your family; and I say again I had rather die than live to see you reckoned any otherwise than compos."—"Die and be d—ned! you shambling half-timber'd son of a——," cried the choleric Crowe; "dost talk to me of keeping a reckoning and compass?—I could keep a reckoning, and box my compass long enough before thy keelstone was laid—Sam Crowe is not come here to ask thy counsel how to steer his course." ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... fret till your proud heart break; Go show your slaves how choleric you are, And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge? Must I observe you? must I stand and crouch Under your testy humour? By the gods, You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Though it do split you; for, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... took their way with suitable dignity and deliberation. In the three who turned, about half-way up the broad-aisle, into a square pew, a physiognomist would have seen at one glance the characteristic features of each mind. In the Colonel, choleric, fresh, and warm-hearted, a good lover, and not very good hater. In his wife, "a chronicler of small-beer," with a perfectly negative expression. One might guess she did no harm, and fear she did no good,—that she saved the hire of an upper servant,—that she was an inveterate sewer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Neither I nor you can say whom—some feaster and rioter, it seems, who had little right (he thought) to carry sword or bow, and who, to show it, hath slunk away. And then another raised his anger: he was indignant that, under his roof, a woman should be exposed to stoning. Which of you would not be as choleric in a like affront? In the house of which among you should I not ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... time they heard the marriage writings read to them, they should account them as indentures, whereby they were made servants; and so, remembering their condition, ought not to set themselves up against their lords." And when they, knowing what a choleric husband she endured, marvelled that it had never been heard, nor by any token perceived, that Patricius had beaten his wife, or that there had been any domestic difference between them, even for one day, and confidentially asking the reason, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Emily and I have had good health, and therefore we have been able to work well. There is one individual of whom I have not yet spoken—M. Heger, the husband of Madame. He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable in temperament. He is very angry with me just at present, because I have written a translation which he chose to stigmatize as 'peu correct.' He did not tell me so, but wrote the word on the margin of my book, and asked, in brief stern phrase, how it happened that ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... reads quab, a gudgeon; not that a gudgeon can be rubbed to much sense, but that a man grossly deceived is often called a gudgeon. Mr. Upton reads quail, which he proves, by much learning, to be a very choleric bird. Dr. Warburton retains gnat, which is found in the early quarto. Theobald would introduce knot, a small bird of that name. I have followed the text of the folio, and ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... this menace, they began to arrest with all possible speed, and were more solicitous to procure their number than to make discriminations. Their diligence, however, was inadequate to appease the choleric legislator, and the Mayor, municipal officers, and all the administrators of the district, were in the morning sent to the Castle, whence they are to be conveyed, with some of their ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... my brave fellow, say no more," interrupted Wilder's considerate but choleric Commander. "I nave met with such rebuffs myself; but we are above them, sir, far above them and their impertinences together. No man need be ashamed of having earned his commission, as you and I have done, in fair weather and in foul. Zounds, boy, I have fed ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... sport," remarked Mr. Richard Grubb to his fellow—passenger, a stout gentleman between fifty and sixty years of age, with a choleric physiognomy and ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... the party that started up Skull Creek under Pinkey's guidance, and the amazing aggregation that greeted the choleric eye of Mr. Canby on one of the solitary rides which were his greatest diversion. He had just returned from the East and had not yet learned of the use to which Wallie had put his check. But now he recalled Wallie's parting speech ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... never to be seen in his house; and his confirmed dislike to them was the occasion of his seldom visiting, except with those who were like himself, in a state of happy singleness. In other points, he was a liberal, worthy man, and a perfect gentleman, but extremely choleric ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... so choleric!" pleaded the knight, leaning anxiously across the table. "What terms do ye offer, Master Droop? Come, man, give a show ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... other. A door closes above, and SIR WILLIAM CHESHIRE, in evening dress, comes downstairs. He is perhaps fifty-eight, of strong build, rather bull-necked, with grey eyes, and a well-coloured face, whose choleric autocracy is veiled by a thin urbanity. He speaks ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... comfort with which he noted the King's prudence"; but he can scarcely have viewed Henry's growing interference without some secret misgivings. For he was developing not only Wolsey's skill and lack of scruple in politics, but also a choleric and impatient temper akin to the Cardinal's own. In 1514 Carroz had complained of Henry's offensive behaviour, and had urged that it would become impossible to control him, if the "young colt" were not bridled. In the following year Henry treated a French envoy with scant civility, and ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... Indies, and then we find him dictating a treaty of peace and a tribute to the Emperor of China from the ruins of his summer-palace and the walls of Pekin. Although generally well disposed, especially towards his kith and kin this side the water, he is choleric, and if his best customers treat him ill, he does not hesitate to knock them down. Although dependent on Russia for his hemp and naval stores, and on China for his raw silk and teas, he suffers no such considerations to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... misrepresentation is, that travellers are not aware of the jealousy existing between the inhabitants of the different states and cities. The eastern states pronounce the southerners to be choleric, reckless, regardless of law, and indifferent as to religion; while the southerners designate the eastern states as a nursery of overreaching pedlars, selling clocks and wooden nutmegs. This running into extremes is ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... many curious and valuable things, had gathered together some remarkably fine stag-horns. One pair of these especially pleased Pirkheimer. The widow, without knowing Pirkheimer's desire for these, sold them for a small sum and thus brought upon herself the anger of her husband's choleric friend, who wrote a most unkind letter concerning her which has been quoted from that day to this to show how Albrecht Durer suffered in his home. The truth seems really to be that Agnes Durer was as sweet-tempered as the average woman, fond of her ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... Writings (National ed.), XVII., 371.] At length the frontier, in the person of its leader, had found a place in the government. This six-foot backwoodsman, angular, lantern-jawed, and thin, with blue eyes that blazed on occasion; this choleric, impetuous, Scotch-Irish leader of men; this expert duelist and ready fighter; this embodiment of the contentious, vehement, personal west, was in politics to stay.[Footnote: For other appreciations, see Babcock, Am. Nationality, chap, xvii.; ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London, and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat in front behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who had taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent passion, and said that it was a breach of contract to mix him up with such villainous company, and that it was poisonous, and pernicious, and infamous, and shameful, and I don't know what else. At this time the coach ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... have taken him for a guardian layman of the tombs of the martyrs, capable of confessing his faith like them, even to the death. And when Julien determined to approach and to touch him lightly on the shoulder, he saw that, in the nobleman's clear, blue eyes, ordinarily so gay, and sometimes so choleric, sparkled unshed tears. His voice, too, naturally sharp, was softened by the emotion of the thought which his reading, the place, the time, the occupation of his day ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... been prepared for a queer volume, will not be disappointed in the diary of our choleric and corpulent colonel. If ever the assurance, which seems to be regarded as indispensable in the preface to works of this class, that the author "wrote the following pages purely for his own amusement," bore the stamp of unequivocal truth, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... the communication which, I am sure from kind feelings, you made to me the other day, had such an effect upon a temper naturally choleric, that I fear I have been guilty of some violence toward you. I am, unfortunately, subject to paroxysms of this sort, and while under their influence feel utterly unconscious of what I do or say. In your case, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... English prisoners in Germany "are allowed to lead the lives of Olympian Gods." Our choleric contemporary is evidently unaware that we are allowing German prisoners to reside in Olympia, which is the next ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... creature of a most perfect and divine temper: one, in whom the humours and elements are peaceably met, without emulation of precedency; he is neither too fantastically melancholy, too slowly phlegmatic, too lightly sanguine, or too rashly choleric; but in all so composed and ordered; as it is clear Nature went about some full work, she did more than make a man when she made him. His discourse is like his behaviour, uncommon, but not unpleasing; he is prodigal of neither. He strives rather ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... with strong feelings. And those people who follow, with interest and admiration, the flights of genius; or, with cooler approbation suck in the instruction, which has been elaborately prepared for them by the profound thinker, ought not to be disgusted, if they find the former choleric, and the latter morose; because liveliness of fancy, and a tenacious comprehension of mind, are scarcely compatible with that pliant urbanity which leads a man, at least to bend to the opinions and prejudices of others, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... time my Father's mother had lived in the house and taken the domestic charges of it on her own shoulders. She now consented to leave us to ourselves. There is no question that her exodus was a relief to my Mother, since my paternal grandmother was a strong and masterful woman, buxom, choleric and practical, for whom the interests of the mind did not exist. Her daughter- in-law, gentle as she was, and ethereal in manner and appearance— strangely contrasted (no doubt), in her tinctures of gold hair and white skin, with my grandmother's bold carnations and black ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Worsting the choleric physician in argument was a mere matter of keeping one's own temper, and Shelby took no pride in his victory. It was a relief to know that he knew so little, but the possibility remained that, in the weakness of convalescence, Bernard might let fall details more damaging than Dr. Crandall's ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... of a choleric temper, friend Benteen. Great Heavens, what names have you English!" he exclaimed. "And you need greatly to practise better control over yourself, as such weakness is apt to lead one into just such scrapes as this of ours. Sacre! it hath been my ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... call of God, and ought consequently to take place of all other views whatsoever, even for his service any other way. At last, offended at his unexpected resistance, she expressed her displeasure in very choleric words, and ordered him to be more closely confined and guarded, and that no one should see him but his two sisters. The reiterated solicitations of the young ladies were a long and violent assault. They omitted nothing that flesh ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... suicides and few crimes. They hurry past, smiting at their victim as they go. None the less they are misery. Mr. Britling in these moods did not perhaps experience the grey and hopeless desolations of the melancholic nor the red damnation of the choleric, but he saw a world that bristled with misfortune and error, with poisonous thorns and traps and swampy places and incurable blunderings. An almost insupportable remorse for being Mr. Britling would pursue him—justifying ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... and came forward, and I explained the impossibility of seeing the train sooner, as I had no head-light, and they had carelessly neglected to leave a light on the rear of the other train. I advised the choleric colonel to go forward and expend his wrath and curses on the conductor of the forward train, that had stopped in such a place, and sent out no signal-man in the rear, nor even left a red light. He acknowledged I was right. ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... choleric old gentleman, who, having had his own way all his life, was by no means inclined to forego that privilege now that he was advanced in years. As he sat beneath the chestnut-tree, one warm spring day, he felt very thirsty, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Yet the character of Theodore was not devoid of energy; he had been educated in the school of his father, in the exercise of war and hunting; Constantinople was yet spared; but in the three years of a short reign, he thrice led his armies into the heart of Bulgaria. His virtues were sullied by a choleric and suspicious temper: the first of these may be ascribed to the ignorance of control; and the second might naturally arise from a dark and imperfect view of the corruption of mankind. On a march in Bulgaria, he consulted on a question of policy his principal ministers; and the Greek logothete, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Mrs. Malaprop, with her bad grammar and ludicrous diction; Lydia Languish, in love with Beverley; Sir Anthony Absolute, choleric, but kind-hearted. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... temper that you have slighted his suit?" interrupted the matron, peevishly. "Child, child, don't you know that every man that is worth his salt has a warm constitution? Why, the tales and warnings that were brought to me of the general's choleric nature when he was wooing me were enough to fright any woman. And true they were, for once roused, his wrath is terrible. Yet to me he has ever been the kindest and most ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... hearing of the mandate, made his appearance on deck; and on a repetition of the order from the officer, exhibited unequivocal symptoms of a choleric temper. After letting off a little of his exuberant wrath, he declared with emphasis that he had a RIGHT to wear a pennant, and WOULD wear it in spite of all the officers in ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... anything. Above all the reserves of maturer life, he could remember the confidence with which as a child he had been used to rush home, bursting with the gossip of the playground, or some childish annoyance, or some fresh delight. He could not remember that he was ever scolded during his little choleric outbursts or untempered enthusiasms, and yet, somehow, after a talk with his father he had so often found himself feeling much calmer or really happier. Anger in some way or other came to seem a foolish thing; ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... "The choleric disposition of the English is almost proverbial. Were I to assign a cause, it would be, their living so much on animal food. There is no doubt but this induces a ferocity of temper unknown to men whose food is taken ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... 822; fretful, fidgety; on the fret. hasty, overhasty, quick, warm, hot, testy, touchy, techy^, tetchy; like touchwood, like tinder; huffy, pettish, petulant; waspish, snappish, peppery, fiery, passionate, choleric, shrewish, sudden and quick in quarrel [As You Like It]. querulous, captious, moodish^; quarrelsome, contentious, disputatious; pugnacious &c (bellicose) 720; cantankerous, exceptious^; restiff &c (perverse) 901.1 [Obs.]; churlish &c (discourteous) 895. cross, cross ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... did not bite me, their company would be more pleasant to me than that of men, who are choleric and intolerable. But I abide by what I have said, that, if my husband were in a like danger, I should not ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... black hair was mingled with grey, but not entirely whitened by it. His eyes were jet-black, deep-set, small, and sparkling, and contributed, with a short turned-up nose, to express an irritable and choleric habit. His complexion was burnt to a brick-colour by the vicissitudes of climate, to which it had been subjected; and his face, which at the distance of a yard or two seemed hale and smooth, appeared, when closely ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... uncle, is by no means a bad sort of man; he is, however, choleric and original. To bear with him means to obey; and scarcely had his heavy feet resounded within our joint domicile than he shouted for me to ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... of splendor hidden somewhere behind the western mountain-tops; broad bars of fiery light were climbing the sky, and the chalets and the Alpine meadows shone in a soft crimson illumination. The Zemmbach, which is of a choleric temperament, was seething and brawling in its rocky bed, and now and then sent up a fierce gust of spray, which blew like an icy shower-bath, into ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... principal owner of the road, who was directing the construction work, learned that several of his engineers had acquired a controlling interest in a portion of the site of the projected town. The choleric Scotchman immediately removed his headquarters to Las Canitas, where Sanchez is now located, and though a vast amount of digging and filling was necessary the shops were erected here and the road to Santa Capuza was abandoned. The railroad has since purchased, for a song, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... developing an ungovernable irritability and a tendency to choleric obsessions, when the word 'Uitlander' is barely mentioned in his presence, that are causing the greatest concern to those around him. Only on some such grounds are explicable the raging exclamations he is reported to have permitted himself to lately use towards Johannesburg ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... Mr. Blades, a red-haired, choleric man. 'How under the sun did she find out these were not fresh? They look all right, and they smell ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... of 1690, the sun shining faint and red through a light fog, there was a great noise of baying dogs, loud voices, and trampling of horses in the courtyard at Wildairs Hall; Sir Jeoffry being about to go forth a-hunting, and being a man with a choleric temper and big, loud voice, and given to oaths and noise even when in good-humour, his riding forth with his friends at any time was attended with boisterous commotion. This morning it was more so than usual, for he had guests with him who had come to his house ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as well as he could the demands of his choleric son; never before had he been trampled on rough-shod by one of his own children. He almost seemed to see the moral fibre of Roger's nature coarsening—perhaps disintegrating—under his very eyes, and he asked himself half reproachfully how ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... I observe was that of four children of a person called John Goodwin, a mason. The eldest, a girl, had quarrelled with the laundress of the family about some linen which was amissing. The mother of the laundress, an ignorant, testy, and choleric old Irishwoman, scolded the accuser; and shortly after, the elder Goodwin, her sister and two brothers, were seized with such strange diseases that all their neighbours concluded they were bewitched. They conducted themselves as ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... occupies the great part of my article, is a parenthises. It is time that I returned to my choleric correspondent who rebuked me for being too frivolous about the problem of Spiritualism. My correspondent, who is evidently an intelligent man, is very angry with me indeed. He uses the strongest language. He says I remind him of a brother of his: which seems to open an abyss or vista of ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... face crimsoning with anger, for he was a choleric little old gentleman, was the Corporal, and as quick to become enraged as to do a good action; "hold! No man shall call me villain with impunity; I shot two rascally Dons at Madrid for the same word, and by God, sir, if you repeat it, I'll cane you within an inch ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... me to return, O Pehliva, for I bethink me how Kai Kaous is a man hard and choleric, and the fear of Sohrab weigheth upon his heart, and his soul burneth with impatience, and he hath lost sleep, and hath hunger and thirst on this account. And he will be wroth against us if we delay yet ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... he left it to assume a professorship at Linz. Here he remained some years, and the latter part of his life was spent as astrologer to Wallenstein. Kepler is described as small and meagre of person, and he speaks of himself as "troublesome and choleric in politics and domestic matters." He was twice married, and left a wife ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... various temperaments, as follows: in its first quadrant it is warm and damp, at which time it is good to let the blood of sanguine persons; in its second it is warm and dry, at which time it is good to bleed the choleric; in its third quadrant it is cold and moist, and phlegmatic people may be bled; and in its fourth it is cold and dry, at which time it is well to bleed the melancholic." Whatever the moon's phase may be, let blood be shed! We are reminded ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... The Choleric again are excessively vehement, and are angry at everything, and on every occasion; whence comes their Greek name signifying ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... No, no, hang't; I was not afraid neither—though I confess he did in a manner snap me up—yet I can't say that it was altogether out of fear, but partly to prevent mischief—for he was a devilish choleric fellow. And if my choler had been up too, agad, there would have been mischief done, that's flat. And yet I believe if you had been by, I would as soon have let him a' had a hundred of my teeth. Adsheart, if he should come just now when I'm angry, I'd ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Roosevelt saw, in the light of a smoky lantern, was not one to inspire confidence in a tenderfoot on a dark night. The features were those of a man who might have been drinking, with inconsiderable interruptions, for a very long time. He was short and stout and choleric, with a wiry moustache under a red nose; and seemed to be distinctly under the impression that Roosevelt had done something for which ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... head. She was thinking of her choleric spouse, and she had hard work forcing the ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south of us. He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... great, and noble nature; but it lacked one element of heroism—strength of will. It was an exquisite touch in the mighty poet to make Hamlet gross in figure, as he was phlegmatic, inactive, and irresolute in temperament. Had he been a thin, brown, choleric, and nervous man, the tragedy would have ended in the first Act. Had he been a fiery Italian, instead of a doubting, deliberating Dane; had he been of a passionate, or yellow complexion, instead of a calm blonde; had he possessed a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... breeding of teeth comes from choleric humours, inflamed by watching, pain and heat. And the longer teeth are breeding, the more dangerous it is; so that many in the breeding of them, die of ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... that he allowed the abbe to find his own way out. When he thought himself alone he flew into the fury of a choleric man; the strangest blasphemies escaped his lips, in which Ursula's name was ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... very strong impression abroad that the King is cracked, and I dare say there is some truth in it. He gets so very choleric, and is so indecent in his wrath. Besides his squabble with old Lord de Saumarez, he broke out the other day at the Exhibition (Somerset House). They were showing him the pictures, and Sir Martin Shee (I believe, but am not sure), pointing out ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... DE, a French general, born in Auvergne, distinguished in the Seven Years' War, in the West Indies and during the Revolution; "last refuge of royalty in all straits"; favoured the flight of Louis XVI.; a "quick, choleric, sharp-discerning, stubbornly-endeavouring man, with suppressed-explosive resolution, with valour, nay, headlong audacity; muzzled and fettered by diplomatic pack-threads,... an intrepid, adamantine man"; did his utmost for royalty, failed, and quitted ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... supper, there was a clatter of dishes—an angry clatter, for Norman Douglas had just had a quarrel with Mrs. Wilson, and both were in a very bad temper over it. Consequently, when Faith stepped on the veranda and Norman Douglas lowered his newspaper she found herself looking into the choleric eyes of an ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Choleric men have eyes of every colour, but rather brown or greenish than blue. A propensity to green is an almost decisive token ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... circumference, and has a complexion like a cranberry by candlelight, you will find that there is a degree of absolute certainty about what he thinks he knows that will put any young man to shame. I am specially convinced of this from the case of my friend Colonel Hogshead, a portly, choleric gentleman who made a fortune in the cattle-trade out in Wyoming, and who, in his later days, has acquired a chronic idea that the plays of Shakespeare are the one subject upon which he is most ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... "Bid him stir not hence, And ask what crime did thrust him hither: once A man I knew him choleric and bloody." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... nights—they would engender a sense of strain and insecurity among our opponents that could not be without an appreciable influence on their temper and moral throughout the campaign. The tents of commanding officers of notoriously choleric nature should be the objects of persistent attention ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... Let no man be so bold as to block my path. (to audience) For damme, just tell me why a god like me hasn't as much right to hector people that hinder him as your paltry slave in the comedies? He brings word the ship is safe, or the choleric old man approaching: (magnificently) as for me, I hearken to the word of Jove and at his bidding do I now hie me hither. Wherefore 'tis still more seemly to get out, to get off the street ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... be a very choleric old person. "Sir," said he, "you seem disposed to carry things off with a high hand; but I suspect that you know more than you choose to reveal. Be so good as to tell me the name of the lady who ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... no practical value. If, however, we make use of the significant general meaning of temperament, the apparatus of circumstance which is connected with this distinction becomes superfluous. If you call every active person choleric, every truculent one sanguine, every thoughtful one phlegmatic, and every sad one melancholy, you simply add a technical expression to a few of the thousands of adjectives that describe these things. These four ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... from an unexpected quarter. It may have been a certain malignity with which the sacrist urged his suit, it may have been a diplomatic dislike to driving matters to extremes, or it may have been some genuine impulse of kindliness, for Abbot John was choleric but easily appeased. Whatever the cause, the result was that a white plump hand, raised in the air with a gesture of authority, showed that the case ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is subjected to choleric outbursts should never send for anything but food an hour before dinner, for the reason that a very trivial thing looks, at that time, big enough to wreck the nation. Bissell, however, failed to recollect this simple truth, ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... scoundrel, a term which he applied to all pro-Germans, pacifists and half the Cabinet, he did not concern himself about Gedge. Young Randall Holmes's intimacy with the scoundrel seemed to him a matter of far greater importance. He strode up and down his library, choleric and gesticulating. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... individuals with more or less the same characteristic somatic and psychic traits and trends. Tuberculosis, for instance, was noted for its frequency in long-skeletoned, thin persons, remarkably optimistic. And the plethoric, choleric nature of the sufferer from gout has become proverbial. Before the era of the great bacteriologic discoveries of the eighties and nineties, the concordance of esoteric racial and personal markings was a great help in diagnosis to ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... inhabitants, however, of these remote regions (with the exception of a few obstinate individuals, who had at first looked upon it as the sure herald of dooms-day, and still were vaguely wondering what the world was coming to,) it was regarded in a very different light. This choleric little monster was to them a friendly and welcome visitor, which established their connection with the outside world, and gave them a proud consciousness of living in the very heart of civilization. Therefore, on steamboat ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... somewhat to man's nature, The place he lives in, still about the fire, And fume of metals, that intoxicate The brain of man, and make him prone to passion. Where have you greater atheists than your cooks? Or more profane, or choleric, than your glass-men? More antichristian than your bell-founders? What makes the devil so devilish, I would ask you, Sathan, our common enemy, but his being Perpetually about the fire, and boiling Brimstone ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... mind which no conviction of its utter absurdity could overcome. In vain did he remember that Lady Ogram had settled his destiny so far as the matter lay in her hands, and that to displease the choleric old autocrat would be to overthrow in a moment the edifice of hope reared by her aid. The image of May Tomalin was constantly before his mind. Not that he felt himself sentimentally drawn to her; but ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... his hair slightly disarranged, his blue eyes no longer choleric but gently smiling. She realized that he was still goodlooking, still a gentleman, a man of culture and even talent, young enough to move the world, and almost as young in appearance as herself; for mental anxiety and care of any kind always showed ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Guises, not knowing whence the blow came. After a while, he is appeased by the queen, assisted by the sieur de Retz. They make his Majesty angry with the Huguenots—a vice peculiar to his Majesty, who is of choleric humor. They induce him to believe that they have discovered an enterprise of the Huguenots directed against him. He is reminded of the designs of Meaux and of Amboise. Suddenly gained over, as his mother had promised herself that he would be, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... uncontrollable energy. Great qualities have not been superfluously assigned to the King; the poet could command our sympathy for his situation, without concealing what he had done to bring himself into it. Lear is choleric, overbearing, and almost childish from age, when he drives out his youngest daughter because she will not join in the hypocritical exaggerations of her sisters. But he has a warm and affectionate heart, which is susceptible of the most fervent gratitude; and even ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... added that we seldom meet with that unnatural combination, but we feel a strong desire to knock them off; merely from an inherent love we have of seeing things in their right places. It is not improbable that many men, in no wise choleric by nature, felt this impulse rising up within them, when they first made the acquaintance of Mr Jonas; but if they had known him more intimately in his own house, and had sat with him at his own board, it would assuredly have been ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... away a perfect man; but the dwelling-place of the wicked shall come to naught." This is savage cruelty, pouring nitric-acid into sword-gashes. Nothing moves your plain man; for he delights in making people wince. He is not angry, but natural, and his naturalness is something worse than the choleric man's anger. He is saying: "Ah, Job, see now—comfort, comfort? Why the house of the wicked shall come to naught." And has not Job's house been splintered by the tempest? And this friend of many years is saying, "Hypocrite!" ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... developed a depraved appetite for human flesh. He was married at twenty-seven, and for twenty-eight years exercised his calling as a cow-herd. Nothing extraordinary was noticed in him, except his rudeness of manner and his choleric and gross disposition. In 1771, at the age of fifty-five, he met a young traveler in the woods, and accused him of frightening his cows; a discussion arose, and subsequently a quarrel, in which Goldschmidt killed his antagonist by a blow with a stick which he used. To avoid detection he dragged ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... she had bloomed towards womanhood. He had set all his hopes upon her, tarrying till she should have seen some little life before he asked her for his wife. He had her father's Godspeed to his wooing, for he was a man whom all men knew honest and generous as the sun, and only choleric with the mean thing. She, also, had given him good cause to think that he should one day take her to his home, a loved and honoured wife. His impulse, when her name passed the Prince's lips, was to draw his sword, for he would have called an ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had never possessed any;) one of these fainted—no heart of oak was he, when our ancient Briton, the commandant, Colonel Jones, again presented himself, vif et emporte. The spectators exclaimed—"que cela venoit de la trop rapide circulation de son sang." N'importe: the choleric Colonel, blustering, restored us to comparative tranquillity, as he brandished on high his sword, giving it an after-sweeping movement, as if to moissonner nos tetes; my valiant compatriot extended on the pavement was the only head in security. The Colonel commanded the misled dragoons ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly and as often choke with rage." At last the frontier in the person of its typical man had found a place in the Government. This six-foot backwoodsman, with blue eyes that could blaze on occasion, this choleric, impetuous, self-willed Scotch-Irish leader of men, this expert duelist, and ready fighter, this embodiment of the tenacious, vehement, personal West, was in politics to stay. The frontier democracy of that time had the instincts ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... I leave these long Greek words without noticing another objectionable abuse of them, whereby, upon the principle that "what in the captain's but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy," a distinction is made between vice in the rich and vice in the poor, and that which in the latter is obstinate depravity, to be handled only by the police, becomes in the former a pitiable weakness or an irresistible impulse to be gently nursed ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... ablest governors of Canada was undoubtedly Louis de la Buade, Count de Frontenac, who administered public affairs from 1672-1687 and from 1689-1698. He was certainly impatient, choleric and selfish whenever his pecuniary interests were concerned; but, despite his faults of character, he was a brave soldier, dignified and courteous on important occasions, a close student of the character of the Indians, always ready when the necessity arose to adapt ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... age. He was well made, and of that easy, swinging gait, that is rather the teaching of Dame Nature, than of the dancing mistress or posture master. His face was full and ruddy, betokening health, spirits, and that choleric disposition to which his countrymen are said to incline, whether justly or unjustly is not for me to determine. His hair had a reddish tinge, and his whiskers were decidedly roseate, bearing still further testimony ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... my wife?" timidly asked Trubus, as he supported himself with one hand on a table near the door. The frightened butler, with choleric red face, ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... the difficulties arising from the nature of things and their necessary consequences; that he was just as slow and circumspect in the execution as he was lively and expeditious in the discussion of measures; that he knew how to moderate his choleric temperament by an intentional reserve,[389] and that even his absence from the capital and his residence in the country were made to second this systematic hesitation; that, if a disputed point awaited decision, instead of attending a meeting ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... small boys and village loungers lined the roadway watching the corps of men who were working like beavers within the lot, urged on by a bawling, cursing voice which seemed to proceed from a stout, choleric man who bounded about, alternately waving his arms and cupping his hands ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... (rancor) which never rests until it is avenged [*Eph. 4:31: "Let all bitterness and anger and indignation . . . be put away from you."]. Hence the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 5) calls some angry persons akrocholoi (choleric), because they are easily angered; some he calls pikroi (bitter), because they retain their anger for a long time; and some he calls chalepoi (ill-tempered), because they never rest until they have retaliated [*Cf. II-II, Q. 158, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... accompaniment of an attempt to do your duty, was just of the right strength to ensure that all his actions should be disastrous. It was, as you see, not strong enough to restrain him from exciting the dull and choleric mind of Sir John Burford; it did not avail to direct the ensuing storm. And then, having first failed to be sufficient check, it ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... reception, the choleric Bello burst forth in a storm of passion; issuing orders for, one thousand conch shells to be blown, and his warriors to assemble by land and ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... without, as when affected by the sensible object: and from within, for we see that the senses are changed when the spirits and humors are disturbed; as for example, a sick man's tongue, charged with choleric humor, tastes everything as bitter, and the like with the other senses. Now an angel, by his natural power, can work a change in the senses both ways. For an angel can offer the senses a sensible object from without, formed by nature or by the angel himself, as when he assumes a body, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... coming out upon the veranda at short intervals to see if the mail were coming. Nothing annoyed the postmaster so much as to have the mail arrive late, and nothing pleased the mail-carrier so much as to annoy the postmaster. Mr. Basketful was a choleric Englishman, and one of Coonie's chief diversions was to put him into a rage by a dilatory approach to the village. So, seeing his enemy on the lookout, he let old Bella crawl down the hill with maddening slowness, looking round, meanwhile, for somebody ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... what, my lord! are you so choleric With Eleanor for telling but her dream? Next time I'll keep my dreams unto myself, ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... 1751, by Peregrine Pickle, a book in similar taste, but the characters in which are even more striking. The forms of Commodore Trunnion, Lieutenant Hatchway, Pipes the boatswain, and Ap Morgan the choleric Welsh surgeon, are as familiar to us now ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... ambition to create novels, though to his everlasting credit wrote two for a particular purpose which he accomplished by injecting the right tone or "color" into tales depicting the inner life on daily newspapers. We of the old Press Club used to grow choleric as we would read stories about alleged newspaper men, but a serene satisfaction fell upon us when Allison's reflections appeared. They were "right!" And while "resting" (definition from the private dictionary of Cornelius McAuliff) ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... quickly that the cook, mechanically wiping his blade on the tablecloth, hardly realized the foulness of the crime of which he had been guilty, but felt inclined to congratulate himself upon his desperate bravery. Then as he realized that, in addition to the offence for which the choleric Mr. Dunn was even now seeking the aid of the law, there was a dead bulldog and a spoiled carpet to answer for, he resolved upon an immediate departure. He made his way to the back door, and sheathing his knife, crept stealthily down the garden, and clambered over ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers wont to call men of their hands, of which sort he had many brave gentlemen that followed him; yet not taken for a popular or dangerous person." Though extremely choleric, he was honest, and not at all malicious. It was said of him that "his Latin and his dissimulation were both alike," equally bad, and that "his custom in swearing and obscenity in speech made him seem a worse ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... said Sir Lucius, whose choleric indications had completely vanished. "I—I should like to have an interview with you, if you will consent to humor an old man. Your face interests me—I admire your work. I propose to remain in town for a brief time, though I am ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon |
