"Peevish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... annoyances on almost everyone to whom he spoke. He was so fully aware of this failing that he at once, in confessing it to a mutual friend, shed tears of regret. Yet he was a millionaire man of business, and had a strong will which might have been directed to a cure. All peevish, fretful and talkative, or even complaining people, should be induced to ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... in those arts of statesmanship of which he believed himself to be a perfect master. His first choice had not proved a happy one. Robert Carr, who had lately become earl of Somerset, had had his head turned by his elevation. He had grown peevish toward his master, and had placed himself at the head of the party which was working for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... called up a man with a long melancholy face, which he noticed before to have been proof against his joke, and after making two or three additional and fruitless experiments upon his gravity, he commenced a cross fire of peevish interrogatories, which would have excluded him from the "tribunal" on that occasion, were it not that the man was remarkably well prepared, and answered the priest's ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... up to the temple of the Lord in Shiloh to worship. Being of a devout spiritual nature, he thought that worshiping at the same altar must produce greater harmony between his wives. But Penninah {sic} became more peevish and provoking, and Hannah more silent and sorrowful, weeping most of the time. Elkanah's love and patience with Hannah was beautiful to behold. He paid her every possible attention ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... not heed his words; she danced with her skirt gathered in one hand, answering him in peevish monosyllables. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... cares of a family, liable to the control of a man who expected the utmost propriety and order, who looked with a strict eye over every department, and whose opinion did not always coincide with her own, she became constantly peevish, and her former gloom grew ten fold more gloomy. She pined after that connubial affection which their reciprocal conduct was calculated to destroy; and from the hasty decisions of passion convinced herself, that no part of the blame was justly her own. Mr. Elford was no less obstinate in the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... mutineers!" said Schreckenwald; "a fair night-watch they keep, and a beautiful morning's rouse would I treat them with, were not the point to protect yonder peevish wench.—Halt thou here, stranger, while I ride back and bring them on—there is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... will allow pictures larger than the life, that this strength of the strokes may make a deeper impression upon the mind of the spectators; that is, if a poet may make a covetous man more covetous, and a peevish man more impertinent, and more troublesome than he really is. To which I answer, that this was the practice of Plautus, whose aim was to please the people, but that Terence, who wrote for gentlemen, confined himself within the compass of nature, and represented vice ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... be an American. The characteristic life of the Hospital is brought out, and the individual character of this old man, vegetating here after an active career, melancholy and miserable; sometimes torpid with the slow approach of utmost age; sometimes feeble, peevish, wavering; sometimes shining out with a wisdom resulting from originally bright faculties, ripened by experience. The character must not be allowed to get vague, but, with gleams of romance, must yet be kept homely and natural by little ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Walter Stewart scornfully. 'Who dares to bear witness, if I did maintain my father's lawful authority over peevish runaway wards ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ambassador had no power to protect out of his own house and household, with many other ridiculous excuses; but all his allegations being proved against him, both by ancient and modern custom, by hundred of examples, and nothing left him to defend himself but his own peevish wilfulness, my husband pursued the business with much vigour, telling the gentleman that brought him the President's letter, that his master, the President, as to him had once been very civil, but as to the King, his master, most ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... went to the well, and desired the maidens to give him some water to drink: but while the others refused, on pretense that they wanted it all at home, and could spare none for him, one only of the company rebuked them for their peevish behavior towards the stranger; and said, What is there that you will ever communicate to anybody, who have not so much as given the man some water? She then offered him water in an obliging manner. And now he began ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... him mad, sir?' said his master, speaking in a peevish tone. 'Don't use that word too freely. Why do you ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... country; how comes it that they make me a prisoner upon my parole?" "How comes it?" said the Chevalier de Grammont, "it is because you yourself are far more unaccountable than all their customs; you cannot help disputing with a peevish fellow, whom you ought only to laugh at; some officious footman has no doubt been talking of your last night's dispute; you were seen to go out of town in the morning, and the Marquis soon after; was not this sufficient to make her Royal Highness think herself obliged ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... do not reach forth your hand for the food, but ask some one to help you. 5. Do not become peevish and pout, because you do not get a part of everything. Be satisfied with what is given you. 6. Avoid a pouting face, angry looks, and angry words. Do not slam the doors. Go quietly up and down stairs; and never make a loud noise about the house. 7. Be kind and ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... could not thrive. Sand knew it and hated me. I was the sturdy oak, Frederic the tender ivy. I poured out my heart's blood for him, poured it into his music. He was a mere girl, I tell you—a sensitive, slender, shrinking, peevish girl, a born prudish spinster, and would shiver if any one looked at him. Liszt always frightened him and he hated Mendelssohn. He called Beethoven a sour old Dutchman, and swore that he did not write piano music. For the man who first brought his name before ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... debonairte, or gentleness, and patience or sufferance: (4.) Sloth, or "Accidie," which comes after the sin of Anger, because Envy blinds the eyes of a man, and Anger troubleth a man, and Sloth maketh him heavy, thoughtful, and peevish. It is opposed to every estate of man — as unfallen, and held to work in praising and adoring God; as sinful, and held to labour in praying for deliverance from sin; and as in the state of grace, and held to works of penitence. It resembles ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... that, as she left the florist shop, a man on the other side of the street had stopped and looked at her. He was a haggard young individual with a pale, peevish expression on his face, a man with a chin the unimpressiveness of which was hidden behind a ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... would be a mite peevish as soon as the news of the social happenings along the river for the past few days got to him," said Vittum. "It's no surprise ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... In what a peevish, injured tone the creature did complain of our unfair tactics! He protested and protested, and whimpered and scolded like some infirm old man tormented by boys. His game after we led him forth was to keep himself as much as possible ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... off!" he declared resolutely. Of what avail would be going home to a wife's peevish complaints, and sit by himself to study out this tangle? As well stay here, and master it. And that palace yonder was home, and these were the comforts for which he had spent his years and his energies! This was what he had ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... her in that heavenly, comforting clasp known and practised by stout old nurses and some mothers, within which you feel that you can defy anything, even to the onslaughts of peevish Fortune. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... this ill-humour, taking root in a nature wherein the animal is already ascendant, has led by downward paths to the Goat-Foot, in whom the submerged human system peeps out but fitfully, at exalted moments. He, the peevish and irascible, shy of trodden ways and pretty domesticities, is linked to us by little but his love of melody; but for which saving grace, the hair would soon creep up from thigh to horn of him. At times he will still do us a friendly turn: will lend a helping hand to poor little ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... wife and a curacy, failing which they resigned themselves to the post of usher in some ultra- Protestant school. Sport in all its forms, art and literature, being alike forbidden, the boy's hungry energy had found no reasonable outlet. He had been miserable, peevish, ailing, until at barely eighteen—after a discreditable episode with a scullery-maid—he had been shipped off to New York to learn business in the house of certain brokers and bill-discounters with whom Messrs. Barking Brothers had extensive financial relations. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... what was expected of them, applauded and then looked at one another in aggrieved surprise. They felt rather peevish, for they had come to regard Pancha Lopez as a permanent institution devised for their amusement. They no more expected her to fail them than the clock in the Ferry Tower to be wrong. Charlie Crowder heard it at the Despatch office next morning—Mrs. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... is put to shame by this open persecution, begins to study, while the peevish and small tyrant, her pa, is nagging her with such soothing remarks as, "I thought you'd have more respect for your pride;" "Why don't you try to come up to the expectations of your teacher?" By and by the student thinks she has "got it," and the public exposition begins ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Opposition indulged in petty nagging and in ingeniously unpatriotic tactics; but they only served to throw up in bold relief the consistent and courageous conduct of the Prime Minister. It was an easy task to refute the peevish efforts of Fox to justify the French Jacobins alike before the war, throughout its course, and in their rejection of the British overtures for peace. But in every encounter Pitt won more than a personal triumph. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... spun in May, And if I had a kite There's not a breath of air to-day To help it in its flight.' With peevish frown he left the room And roamed the garden through, And murmured in a tone of gloom: 'I don't know what ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... all-cheering sun Was rising on our garden. When I dozed, 220 My infant's moanings mingled with my slumbers And waked me.—If you were a mother, lady, I should scarce dare to tell you, that its noises And peevish cries so fretted on my brain That I have struck the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... married Jack Drayton. The afternoon we rehearsed for the wedding I looked at her, before we pranced down the aisle and endured the endless silly giggles of the bridesmaids, and the usher louts who would fall out of step, and grew more peevish by the minute. I looked her over then, and I said to myself: "You feeble paranoiac, imagine that girl tying up with you." Well, I couldn't very well imagine it, although I tried. But I was extremely noisy, and I ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... that the Assembly could convey its opposition to the Stamp Tax without giving the "least offense" to crown and parliament. Fauquier also observed that economic uncertainties had made Virginians "uneasy, peevish, and ready to murmur at every Occurrence." Henry suggests that he drew up the Resolves when he found no one else was willing to do so after hearing of the actual passage of the Tax Act. Whatever the reason, Henry and his associates were ready to abandon the niceties ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... hand, decision, full of will and self-control. The moment this is lost, stinging punishment follows. Hence it is the surest of all cures for excessive irascibility, and has been found to have a most beneficial effect upon a peevish or ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... gill of wine, and twelve ounces of bread per day. The wine was of an ordinary quality, and the bread made of sour or musty flour, and sometimes poorly baked. There was a small sheet iron stove between decks, but the fuel was green, and not plenty, and there were some peevish and surly fellows generally about it. I never got an opportunity to sit by it, but I could generally get the favor of some one near it to lay a slice of bread upon it, to warm or toast it a little, to put into my ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... to confer upon him more than a nominal authority in England. His children, should they be born, might be sovereigns; he was but husband of the Queen; of a woman who could not atone by her abject but peevish fondness for himself, and by her congenial blood-thirstiness towards her subjects, for her eleven years seniority, her deficiency in attractions, and her incapacity to make him the father of a line of English monarchs. It almost excites compassion even for Mary Tudor, when her passionate ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... no legacy, Save that his story teaches:— Content to peevish poverty; Humility to riches. Ye scornful great, ye envious small, Come follow in his track; We all were happier, if we all Would ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was she that she behaved with unusual forbearance toward Martha whose conduct of late had been most trying. Not Martha's sometimes peevish, sometimes plaintive criticisms of her; these she did not mind. But Martha's way of ordering her own life. Jane, moving about in the world with a good mind eager to improve, had got a horror of a woman's going to pieces—and that was what ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... for some weeks past, I have been forced in my own defence, to follow a proceeding that I have so much condemned in others. But several of my acquaintance among the declining party, are grown so insufferably peevish and splenetic, profess such violent apprehensions for the public, and represent the state of things in such formidable ideas, that I find myself disposed to share in their afflictions, though I know them to be groundless and imaginary, or, which is worse, purely ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... at her own disposal. To these hours we owe great Part of her "Diary." At five she had to attend her colleague, Madame Schwellenberg, a hateful old toadeater, as illiterate as a chambermaid, as proud as a Whole German Chapter, rude, peevish, unable to bear solitude, unable to conduct herself with common decency in society. With this delightful associate, Frances Burney had to dine and pass the evening. The pair generally remained together ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... not enforce, your peevish thirst of honour (A brave, cold, weak, imaginarie fame) Hath brought on Candy: Candy groans, not ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... sound of the barking, Cyril had recognized the dog. And his terror had vanished. In its place surged a peevish irritation against the beast that had so frightened him. He groped for a rock-fragment to hurl up at ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... not sure that I make myself quite clear," said the rector. "I mean, a chance to prove how useful and helpful she can be. Do you think you can make life hard for her occasionally? Can you be peevish and exacting, and unreasonable? Can you do something to make her value superfluity and luxury ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... awfully peevish and was mad enough to crush a grape when he found out that he couldn't have the 'spot' when he does his duet number with the ingenue, and when he found out that he would have to dress with the character comedian, who is a low, coarse brute, always drinking ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... donkey, and climbed up herself. Then she was cross with the funny little old bag, and mad with the funny little old donkey, and she beat him with a funny little old stick, and scolded and scolded with a funny little old cracked, quivering, peevish, hateful voice. ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... is all to no purpose: For though the Grandmother, Nurse, and Ant do what they can, yet all their labour's lost. And the Child is so froward and peevish, that the Nurse is ready to run away from it; nay, though she dandle and play with it alwaies till past midnight, it is but washing the Black-a-more; in so much that a Wet-Nurse must be sought for, or away goes the ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... and loyalty were matchless. He was never once known to upbraid Josephine after the condonement of her infidelities. He paid her colossal debts, not without protest, but rather than make her unhappy he excused her extravagance and overlooked the capricious, peevish way in which she gave her domestic confidences concerning himself to her friends, who were oft-times his enemies, and so forgiving was he of faults which were so glaring to others, that he frequently caressed when he ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... "raw morning," for what reason I know not, for such days are really elaborated with the most exquisite finish. A soft gray mist hugged the country in a chilly embrace, while a fine rain fell as noiselessly as snow, upon soaked ground, drenched trees, and peevish houses. There is always a sense of wonder about a mist. The outlines of what we consider our hardest tangibilities are melted away by it into the airiest dream-sketches, our most positive and glaring facts are blankly blotted out, and a fresh, clean sheet left for some new fantasy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... knew him more favorably than the bearing of Alexander, whose soft voice and graceful attitudes began to savor of affectation when he had attained to mature manhood. As they stood together on the quay at Buyukdere, one could guess that, in the course of years, Alexander would be an irritable, peevish old dandy, while Paul would turn out ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... thousand francs with the lady, who, after two years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair complexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright color in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Dishonesty of it, and perhaps the Reader of these Sheets may be in the same Case; but my old Lunarian Friend being continually exclaiming against the Matter, and blaming his Country-men the Solunarians for the Dishonesty of it, but especially the Mogenites, he began to be something peevish with me that I should be so dull as not to reach it, and askt me if he should screw me into the Thinking-Press for ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... has followed very closely the journal of Pricket and has not tried to determine the truth or falseness of that man's statements. It does not seem probable that a man of Hudson's character should so suddenly become peevish and irritable, nor that his judgment should so suddenly become weak. The journal was probably written to defend Pricket's share in the disgraceful transaction, and so events ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... like country maids; for no sooner do they get their little feet settled in a dark, still corner than they are summoned out of it, to sunlight bright and strong. Miss Nancy lives with a bedridden father, who has grown peevish through long patience; can it be that slow, senile decay which has roused in her a fierce impatience against the sluggishness of life, and that she hurries her plants into motion because she herself must halt? Her ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... to please myself. I hear you are melancholy, because you have a bad head and deaf ears. These are two misfortunes I have laboured under these many years, and yet never was peevish with either myself or the world. Have I more philosophy and resolution than you? Or am I so stupid that I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... difference." James Albetes and the bachelor Corral were in the caravel which went before, and gave notice to the colonists at Darien of the threats which Nicuessa had made, of taking away their gold and punishing them; saying that his misfortunes had rendered him peevish and cruel, abusing all who were under his authority. From the little islands which he had stopped to explore, Nicuessa sent one Juan de Cayzedo to acquaint the colony at Darien of his approach; and this man being privately his enemy, still farther exasperated the people against him, so ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... treatment of the dog, and also of my servant, whom I had been obliged to protect against him when she had had a love-affair with a tailor. In spite of receiving payment and promises he remained peevish, and insisted that he would have to move into my part of the house on account of his health in the coming spring. So while I forced him, by paying advance, to leave my household goods untouched until Easter at least, I went about trying to find a suitable house for the following year, visiting various ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... and beauty: I did not then know, that there are places in which the only compliment is a bribe. Having yet credit with a jeweller, I afterwards procured a ring of thirty guineas, which I humbly presented, and was soon admitted to a treaty with Mr. Squeeze. He appeared peevish and backward, and my old friend whispered me, that he would never make a dry bargain: I therefore invited him to a tavern. Nine times we met on the affair; nine times I paid four pounds for the supper and claret; and nine guineas I gave the agent for good offices. I then obtained the money, paying ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... warned us to return. On our way down we disturbed a peevish jackdaw from her nest; she had dragged up to that intolerable height a pile of boughs that would have made a dozen nests; she had interwoven for the cup to hold her eggs a number of strips of purloined canvas. There lay the three speckled eggs, the hope of the race, while ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of Peace, of the Highlanders, though not absolutely malevolent, are believed to be a peevish, repining race of beings, who, possessing themselves but a scanty portion of happiness, are supposed to envy mankind their more complete and substantial enjoyments. They are supposed to enjoy, in their ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... are bad and peevish folks swear, Remember to ruffle thy brows, friend, ne'er; And let not the fancies of women so fair E'er serve thy pleasure ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... acquaintance; yet they did not love him, for they loved none outside the mating season, and the animosities aroused by other bulls during that season lasted well over until the next. They were a morose and peevish band at best, though here and there were those among them in whom germinated the primal seeds of humanity—reversions to type, these, doubtless; reversions to the ancient progenitor who took the first step out of ape-hood toward humanness, when he walked more often upon his hind feet and ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... become that Burroughs, possessing small faith in the impeccability of his fellow men, grew peevish at the delay in securing the requisite majority, while those who held Montana's best interests at heart breasted the tidal wave of corruption with ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... and repeated it often during the evening; he mimicked as if he were calling a person on the second floor and giving her equivocal advices drawn from his imagination of a commercial traveler. At times he assumed a dismal air and sighed:—"Poor girl!"—or he muttered in his teeth, with a peevish air:—"Rascal of a Prussian!"—Several times, when the others did not think of it, he called out repeatedly in a vibrating voice: "Enough! Enough!" and he added as if soliloquizing:—"Provided that we see her again and that the wretch ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... Tantrums,—I have for years been tortured with a husband of unusually peevish, irritable temper, who made my life so intolerable that I sometimes answered him in a way that led to his using personal violence towards me. After taking a course of twelve sittings from you, I found my husband's ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... a cousin-german of mine, was perpetual curate. He was the only one of my relations who ever rose in fortune above penury, or in character above neglect.' Piozzi Letters, i. 105. His uncle Harrison he described as 'a very mean and vulgar man, drunk every night, but drunk with little drink, very peevish, very proud, very ostentatious, but luckily not rich.' Annals, p. 28. In Notes and Queries, 6th S. x. 465, is given the following extract of the marriage of Johnson's parents from the Register ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... there isn't a woman at this nester's shack," said he appealingly to the bearers of the blanket stretcher. "If there is, I ain't going. Paul, stand squarely in front of me, where I can see your eyes. After what I've been handed lately, it makes me peevish. I want to feel the walnut juice in your hand clasp. Now, tell it all ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... dark night, and this night they made an end of all; and so having paid them 40s. for their six days' work, I am glad they have ended and are gone, for I am weary and my wife too of this dirt. My wife growing peevish at night, being weary, and I a little vexed to see that she do not retain things in her memory that belong to the house as she ought and I myself do, I went out in a little seeming discontent to the office, and after being there a while, home to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... mighty peevish in the morning about my lying unquietly a-nights, and she will have it that it is a late practice, from my evil thoughts in my dreams,....and mightily she is troubled about it; but all blew over, and I up, and to church, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... impressions upon the cottagers made by the mother and daughter. Both were beloved with almost equal enthusiasm; but with the first the poor felt more at home. They could talk to her more at ease: she understood them so much more quickly; they had no need to beat about the bush to tell the little peevish complaints that they were half-ashamed to utter to Evelyn. What seemed so light to the young, cheerful beauty, the mother listened to with so grave and sweet a patience. When all went right, they rejoiced to see Evelyn; but in their little difficulties and sorrows nobody ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... expedition, and got a useful bit of work in hand. It was, he supposed, inevitable that Cecily should journey with him in the spirit to Blinkhampton; he flattered himself that she got very little chance while he was there. She was the enemy, he declared, with a half-peevish half-humorous smile. It was not altogether without amusement to invent all manner of devices and all sorts of occupations to evade and elude her. He ventured to declare—following the precedents—that she had treated him shamefully. That broke down. Candor insisted once ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... thickly too. They had a sad walk home, and that night, full of love and good counsel, Dick exerted every art to please his father, to convince him of his respect and affection, to heal up this breach of kindness, and reunite two hearts. But alas! the Squire was sick and peevish; he had been all day glooming over Dick's estrangement—for so he put it to himself, and now with growls, cold words, and the cold shoulder, he beat off all advances, and entrenched himself in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him, he took up every one in turn, and expressed his disappointment at every indifferent one. In the progress of the game he did not follow suit, and his partner said, "What! have you not a spade, Mr. Cibber?" The latter, looking at his cards, answered, "Oh, yes, a thousand;" which drew a very peevish comment from the General. On which Cibber, who was shockingly addicted to swearing, replied, "Don't be angry, for —— I can play ten times worse if ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... had longed for freedom, on and on, with craving for the open sky, for solitude, for green silence, beyond these maddening walls. This heedful silken coming and going, these Sunday voices, this reiterant yelp of a single peevish bell—would they never cease? And above all, betwixt dread and an almost physical greed, he hungered for night. He sat down with elbows on knees and head on his hands, thinking of night, its ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... in his chair with a peevish air. "Well, if you must, you must. What is this great affair, Count? Let us have it over, and then you can ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... refuses our pity. Man cannot help her. The starved, ignoble country in Childe Roland, one of the finest pieces of description in Browning, wicked, waste and leprous land, makes Nature herself sick with peevish wrath. "I cannot help my case," she cries. "Nothing but the Judgment's fire ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... new-made Divine, "Your old modes we reject, Nor give ourselves trouble about them: It is manners and dress that procure us respect, And it 's wrong to look for it without them." Says the grave peevish Saint, in a fit of the spleen, "Ah! me, but your manners are vile: A parson that 's blythe is a shame to be seen, And it 's wrong in you even ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... like a sunset cloud, somebody said—happened to have ruffles to the waist, and ribbons fluttering about more or less. He said I fluttered, and I told him I certainly did. 'I always flutter, Mr. Monk,' I said. 'When I don't flutter, I shall be dead.' Which was true. He was quite peevish, but I was firm; you know you have to be firm about such things. Only, the next Sunday he happened to come by when one of those great dreadful boys asked me if Solomon's seal was tame, and I said I didn't think it was. Well, I didn't! But he wrote me a note next day, saying ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... not prevent Sally from disliking Gaga as she had not hitherto disliked him; for Gaga was the person whom she had most injured, and the person who now stood in the way of complete liberty. It was as yet only an hysterical exasperation due to her search for some scapegoat; but his sickness and his peevish complaints of her restlessness had added to Sally's feeling an ingredient of distaste which ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... varry, Which when we oft haue fetcht from farre, With us they neuer tarry: Some worldly crosse doth still attend, What long we haue in spinning, And e'r we fully get the end We lose of our beginning. 330 Our pollicies so peevish are, That with themselues they wrangle, And many times become the snare That soonest vs intangle; For that the Loue we beare our Friends Though nere so strongly grounded, Hath in it certaine oblique ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... you draw your pay from me." With his arm he described a circle. "And here's the stock you help take care of. The only one you need to be careful about is that leopard over yonder. She gets a little peevish once in a while. Well, I would sort of keep an eye on the ostrich here alongside you too. The old bird's liable to cut loose when you ain't looking and kick the taste out of your mouth. You give them both their distances. But those bears ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... plane tree and the bay tree with its garland of berries, and the quivering cypress and the trim pine with its tremulous top, spread a sweet summer shade abroad. Amid them a foaming river sported with wandering waters and lashed the pebbles with its peevish spray. Meet was the place for love, with the woodland nightingale and the town-haunting swallow for witness, that, flitting all about the grass and the soft violets, told ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... him they were austere, But age is peevish still, Dear to their hearts he was—so dear, That none his place might fill. They called him Sindhu, and his name Was ever on their tongue, And he, nor cared for wealth nor fame, Who dwelt his ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Brunswick, who had known him previously, received the famous Dutch exile with open arms, and granted him a pension; but it never sufficed. Many efforts were made to have his decree of exile annulled; but they failed through his own peevish insolence and his boundless ingratitude. King Louis (Bonaparte) of Holland extended his protection to the dissatisfied old poet; and all these royal gentlemen were most generous. When the house of Orange ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... morose, grumbling, peevish, but for a long time she said nothing; she did not hinder the thin, gray-haired mother, nor the youth, beautiful as a dream, from rejoicing and imagining; till at last she spoke when alone with the petted stripling. It was the end of an autumn day, twilight had begun to come down on the ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... distressed the committee, who saw a large profit to their venture in the prestige of his fame. The following characteristic letter was written in self-defense when, on one such occasion, a committee had become sufficiently peevish to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for a youth in a peevish state of convalescence. What lover could send his heart's eloquence by word of mouth ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... not, to see their letters. You, my dear, would not call them my friends, you said, long ago; but my relations: indeed I cannot call them my relations, I think!——But I am ill; and therefore perhaps more peevish than I should be. It is difficult to go out of ourselves to give a judgment against ourselves; and yet, oftentimes, to pass a ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... speculation; and for the remaining sixteen years of his life he depended solely on the precarious products of the gaming table. He died at Bath, in 1761, in greatly reduced circumstances, being represented as 'poor, old, and peevish, yet still incapable of turning from his former ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... she laid her hand again upon Solita's head. "Take not the speech to heart. 'Tis but the plaint of a woman whose hair is withered from its brightness and who grows peevish in her loneliness. But open your mind to me, for you have twined about my heart even as your curls did but now twine and coil about my wrist, and the more for this pretty vanity of yours. Therefore tell me his name, that I ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... whatever vicious impotence women are under, it is acquired, not natural; nor derived from any illiberality of God's, but from the ill-managery of his bounty. Let them not charge God foolishly, or think that by making them women, he necessitated them to be proud or wanton, vain or peevish; since it is manifest he made them to better purpose; was not partial to the other sex; but that having, as the prophet speaks, "abundance of spirit," he equally dispensed it, and gave the feeblest woman as large and capacious a soul as that of the greatest hero. Nay, give me leave to say further, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... remainder of her days. She was supremely selfish in an agreeable unconscious fashion, and considered herself a domestic martyr whenever she spent an hour in her husband's sick-room, listening to his peevish accounts of his maladies, or reading a Times leader on the threatening aspect of things in the City for the solace of his loneliness ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... embroidered girdle, which had the gift of inspiring love. This charm will doubtless ensure the volume hundreds of possessors. The names of a few of the galaxy will give the reader a faint idea of their charms, unless the reader accord with Juliet's somewhat peevish "What's in a name." Thus, we find Julia, the queen of sentimentality; Belinda, gay and sparkling; Madeline, the early prey of despair; Lolah, languishing amid Eastern magnificence; the Orphan, pencilled in the very simplicity of nature, and finely contrasted with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... this girl coming?" asks the old man, presently, in a peevish tone, vexed that, as far as he can tell, his arrow has overshot the mark. "I might have known she would have caught ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... appall A drunkard's peevish brain, O'er the grey deep the dories crawl, Four-legged, with rowers twain: Midgets and minims of the earth, Across old ocean's vasty ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... a legion of poets of greater or less ability, but all more or less characterised by affectation, foolishness, and moral blindness: singers of the falsetto school, with ballads to their mistress's eyebrow, sonnets to their lady's lute, and general songs of a fiddlestick; peevish men for the most part, as is the way of all fleshly and affected beings; men so ignorant of human subjects and materials as to be driven in their sheer bankruptcy of mind to raise Hope, Love, Fear, Rage (everything but Charity) into human entities, and to treat the body ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... f'rimpudence to a gen'l'm'n," is the peevish return of OLD MORTARITY, who immediately falls asleep as he lies, with his lantern under ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... trying to tell Nicholas how he can make some money, and have submitted a brilliant plan to him, but my seed, as usual, has fallen on barren soil. Look what a sight he is now: dull, cross, bored, peevish—— ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... passions together. Spirituality, if identified with such types, might justly be called childish. There is an innocent and incredulous childishness, with its useless eyes wide open, just as there is a malevolent and peevish childishness, eaten up with some mischievous whim. The man of experience and affairs can very quickly form an opinion on such phenomena. He has no reason to expect superior wisdom in those quarters. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Bishop Joseph Hall, a painful preacher and solid divine of Puritan tendencies, declares that he prefers good-nature before grace in the election of a wife; because, saith he, "it will be a hard Task, where the Nature is peevish and froward, for Grace to make an entire Conquest whilst Life lasteth." An opinion apparently entertained by many modern ecclesiastics, and one which may be considered very encouraging to those young ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Wrinkle puffed. "That one about the baby was my last one—on you, anyway. You took it like some old, peevish man, and sulked and looked crooked for a week. I've tried to study out just how that happened to go agin the grain so mighty awful, but I'm up agin a snag. No, Alf, you make the bread-and-butter for this shebang, and you ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... and their new! And yet how short was the time and space which divided them! Less than an hour ago they had stood upon the summit of that rock, and had laughed and chattered, or grumbled at the heat and flies, becoming peevish at small discomforts. Headingly had been hypercritical over the tints of Nature. They could not forget his own tint as he lay with his cheek upon the black stone. Sadie had chattered about tailor-made dresses and Parisian chiffons. Now she was clinging, half-crazy, to the ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... while, blinking at the ceiling and worrying a little about Mihul. Even theoretically a stunner-max blast couldn't cause Mihul the slightest permanent damage. It might, however, leave her in a fairly peevish mood after the grogginess wore off, since the impact wasn't supposed to be pleasant. But Mihul had stated she would hold no grudges over a successful escape attempt; and even if they caught up with her again before she got to Manon, ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... Gwendolyn or Pet or Sweetheart or Dearest, in rapid succession, and in return for his pseudonymnal attentions, Mr. Brotherton always was sure of receiving from Miss Mauling upon leaving the office, an elaborately turned-up nose. For Miss Mauling was peevish and far from happy. She had been conscious for nearly a year that her power over young Mr. Van Dorn was failing, or that her charms were waning, or that something was happening to clog or cloy her romance. On a certain May morning she had sat industriously writing, "When in the course of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... to his home has brought; And were I only young again! But peevish was she, and with malice fraught— To honied words we list ...
— The Return of the Dead - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... which he had harboured concerning her. Why, he hardly knew—for she always presented a face of amiability, and talked in gentle, womanly tones—doubt as to Abbott's domestic felicity haunted his mind. Perhaps he now saw her, for the first time, as she commonly appeared to her husband—slightly peevish, unwilling to be disturbed, impatient when things ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... more of money, &c. and then sailed for England in the month of June. When we were about the north latitude 42, we had contrary wind for several days, and the ship did not make in that time above six or seven miles straight course. This made the captain exceeding fretful and peevish: and I was very sorry to hear God's most holy name often blasphemed by him. One day, as he was in that impious mood, a young gentleman on board, who was a passenger, reproached him, and said he acted wrong; for we ought to be thankful to God for all things, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... the present we had all agreed splendidly, but now John's irritability seemed to increase hourly; and as regards myself, I often found it necessary to exercise very great self-control to avoid giving very sharp and snappish answers to John's peevish and ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... have rain. I never saw the glass so low in my life." Every one was pleased with the humour and pleasantry of the turn; and the more so, as the Doctor was then more than eighty, a time of life when the infirmities of old age make most men peevish and hasty. ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... stable hope. As well the weary mariner, whose bark Is toss'd beyond Cimmerian Bosphorus, Where storm and darkness hold their drear domain, And sunbeams never penetrate, might trust To expectation of serener skies, And linger in the very jaws of death, Because some peevish cloud were opening, Or the loud storm had bated in its rage; As we look forward in this vale of tears To permanent delight—from some slight glimpse Of ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and Guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart—sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the difficulties by which it is beset, and our already numerous failures in it. We lose heart; and partly in ill-temper, partly in real doubt of our own ability to persevere, we first grow querulous and peevish with God, and then relax in our efforts to mortify ourselves and to please Him. It is a sort of shadow of despair, and will lead us into numberless venial sins the first half-hour ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... preparatory school or training-college for a state of being infinitely greater, nobler, and more glorious than anything the merely mundane imagination can conceive—you can realise how infinitely to the nuns' advantage is the contrast between them and the laywomen of Society, peevish, hysterical, neurotic, sensual, and bored. But before these chastened, temperate bodies, these serene and well-balanced minds attained the state of self-control and crossed the Rubicon of resignation, what struggles their owners must have undergone!—what ordeals ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... should be so facile to man, was to set straiter limits to obedience than God had set, to enslave the dignity of Man, to put a garrison upon his neck of empty and over-dignified precepts: and we shall read our Saviour never more grieved and troubled than to meet with such a peevish madness among men against their own freedom. How can we expect him to be less offended with us, when much of the same folly shall be found yet remaining where it least ought, to the perishing of thousands? The greatest burden in the world is Superstition, not only of ceremonies in the Church, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... very much of her friend in those days. Netta, exacting and peevish, monopolized much of the latter's time and kept her effectually at a distance. The days were growing hotter moreover, and her energies flagged, though all her strength was concentrated upon concealing the fact from Everard. For ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... morning it happened that Miss Day was in a very bad humor indeed—peevish, fretful, irritable, and unreasonable to the last degree; and, as usual, Elsie was the principal sufferer from her ill-humor. She found fault with everything the little girl did; scolded her, shook her, refused to explain the manner of working out a very difficult example, or to permit ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... quite the usual pleasant, happy-go-lucky affair that day. The gallant little Major, recently married to the fluffy-minded Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves and her peevish little dog, sat on the right of the overwhelmingly complacent Cornucopia. With the hope of rendering himself more youthful for this belated adventure with the babbling widow he had been treated by a hair specialist. The result ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... however, the lovers, or at any rate the bride, having been without any real idea of duty or sacrifice, the match had proved one of those that serve to justify the opinions of people who are "sensible;" the young wife, wearying of the lot she had chosen, had sunk into a state of peevish discontent from which ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... more peevish in my life than I have been about this journey of Bridgeman's. I am sure I took true pains that it should have been just as the Duchess wished. I find upon enquiry that he did not go as soon as I expected. He told me of the first letter ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... husband is not only an unbeliever, but one very froward, peevish, and testy, yea, so froward, &c., that I know not how to speak to him, or ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hot and I longed to get rid of my heavy, sodden great-coat. The strap of my haversack was making my shoulder ache. I became peevish and ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... to take out a policy for My conjugal partner, my cordium cor, "No, no," said I, "If my spouse should die We should enter again into strife; You would come and say at the funeral, 'Sir, Your wife was peevish and plain; for her I offer six hundred or, if you prefer, A ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... written a letter to my lady ——, that I believe she won't like; and, upon cooler reflection, I think I had done better to have let it alone; but I was downright peevish at all her questions, and her ridiculous imagination, that I have certainly seen abundance of wonders which I keep to myself out of mere malice. She is very angry that I won't lie like other travellers. I verily ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... amities, why shall it be found in these? The father and the sonne may very well be of a farre differing complexion, and so many brothers: He is my sonne, he is my kinsman; but he may be a foole, a bad, or a peevish-minded man. And then according as they are friendships which the law and dutie of nature doth command us, so much the lesse of our owne voluntarie choice and libertie is there required unto it: And our genuine libertie hath ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... not at all encouraging. She was often ailing and peevish, behaving as if she owed Dorothy grudge instead of gratitude. And indeed to herself Dorothy would remark that if nothing more came out of it than seemed likely now, Juliet would be under no very ponderous obligation ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... depressed at this time, and he was also peevish and difficult to please. George could manage him better than any one else, except his wife, for the reason that his confidence in his young brother was unbounded. The latter knew how to encourage the sick man without concealing from him ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... were a child. Who finds fault with these things? he would be a cynic, he would be white-livered, and would have gall for blood, who was not struck with this graceful, touching evidence of the love her subjects bear her. Who could have the head, even if he had the heart, who could be so cross and peevish, who could be so solemn and perverse, as to say that some of these stories may be simple lies, and all of them might have stronger evidence than they carry with them? Do you think she is displeased at them? Why then should He, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... The peevish old man scowled, hesitated. He read the order again, hesitated again, and at last handed it back, his mind ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... manner. She was much thinner than she used to be, and very pale. Her face had a drawn look, and her eyes seemed sunken. She seemed, somehow, to have shrunken in every way. Her expression used to be smiling and kindly. It was now peevish and irritable. ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... see than the look of sadness or neglect which motherless children sometimes wear. It was of a wayward temper grown more wayward still for want of a mother's firm and gentle rule. One could not doubt that peevish words and angry retorts fell very naturally from those pale lips. She looked like one who needed to be treated with patience and loving forbearance, and who failed to meet either. And, indeed, the rule to which Christie was forced to ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... measure.—At whose wedding was it that we last danced, my Fleming? I think care has troubled my memory—yet something of it I should remember, canst thou not aid me? I know thou canst.' 'Alas, madam,' replied the lady. 'What,' said Mary, 'wilt thou not help us so far? this is a peevish adherence to thine own graver opinion which holds our talk as folly. But thou art court-bred and wilt well understand me when I say the queen commands Lady Fleming to tell her when she led the last branle.' With a face deadly pale and a mien as if she were about to sink ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... while the others were fighting their way to the van, he, who needed assistance more than any of them, was left to shift for himself. He moved with great difficulty, dragging down from the carriage a worn black bag, and occasionally muttering to himself, not as a peevish invalid would have done, but as if it were a sort of solace to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... They never had any discomforts. They never found the food bad, or the beds hard, or the servants stupid. They never were tired when anything was to be done, or cross when it had been done, or under any circumstances peevish, or pouty or "offish." They were ready for everything and content with anything. It was a pleasure to give them a pleasure, because their pleasure was so manifest. They looked eagerly at everything and into everything. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... answered I: if thou takest a wrong step in this affair he will cudgel thee to death. Well, a minute is but a minute, and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill spent. He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and, in the little peevish contentions of nature betwixt hunger and unsavouriness, had dropped it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and picked it up again. God help thee, Jack! said I, thou hast a bitter breakfast on't, and many a bitter blow, I fear, for ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... lips then, but I heard no sound till I put my ear down, and caught the peevish comment: "This is crawling. . . . ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Sydney Smith's delicious chaffing of his friend Jeffrey, on account of Jeffrey's sensitiveness of literary taste, and his inward rage that events, men, and books, outside of him, do not correspond to the exacting rules which are the products of his own subjective and somewhat peevish intelligence. "I like," says Sydney, "to tell you these things, because you never do so well as when you are humbled and frightened, and, if you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... nerve-cells which is important in study is modifiability. That is, impressions made upon the nerve-cells are retained. Most living tissue is modifiable to some extent. The features of the face are modifiable, and if one habitually assumes a peevish expression, it becomes, after a time, permanently fixed. The nervous system, however, possesses the power of modifiability to a marked degree, even a single impression sufficing to make striking modification. This is very important in study, being the basis ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... wild cry close at hand, and a curlew rose, and then a flock of lapwings, to flit round and round, uttering their peevish calls; but Max saw nothing but the scene at the castle, heard nothing but The Mackhai's bitter words, and he tramped onward and onward into the wilderness of mountain and moss, onward ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... but was immediately stopped by Jarras with a peevish gesture: "All right, all right; keep all that for the Chief of Department. Your report ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... aggrieved and tried to say so, but couldn't seem to make any sound. Then he realised that he had forgotten to open his lips. When he did he got a lot of cold water in his mouth and that made him quite peevish. He tried to raise his right hand, changed his mind about it and raised his left instead. With that he pushed weakly at the ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... way to insure confidence. She had not been there long before she had both parents in bed, "saving themselves for to-morrow," and was gently rubbing the hot little body of the baby. She kept giving it warm tea she had made of herbs, until soon the threatening jerks were over, the peevish whining ceased, and the child slept peacefully on Grandma's lap. I watched her, fascinated. There was never a bit of faltering, no indecision; everything she did seemed exactly ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... enabled him to pronounce. Still, let it not be supposed that amid this affected resignation to the will of Providence, the unfortunate inn-keeper did not writhe under the double misery of seeing the hateful canal carry off his customers and his profits, and the daily infliction of his peevish partner's ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be referred to the proposed scope. Yet nothing, according to their opinion, will hinder but that fortitude, prudence, continence, and patience may be good, and their contraries to be avoided." Has there ever then been any man more peevish in his disputes than he, who has blamed two of the principal philosophers, the one for taking away all virtue, by not making that only to be good which is honest, and the other for not thinking all the virtues except justice to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... discomfiture, "that only proves that he was here then. He may be a hundred miles off by this time. Still, it won't do a bit of harm to keep our eyes peeled and make sure that our guns are in good working order. He's probably got a perpetual grouch, and he might be peevish if he should turn up and find us poaching on his ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... quarts of liquor, paid Pete, and departed alone, Carl and Hugh having decided to have another drink or two before they returned to Haydensville. After a second high-ball Hugh did not care how many he drank and was rather peevish when Carl insisted that he stop with a third. Pete charged them eight dollars for their drinks, which they cheerfully paid, and then warily climbed the stairs and stumbled out ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... strain the dignity of England broke, and revealed a malignity less focussed and intense than the German, but perhaps even more distressing. No paternal government had organised the British spirit for patriotic ends; it became now peevish and impatient, like some ill-trained man who is sick, it directed itself no longer against the enemy alone but fitfully against imagined traitors and shirkers; it wasted its energies in a deepening and spreading net of internal ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... that music cannot melt? Alas! how is that rugged heart forlorn! Is there, who ne'er those mystic transports felt Of solitude and melancholy born? He needs not woo the Muse; he is her scorn. The sophist's rope of cobweb he shall twine; Mope o'er the schoolman's peevish page; or mourn, And delve for life in Mammon's dirty mine; Sneak with the scoundrel fox, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... Neither the small boy nor a big man, nor an old woman standing by, knew anything about it; and I had determined to take the next train to Town, when a flannel-clad young man, with a heavy face and a peevish voice, called out from the bank, "I've been looking for you everywhere." It proved to be KITTY'S husband, but, as we were totally unacquainted with each other's appearances, it was not wonderful that his search for me had been ineffectual. He seemed much annoyed, however, and ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... so alarmed, Isabel? Of course I have," he continued, in a peevish, though kind tone, as he took hold of ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the world, and this under it. At his first coming in, he is a piece of new coin, all sharking old prisoners lie sucking at his purse. An old man and he are much alike, neither of them both go far. They are still angry and peevish, and they sleep little. He was born at the fall of Babel, the confusion of languages is only in his mouth. All the vacations he speaks as good English as any man in England, but in term times he breaks out of that hopping one-legged pace into a racking trot of issues, bills, replications, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... peculiarly happy effect upon some occasions. But are you voluble enough to drown all sense in a torrent of words? Can you be loud enough to overpower the voice of all who shall attempt to interrupt or contradict you? Are you mistress of the petulant, the peevish, and the sullen tone? Have you practised the sharpness which provokes retort, and the continual monotony which by setting your adversary to sleep effectually precludes reply? an event which is always to be considered as decisive ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... chatter had wrought a change in Dotty. During the two weeks that had just passed she had become peevish and fretful from enforced inactivity and now the thought of getting up and going downstairs had brought the smiles to her face and the light ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... knowledge and care, however, did not answer expectation, for he ran the proa on the rocky shoals near the island of Bottone, where she bilged and lost all the mace, the men getting ashore. Stacie is much blamed by the rest, some of whom told him they saw land on the lee-bow, but he was peevish and headstrong, calling them all fools, and would not listen ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... puny critics, who scatter their peevish strictures in private circles, and scribble at every author who has the eminence of being unconnected with them, as they are usually spleen-swoln from a vain idea of increasing their consequence, there will always be found a petulance and illiberality in their remarks, ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... time vitiated his constitution, and a slow disease siezed upon him. He refused physick, neglected exercise, and lay down on his couch peevish and restless, rather afraid to die than desirous to live. His domesticks, for a time, redoubled their assiduities; but finding that no officiousness could soothe, nor exactness satisfy, they soon gave way to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson |
