"Shrew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Besa! here is what I have sought for so long," he exclaimed, at last. "Hither! thou treasure, thou dear, defiant little shrew! Thou art more to me than all the wealth of Pithom. Hither, I ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and perilous and awful it is to behold; for betwixt those forces it filleth all the mountain ghyll, and there is no foothold for man, nay for goat, save at a hundred foot or more above the water, and that evil and perilous; and is the running of a winter millstream to the beetles and shrew-mice that haunt the greensward beside it, so is the running of that flood to the sons of Adam and the beasts that serve them: and none has been so bold as to strive to ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... she was a tall, mannish-looking, but not unattractive woman of thirty-seven years, the mother of four children. She was characterized by her friends as refined, magnetic, and witty; by her enemies of the Republican party as a hard, unlovely shrew. The hostile press made the most of popular prejudice against a woman stump speaker and attempted by ridicule and invective to drive her from the stage. But Mrs. Lease continued to talk. She it was who told the Kansas farmers that what they needed was to "raise ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... Humming-bird went away a Field-mouse was seen for a moment dodging about in the grass, and shortly afterward a Shrew-mole, not so big as the Mouse, was seen in hot pursuit ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... I will never get a clean shirt to my back; how my coat will always be out at the elbows; and how I never will get my breeches to stay up. I am thinking how I will be married to a shrew of a wife, who will beat me every evening and morning, and sometimes in the middle of the day. I am thinking what a d——d w—— she will be, and how my children will be most of them hanged, and whipped through towns, and burnt in the ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... formed themselves into phrases. Phrases made dim pictures as if the past was struggling fitfully to remain somehow alive.... His good-bye to Mathilde. And long, stupid weeks in Berlin. The girl had been absurd. Absurd, an impulsive little shrew. With demands. Four months of Mathilde. Unsuspected variants of boredom. Clothed in her unrelenting love like an Indian in full war dress. Yet to part with her had made ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... tour under the personal direction of Charles Frohman, Miss Adams combined with a revival of "Quality Street" a clever skit by Barrie called "The Ladies' Shakespeare," the subtitle being, "One Woman's Reading of 'The Taming of the Shrew.'" With an occasional appearance in Barrie's "Rosalind," it rounded out ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... couldn't have left New York; but now, now that I am safe, why should I stay here, flatting with a shrew, provoking the Van Dams, to whom I owe some gratitude, wasting my life for a man who—who said he ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... when devoted to satire, is keen and vehement. The ballad of "Watty and Meg," though exception may be taken to the moral, is an admirable picture of human nature, and one of the most graphic narratives of the "taming of a shrew" in the language. Allan Cunningham writes: "It has been excelled by none in lively, graphic fidelity of touch: whatever was present to his eye and manifest to his ear, he could paint with a life and a humour which Burns seems alone to excel."[41] ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... and the sound of my mother's voice. No wonder; I had scarce once heard the mellow sound of a good woman's voice since I ran away to sea five years before, only the hard voices of hard men, and, now and then, the shrill voice of some shrew of the waterside. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... Thordis—and a shrew she was—who lived at Spakonufell (Spaequean's-fell), in Skagastrand. She, having foresight of Cormac's goings, came that very day to Muli, and answered this matter on his behalf, saying, "Never give him yon false woman. ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... abroad penniless. Soon after he married, almost as early and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare. He told Drummond curtly that "his wife was a shrew, yet honest"; for some years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs among Jonson's "Epigrams," "On my first daughter," and "On my first son," attest the warmth of the poet's family ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... which the old shrew had given me pursued me everywhere. More than once, while climbing the almost perpendicular ladder to my loft, feeling my clothing caught on some point, I trembled from head to foot, imagining that the old wretch was hanging to the tails of my coat ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... was well and happy in this retired corner. All at once they were refreshed by a delightful coolness as they entered the avenue of tall green oaks. On either side the springs, the mothers of these giant shade trees, flowed on in their eternal course. And when they reached the house of the shrew they came, as chance would have it, upon the two lovers, Sophie and her miller, kissing each other beside the well; for the girl's aunt had just gone down to the lavatory behind the willows of the Viorne. Confused, the couple stood in blushing silence. But the doctor and his companion ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... enough not to understand. The forehead of the shrew unknotted a bit, and a look of satisfaction ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... us, Emperor Jurgen," said they all, "your wife was an acidulous shrew, and the sort of woman who believes that whatever she ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... hooded; I could hear but that floweth The great hood below its mouth:" then the bird made reply. "If they know not, more's the pity, for the little shrew-mouse knoweth, And the kite knows, and the eagle, and the glead ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... hoarse-throated bugle, as it had risen many a time in the old days on the road from Manfaloot. Seti and his bobtailed Arab, two shameless ones, worked their way to the front. Not Seti's strong right arm alone and his naboot were at work, but the bobtailed Arab, like an iron-handed razor toothed shrew, struck and bit his way, his eyes bloodred like Seti's. The superstitious Dervishes fell back before this pair of demons; for their madness was like the madness of those who at the Dosah throw themselves beneath the feet ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of sleep had I, rather I lay that I might watch her (furtively, beneath my arm) where she sat head aloft, cheeks flushed and bosom tempestuous. And (despite her beauty) a very termagant shrew I thought her. Then, all at once, I saw a tear fall and another; and she that had sung undaunted to the tempest and outfaced its fury, sat bitterly weeping like any heart-broke maid, yet giving due heed ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money all ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the eldest daughter of Baptista, a rich gentleman of Padua. She was a lady of such an ungovernable spirit and fiery temper, such a loud-tongued scold, that she was known in Padua by no other name than Katharine the Shrew. It seemed very unlikely, indeed impossible, that any gentleman would ever be found who would venture to marry this lady, and therefore Baptista was much blamed for deferring his consent to many excellent offers ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... family from any share in it. Consequently I am made use of, and the fortune is placed in my hands with instructions to hasten to lay it at the feet of this 'fair lady.' Nothing seems easier or more natural. But suppose the 'fair lady' should be ugly, hunchbacked, a shrew, or a troublesome coquette. In this case, you know, with my ideas about women and marriage, I should feel myself ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... which determined the habits of life, and the general place of each being in the economy of nature, would be of very high importance in classification. Nothing can be more false. No one regards the external similarity of a mouse to a shrew, of a dugong to a whale, of a whale to a fish, as of any importance. These resemblances, though so intimately connected with the whole life of the being, are ranked as merely "adaptive or analogical characters;" but to the consideration of these resemblances we shall recur. It may ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... from "The Taming of the Shrew," we see, what Mr. Collier himself notices in his "Notes and Emendations," that the prefix to the tinker's speeches, which in the folios is invariably Beg. [Beggar], is changed to Sly; and this is done in every instance. We have not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... stormy sea of soliloquies. From these frightful tempests which ravage a woman's heart springs an ignoble, unworthy resolution, one which every woman, the duchess as well as the shopkeeper's wife, the baroness as well as the stockbroker's lady, the angel as well as the shrew, the indifferent as well as the passionate, at once puts into execution. They imitate the government, every one of them; they resort to espionage. What the State has invented in the public interest, they consider legal, legitimate ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... entering more and more as an equal partner whose rights the modern law recognizes as the ancient law did not. She is no longer to be classed as exemplified by the famous words of Petruchio, when he claimed his wife, the erstwhile shrew, as his property in exactly the same sense as any domestic animal, linking the wife with the horse, the cow, the ass, as the chattels of the man. The law agreed to this attitude of the man, the Church supported it; woman, strangely enough, seemed ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... grinders are formed into conical, or pointed processes. Their feet are divided into toes, which are armed with sharp, hooked claws. This tribe is predacious, living almost entirely upon animal food; and consists of the seal, dog, cat, weasel, otter, bear, opossum, kangaroo, mole, shrew, and hedgehog genera. ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... thou thread, thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou; Braved in my own house by a skein of thread! Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant!" (Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... I show thee who is master, O! shrew!" observed her master, as he surveyed his handiwork. "Thou wilt not walk, then shall thy sisters force thee to run; thou wilt lie down, then shall they drag thee until thy ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... of spavined old croakers. Old Plain Talk had a shrew for a wife, and that's made him shrewish; and Old Prudence, when a boy, broke down in an apple-stall, and that discouraged him for life. No better sport for a knowing spark like me than to hear Old Plain Talk wheeze out his sour ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... rate have peace and quiet, and be free from hearing my mother lay plans of what she will do when I bring Dorothy as mistress of Hillside. Marry Dorothy, forsooth! I pity any man who is tied to that shrew for life.' ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... There is a rat found only in the Cinnamon Gardens at Colombo, Mus Ceylonus, Kelaart; and a mouse which Dr. Kelaart discovered at Trincomalie, M. fulvidiventris, Blyth, both peculiar to Ceylon. Dr. TEMPLETON has noticed a little shrew (Corsira purpurascens, Mag. Nat. Hist. 1855, p. 238) at Neuera-ellia, not ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... unpinning, making grimaces and striking attitudes. Many a coy wench was there who knew not how to open her lips to speak, much less to eat, or from very ceremony, how to look under foot; and many a ragged shrew who would contend that she was equal to the best lady in the street, and many an ambling fop who might winnow beans by ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... not stop midway the furrow to listen and laugh at a droll story or tell one? If he might not go a-fishing when all the forces of nature invited and the jay-bird called from the tree and gave forth saucy banter like the fiery, blue shrew that she was? ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... makes it, invitus amabo! as the man said who married the shrew." Bigot laughed mockingly. "We must make the best of it, Des Meloises! and let me tell you privately, I mean to make a good thing of it for ourselves whichever way ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... ashamed that women are so simple To offer war when they should kneel for peace. —Taming of the Shrew. ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... Clouds, like the plains, come and water the earth. Sun, embrace the earth that she may be fruitful. Moon, lion of the north, bear of the west, badger of the south, wolf of the east, eagle of the heavens, shrew of the earth, elder war hero, younger war hero, warriors of the six mountains of the world, intercede with the Cloud People for us that they may water the earth. Medicine bowl, cloud bowl, and water vase give us your hearts, that the earth ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... a disputatious crew Each evening meet; the sot, the cheat, the shrew; Riots are nightly heard:—the curse, the cries Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies, While shrieking children hold each threat'ning hand, And sometimes life, and sometimes food demand; Boys, in their first-stol'n rags, to swear begin; And girls, who ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the world well lost for them, and lose it accordingly. Who are the men that do things? The husbands of the shrew and of the drunkard, the men with the thorn in the flesh. [Walking distractedly away towards the pantry]. I must think these things out. [Turning suddenly]. But I go on with the dynamite none the less. I will discover a ray mightier than any X-ray: a mind ray that will explode the ammunition ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... collections of English Mysteries Noah's wife is an untamed shrew, who refuses to enter the ark. In the York collection, Noah being ordered by "Deus" to build his ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Cryptotis from Boca del Rio, Veracruz, to Cryptotis parva berlandieri (Baird). Comparison of this specimen, Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collections, No. 2765, with 8 specimens of C. micrura from various parts of northern Veracruz and with 9 C. parva from southern Tamaulipas reveals that the shrew from Boca del Rio is referable to Cryptotis micrura. The series of 8 specimens in the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History from Altamira, Tamaulipas, provides the southernmost known record of Cryptotis parva berlandieri. These 8 specimens are typical ...
— Taxonomy and Distribution of Some American Shrews • James S Findley
... Socrates, noted for her violent temper and scolding propensities. The name is frequently applied to a shrew, or ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... Two Gentlemen of Verona. The Merry Wives of Windsor. Measure for Measure. The Comedy of Errours. Much adoo about Nothing Loves Labour lost. Midsommer Nights Dreame. The Merchant of Venice. As you Like it. The Taming of the Shrew. All is well, that Ends well. Twelfe-Night, or what you will. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... see. The little shrew mole, which I know is active at night, I have never seen but once. I once set a trap, called the delusion trap, in the woods by some rocks where I had no reason to suspect there were more mice than elsewhere, and two mornings later it was literally packed full ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... attempted. The Taming of the Shrew no doubt passed for a light comedy in Shakespeare's day, though we describe it by a briefer name. Its rapid, bustling action is possible because we are always ready to take the character of a shrew for granted. It would have been a very different play had the poet required to account for Katharine's peculiarities of temper by a retrospective study of her heredity and upbringing. Many eighteenth-century comedies are single-adventure plays, or dual-adventure ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Matter for further speculation? I can think sitting still as well as standing up. And what is knowledge? What are our learned men save the descendants of witches and hermits who crouched in caves and in woods brewing herbs, interrogating shrew-mice and writing down the language of the stars? And the less we honour them as our superstitions dwindle and our respect for beauty and health of mind increases.... Yes, one could imagine a very pleasant world. A quiet, spacious world, with the flowers so red and blue in the open ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... stripe on each cheek. This made the third species of marsupial rat I had so far obtained— but the number of these animals is very considerable in Brazil, where they take the place of the shrews of Europe; shrew mice and, indeed, the whole of the insectivorous order of mammals, being entirely absent from Tropical America. One kind of these rat-like opossums is aquatic, and has webbed feet. The terrestrial species are nocturnal in their habits, sleeping during the day ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... great deal from him. There was nothing which Mrs. Carbuncle would not endure from Sir Griffin,—just at present; and, on behalf of Mrs. Carbuncle, even Lizzie was long-suffering. It cannot, however, be said that this Petruchio had as yet tamed his own peculiar shrew. Lucinda was as savage as ever, and would snap and snarl, and almost bite. Sir Griffin would snarl too, and say very bearish things. But when it came to the point of actual quarrelling, he would become sullen, and in ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... person of a house full of sordid shames and cares, with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even innocent sleep with sensual brutality and degradation. The doll's dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, worldly; of the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Dunstan's, issued Stow's 'Chronicles,' and was the holder of several licenses for printing; for nearly half a century J. Smethwicke (who died in 1641) had a shop 'under the diall' of St. Dunstan's, whence he issued Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' 'Love's Labour Lost,' 'Romeo and Juliet,' 'Taming of the Shrew,' as well as works by Henry Burton, Drayton, Greene, Lodge, and others; Richard Marriot was in St. Dunstan's Churchyard early in the seventeenth century, and his ventures included Quarles' 'Emblems,' 1635, Dr. Downes' 'Sermons,' 1640, and Walton's 'Compleat Angler,' 1653, for which 1s. 6d. ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... the truth was known, I know where the blame would lie—your daughter will not be the shrew and scold to him that my blister was to me—upon ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Moles from the four quarters of the world. There are the North American marsh moles and long-tailed star-nosed moles; the golden moles, from the Cape of Good Hope; the varieties of the shrew-mouse, including the remarkable blue shrew-mouse of India, the African elephant shrew, and the Russian musk shrew; the Javan insectivorous squirrel; and a curious variety of hedgehogs, from opposite quarters of the globe. Having examined ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... a high military command.[11] Like Marlborough, to whom he bears some resemblance in personal character, he strengthened his position at court by marrying the Lady Antonina, the beautiful favourite of the Empress Theodora, though she was as fierce a shrew as the Duchess Sarah, and wherewithal not so modest, if we give credit to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Neither does any man, no more than he; Only to hinder wives, it serveth nought; - A good wife, that is clean of work and thought, No man would dream of hindering such a way. And just as bootless is it, night or day, Hindering a shrew; for it will never be. I hold it for a very foppery, Labour in vain, this toil to hinder wives, Old writers always say ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... worse for that Zeitgeist! The jade had to come to him, at last, completely subdued, as in the "Taming of the Shrew." ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... pollarded elm, sacred to the wise bird—came mewing of brown owls; and once a white one struck, swift as a streak of feathered moonlight, on the copse edge, and passed so near to Blanchard that he saw the wretched shrew-mouse in its talons. "'Tis for the young birds somewheers," he thought; "an' so they'll thrive an' turn out braave owlets come bimebye; but the li'l, squeakin', blind shrews, what'll they do when no mother ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... In hopes thereby to get me some relief, I heard, methought, his voice say, "Cease to mourn: I live; and though the veil of flesh once worn Be now stript off, dissolved, and laid aside, My spirit's with thee, and shall so abide." This satisfied me; down I shrew my quill, Willing to be resigned to ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... distinction in the annals of kings and emperors. What famous beauty embellished the court of Elizabeth or either Mary? Even Anne's Mrs. Masham was not a shining personality, and her Sarah of Marlborough was only a brilliant shrew. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Beth," said brother Jim in a tone of exasperation, "I know what you'll be when you grow up, if you don't mind. You'll be just the sort of long-tongued shrew, always arguing, that ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the attraction which Christine Dryfoos had for him, apart from this, escapes from all terms, as anything purely and merely passional must. He had seen from the first that she was a cat, and so far as youth forecasts such things, he felt that she would be a shrew. But he had a perverse sense of her beauty, and he knew a sort of life in which her power to molest him with her temper could be reduced to the smallest proportions, and even broken to pieces. Then the consciousness of her money entered. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... production of bees from dead meat (both of which puerilities are repeated unquestioningly by Virgil), the custom of wolves plunging swine into cold water to cool their flesh which is so hot as to be otherwise quite uneatable, and of shrew mice occasionally gnawing a nest for themselves and rearing their young in the hide of a fat sow, &c. [43] He also attempts one or two etymologies; the best is via which he tells us is for veha, and villa ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... together that foggy night, but he could express very little. Many of his defects sprang from his not having been on the stage as a child. He was stiff with self-consciousness; his eyes were dull and his face heavy. The piece we played was Garrick's boiled-down version of "The Taming of the Shrew," and he, as Petruchio, appreciated the humor and everything else far more than I did, as Katherine; yet he played badly, nearly as badly as I did; and how much more to blame I was, for I was at this time much more easy and skillful from a purely ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... and thou hadst died! So had the Trojans respite from their toils 465 Enjoy'd, who, now, shudder at sight of thee Like she-goats when the lion is at hand. To whom, undaunted, Diomede replied. Archer shrew-tongued! spie-maiden! man of curls![14] Shouldst thou in arms attempt me face to face, 470 Thy bow and arrows should avail thee nought. Vain boaster! thou hast scratch'd my foot—no more— And I regard it as I might ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... one, "here is an old dotard shrew to have so goodly a crutch! Use the leg that God hath given you, man, and do not bear so heavily upon ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and all-embracing, under priestly vestments, had no tenderness, no embrace for him,—only a mockery and a prophecy, a cold and cynical prediction that I should soon tire of his shrill voice. Yes, Cheri, your sweet silver trills, your rippling June-brook warbles, were to him only a shrew's scolding. I took the bird wrathfully, his name had been Cherry, and rechristened him on the spot Cheri, in anticipation of the new life that was to dawn upon him, no longer despised Cherry, but Cheri, my ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... has two plots. In one of them, Petruchio woos and tames the shrew Katharina; in the other, Katharina's sister Bianca is wooed by lovers in disguise. The two plots have little connection with each other. That which relates to Petruchio and Katharina is certainly by Shakespeare. The other seems to be by ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... itself. Thou art well aware, O Prince of True Believers, that by Moslem custom none may look upon the face of his betrothed before the marriage contract? nor after wedlock can he complain should his bride prove a shrew or a fright: he must needs dwell with her in such content as he may and be thankful for his fate, be it fair or unfair. When I saw first the face of my bride and learnt that it was passing comely, I joyed with exceeding joy and gave thanks to Almighty Allah that He ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Dr. W. Bulleyne says "it keepeth clothes from moths and wormes." This is the great preventive used by cloth manufacturers. "Furthermore," adds Gerard, "taken in wine it is good against the biting of the shrew mouse, and of the sea dragon. It may be applied against the Squincie, or inflammation of the throat, with honey and water: likewise, after the same manner, to dim ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... that Xantippe, the wife of Socrates, was a shrew, and had she lived in New England in Cotton Mather's time would have been a candidate for the ducking-stool. Socrates said he married her for discipline. A man in East Aurora, however, has recently made it plain to himself that Xantippe was possessed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... have his daughter remain, but the shrew was determined to be rid of her, and gave him no peace. At last, when he could gainsay her no longer, he placed his daughter in a sledge and drove her to the open fields. Here he left her, with nothing to shield her from ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... here we go with a yo! ho! ho! While the waves and the tempests soar, An artist can paint a shrew as a saint, But not camouflage on ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... addressed to the young man or the old, the latter of whom soon grew into an object of local compassion as "a harmless, dacint, poor crathur," while his son came in for the frank-eyed looking-down-upon which is the portion of an able-bodied man, shrew-ridden through sheer supineness and "polthroonery." But what Lisconnel often said that it "thought badder of" was the stepmotherly treatment which seemed to be the lot of the little girl Katty. Of course the situation was one which, under ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... had borne the reputation of a pious, and certainly was an industrious and thrifty man; but failure and the loss of an excellent wife had wrought a sad change in his character and temper; and having married a second wife, who turned out a virago and a shrew, there was little hope of his improving. He was still industrious, and owing to his former reputation for honesty and doing good work, he still retained many of his old customers. He had a small shop in a public part of the city, where he took the measures for shoes or sold ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... the two daughters of the "architect and land surveyor." Charity is thin, ill-natured, and a shrew, eventually jilted by a weak young man, who really loves her sister. Mercy Pecksniff, usually called "Merry," is pretty and true-hearted; though flippant and foolish as a girl, she becomes greatly toned down by the troubles of her married life.—C. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... rage, indignation, ire, frenzy; virago, termagant, shrew, vixen, beldame, Xantippe; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Lizzie tried to bring the child round again to that prettier and better state. But the charm was broken. The dolls' dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew, of the world, ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Where's Edward? Edward, Edward! Kiss me, you minx! Fair, I wish that my dear friend, your father, were alive. Well, well, patience does it, and the Lord knows, Unity, he's been patient! Oh, you black-eyed piece, you need a bit and bridle! Here's Edward! Edward, the shrew's tamed at last! Such a wedding ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... as she finally goes to live with him, she makes brief visits for festivals or on other social occasions, or to help her mother-in-law, if her assistance is required. If the mother-in-law is ill and requires somebody to wait on her, or if she is a shrew and wants some one to bully, or if she has strict ideas of discipline and wishes personally to conduct the bride's training for married life, she makes the girl come more ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... whereas; for as much as, in as much as; in point of, as far as; on the part of, on the score of; quoad hoc[Lat]; pro re nata[Lat]; under the head of &c. (class) 75 of; in the matter of, in re. Phr. " thereby hangs a tale " [Taming of the Shrew]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "The muckle shrew!" quoth Master Jonson. "Why, I'll have this out with him! By Jupiter, I'll read him reason with a vengeance!" With a clink of his rapier he made as if to ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... observe any man or woman of our acquaintance when that person supposed himself or herself to be absolutely alone, we should be astonished and often horrified at the unconscious revelations we would receive. The woman with the Madonna face may unmask and show the lineaments of a common shrew in her chamber. And the virago may soften into the gentleness of a saint as she gives way to the penitence of her own thoughts. The dignified man with the air of virtue and authority might show himself as a nimble-motioned rascal, timid and furtive, if he believed only ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... Probably my own is the only eye that has ever penetrated his secret, and mine never would have done so had I not chanced on one occasion to see him leave his retreat and make a raid upon a shrike that was impaling a shrew-mouse upon a thorn in a neighboring tree and which I was watching. Failing to get the mouse, the owl returned swiftly to his cavity, and ever since, while going that way, I have been on the lookout for him. Dozens of teams and foot-passengers pass him late ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... and father both being dead, I was brought up by my sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who was more than twenty years older than I, and a veritable shrew by nature. She had acquired a great reputation among the neighbours because she had brought me up by hand. Not understanding this expression, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... fume. I should observe that she was a brisk, coquettish woman; a little of a shrew, and something of a slammerkin, but very pretty withal; with a nincompoop for a husband, as shrews are apt to have. She rated the servants roundly for their negligence in sending up so bad a breakfast, but ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... has that there's never any knowing where it will break out, or what dance it will lead him, especially when it comes to this love-making business. You are just as likely as not to lose your head over some little fool or shrew for the sake of her outward favour and make yourself miserable for life. When you pick you a wife please remember that I shall reserve the right to pass ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... touch'd, or seem'd to touch, the skies: Not the most distant mark of fear, No sign of axe or scaffold near, Not one cursed thought to cross his will Of such a place as Tower Hill. 680 Curse on this Muse, a flippant jade, A shrew, like every other maid Who turns the corner of nineteen, Devour'd with peevishness and spleen; Her tongue (for as, when bound for life, The husband suffers for the wife, So if in any works of rhyme Perchance there blunders out a crime, Poor ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... I let myself get cross-grained and ugly now, p'r'aps someone else—some day—will be cross-grained and ugly too. And I should never forgive myself for that. I should always feel it was my fault. Fancy if it turned out a shrew like me, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Swain's warning. "You d—d scoundrel!" I cried, "it was you killed him, and you know it. When you had put me out of the way and he was in your power, you tortured him to death. You forced him to die alone with your sneering face, while your shrew of a wife counted cards downstairs. Grafton Carvel, God knows you better than I, who know you two well. And He will punish you as sure ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a young husband, the slattern Catherina Meigengra, the market-woman who plays the pandero in the market-place, the peasant girls with pretentious names coming down to market basket on head from the hills, the shrew Branca and the timid wife Marta, the two irrepressible Lisbon fishwives, the voluble saloia who sells milk well watered and charges cruel prices for her eggs and other wares, the country priest's greedy 'wife' who eats the baptism cake and is continually ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... the little shrew," he would say. "Neither man nor devil can bend or break her. If I smashed every bone in her carcass, she would die shrieking hell at ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said to have three white stripes: our sailors caught one, but it got away again. The mole here is larger than in Europe; the upper part of the body is of a greyish brown, the lower part an ash grey; the legs are covered with a white fur, and the taper tail is one-fifth of the length of the body. A shrew-mouse also was caught. Two or three kinds of large cats are said to have been seen; a mustela, something of the nature of the Lutreola, was shot near the Rio Sacramento. The sea-otter still abounds ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... come back to th' lass. And, now that I think o' th' lass, comrade, I am not so sure that a scolding wife is not well paid for by a duteous daughter. Nay, I am sure o't. Methinks I would 'a' been wed twice, and each time to a shrew, could I but 'a' had my Keren o' one o' 'em. Ay, even so, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... only gave greater boldness to Olaf Triggvison, who very naturally considered that the monarch who would thus allow an alien foe to settle upon his shores must be a very child in weakness—a man with no more spirit than a shrew mouse. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... to graze anew over deposits in which the bones and horns of their remote ancestors had been entombed long ages before, the feat would have been surely far beyond the power of such feeble natives of the soil as the mole, the hedgehog, the shrew, the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Wesleyanism, has to dwell very largely on his domestic miseries. Wesley held patriarchal views on household matters, the proper subordination of the wife being a prime article of his faith. Mrs. Wesley, however, entertained different views. She is therefore described as a frightful shrew, and rated for her inordinate jealousy, although her husband's attentions to other ladies ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... morning there were only three or four, I think, beside Mr. Glennie and Ratsey and the half-dozen of us boys, who crossed the swampy meadows strewn with drowned shrew-mice and moles. Even my aunt was not at church, being prevented by a migraine, but a surprise waited those who did go, for there in a pew by himself sat Elzevir Block. The people stared at him as they came in, for no one had ever ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... directness of the masculine shopper arouses a certain combative derision in the feminine onlooker. A cat that spreads one shrew-mouse over the greater part of a long summer afternoon, and then possibly loses him, doubtless feels the same contempt for the terrier who compresses his rat into ten seconds of the strenuous life. I was finishing ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... threatening action of an angry scorpion. Now, as a matter of fact, the devil's coach-horse is quite harmless, but I have often seen, not only little boys and girls, but also chickens, small birds, and shrew-mice, evidently alarmed at his minatory attitude. So, too, the bumble-bee flies, which are inoffensive insects got up in sedulous imitation of various species of wild bee, flit about and buzz angrily in the sunlight, quite after the fashion of the insects ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... is the track of the meadow mouse. This is not unlike that of the blarina, because it walks, being a ground animal, while the deer mouse more often bounds. The delicate lace traceries of the masked shrew, shown in Fig. 4, are almost invisible unless the sun be low; they are difficult to draw, and impossible to photograph or cast satisfactorily but the sketch gives ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... died, a happy thing to do, When twenty years united to a shrew. Released, he hopefully for entrance cries Before the gates ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... In making me a slave, and making yourself a laughing-stock. Its not fair. You get me the name of being a shrew with your meek ways, always talking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. And just because I look a big strong woman, and because I'm good-hearted and a bit hasty, and because you're always driving ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... ushers? (The Two Gentlemen of Verona.) 8. Who gave the reception? (Merry Wives of Windsor.) 9. In what kind of a place did they live? (Hamlet.) 10. What was her disposition like? (The Tempest.) 11. What was his chief occupation after marriage? (Taming of the Shrew.) 12. What caused their first quarrel? (Much Ado about Nothing.) 13. What did their courtship prove to be? (Love's Labor Lost.) 14. What did their married life resemble? (A Comedy of Errors.) 15. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... faith, we'll re-enact a modern edition of 'The Taming of the Shrew.' Y'u'll find me, sweet, as apt at the part as old Petruchio." He paced complacently up the room and back, ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... that time has written plays that are remembered. The John Lacy whom Charles II. admired so much that he had his picture painted in three of his characters, died in 1681, leaving four comedies and an alteration of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. He was a handsome man: first dancing-master, then quarter-master, then an admired comedian. Henley would hardly have used a blank in referring to a well-known writer who died thirty years before. There was another John Lacy ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... is the origin of the word Nursrow, a name applied by Plott, in his History of Staffordshire, to the shrew mouse, and by the common people in Cheshire at the present day to the field-mouse; or rather, perhaps, indiscriminately to field ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... was free to one or two who knew all about it. There is an old story about the stick that would not beat the dog, and the dog would not bite the pig, and so on; and so I am quite sure that ill-natured cur could never have lived with that 'yang-yang' shrew, nor could any one else but he have turned the gear of the hatch, nor have endured the dog and the woman, and the constant miasma from the stagnant waters. No one else could have shot anything with that cumbrous weapon, and no one else could row that punt straight. He used to row it quite ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... her Sabbath face, putting off the mask of the shrew, which hid not from him the angel countenance. To-night he could in very truth call his wife (as the Rabbi in the Talmud did) "not wife, but home." To-night she would be in very truth Simcha—rejoicing. A cheerful warmth glowed at his heart, love for ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... ceremony, she was asked if she willingly received Henry of Bourbon for her husband, she pouted, coquettishly tossed her proud head, and was silent. The question was repeated. The spirit of Marguerite was now roused, and all the powers of Europe could not tame the shrew. She fixed her eyes defiantly upon the officiating bishop, and refusing, by look, or word, or gesture, to express the slightest assent, remained as immovable as a statue. Embarrassment and delay ensued. Her royal brother, Charles IX., fully aware of his ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... afraid, a shrew of a wife—shrill, vehement, and fluent. 'Rogue,' 'old miser,' 'old sneak,' and a great many worse names, she called him. Good Mrs. Irons was old, fat, and ugly, and she knew it; and that knowledge made her natural ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... traps about our temple camps only to find them untouched in the morning. There were no mammals with the exception of a few red-bellied squirrels (Callosciurus erythraeus sub sp.) and now and then a tree shrew (Tupaia ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... his poor little body stuffed, and propped him up with wire in the way they thought he looked nicest, and wrote a brand new ticket for him—SOREX MINUTUS. The lesser shrew. The smallest British quadruped. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... grind of doing the same thing day after day, year after year, seems to bring the meanness right out. I've seen lots of instances of that, and I'm perfectly sure that if I were a farmer's wife, and had to work like a slave I'd be a perfect shrew and there'd be no ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... put upon the stage: flames issued from their mouths: they performed tricks of buffoonery: they dragged off sinners to their doom. Sometimes comic scenes were introduced, as in the play of the 'Flood,' where it was common to represent Noah's wife as a shrew who beats her husband and refuses to go ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... down upon her with a bitter smile. "So you've had your fool's paradise? Well, once I had mine, though 'twas not your kind. 'Tis a pretty country, Audrey, but it's not long before they turn you out." She laughed somewhat drearily, then in a moment turned shrew again. "He never knew what people were saying?" she cried. "You little fool, do you suppose he cared? 'Twas you that played your cards all wrong with your Governor's ball last night!—setting up for a lady, forsooth!—bringing all the town about your ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... laugh with careless hilarity. But they were mute enough now. A few of them had tasted the bastinado and been tamed; most of them had been wise enough to tame themselves. If Shakespeare had been a Turk he would probably have written a very different version of the Taming of the Shrew! ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... you use this dalliance to excuse Your breach of promise to the Porpentine. I should have chid you for not bringing it, 50 But, like a shrew, you first ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... all from the mines come down. 'Most all of us have in our day— In some sort of shape, some kind of way— Painted the town with the old stuff, Dipped in stocks or made some bluff, Mixed wines, old and new, Got caught in wedlock by a shrew, Stayed out all night, tight, Rolled home in the morning light, With crumpled tie and torn clawhammer, 'N' woke up next day with a katzenjammer, And walked, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... overcame wifely obedience, and Brinsden, hoping for the best, was constrained to cut a hole in her skull. The next day she was as impudent as ever, until Matthias rose yet more fiercely in his wrath, and the shrew perished. Then was Thomas Pureney's opportunity, and the Sunday following the miscreant's condemnation he delivered unto him and seventeen other malefactors the moving discourse which ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Mammals. Now the placental mammals are subdivided into various orders, amongst which are the flesh-eaters (Carnivora, i.e. cats, dogs, otters, weasels, &c.), and the insect-eaters (Insectivora, i.e. moles, hedgehogs, shrew-mice, &c.). The marsupial mammals also present a variety of forms (some of which are carnivorous beasts, whilst others are insectivorous), so marked that it has been even proposed to divide them into orders parallel to ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... in its radical sense shrew-ed, malicious, like a shrew. Comp. M. N. D. ii. 1, "That shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow." Chaucer has the verb shrew to curse; the current ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... an instant, as if the thought startled him with its truth and value. But when she added, with yet deeper seriousness of brow, "That's no way to tame a shrew, my love," he laughed aloud, and peace came again ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... a new piece of furniture several times; are attached to houses, and are extremely fond of scents, especially certain kinds emanating from plants. They seldom eat the rats which they kill, although they devour mice. If they should swallow a shrew, which is very rare, they almost immediately reject it. They will sit hour after hour watching at the mouth of a hole, and after seizing their prey, bring it to their favourites in the house to show their prowess, and strut about with a great air of ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... The Taming of the Shrew, by Samuel Hickson Proverbial Sayings and their Origins William Basse and his Poems Folk Lore:—Something else about Salting. Norfolk Weather Proverb, Irish Medical Charms. Death-bed Superstitions Note on Herodotus by Dean Swift ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... returned. Old birds are not caught with such wiles. I did succeed in gaining the ear of one of the gossips, and asking him what he could tell me of the good dame and her inn. It seemeth that she is somewhat of a shrew upon occasion, and that her tongue had more to do with her husband's death than the dropsy which the leech put it down to. Again, a new inn hath been started in the village, which is well-managed, and is like to draw the custom ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... played out, Shrew ball, shrew ball, Ole Confederate has done played out Shrew ball say I, An' ole Gen'l. Lee can't fight no mo'; We'll all drink stone blind Johnnies ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... or to whom they first referred. They seem to be the production, as they are the heritage, not of man but of humanity. It is essential to the permanence of humour that it should refer to large classes, and awaken emotions common to many. If Socrates and Xantippe, the philosopher and the shrew, had not represented classes, and an ordinary connection in life, we should have been little amused ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... painful, though as practical, by publicly attacking or defending theses solemnly approved for discussion by Congregation. These theses were themselves by no means always solemn, e.g. one of those appointed in 1600 was 'an uxor perversa humanitate potius quam asperitate sanetur?' ('whether a shrew is better cured by kindness or by severity'). This question, obviously suggested by Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, which was written soon after 1594, was answered by the incepting M.A.s in the opposite sense to the dramatist. It need hardly be said that ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... patent medicine venders whose grandiloquent advertisements take up so much space in our newspapers. Plato, in the "Laws," says that "The Gods, pitying the toils which our race is born to undergo, have appointed holy festivals in which men rest from their labors." Lucentio, in "The Taming of the Shrew," advances the same opinion in ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... without washing, for fear of mouldiness. In Italy they arm the tops of long poles with nails and iron for the purpose, and believe the beating improves the tree; which I no more believe, than I do that discipline would reform a perverse shrew: Those nuts which come not easily out of their husks, should be laid to mellow in heaps, and the rest expos'd in the sun, till the shells dry, else they will be apt to perish the kernel: Some again preserve them in their own leaves, or in a chest made of walnut-tree wood; ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... the little shrew being thoroughly game, and yet her act was less striking as evidence of her bravery, than as testifying her confidence in the chivalry of the rough men before her. And, indeed, it was comical to see the dumbfoundered and chop-fallen expression on their flushed and excited faces, as they took ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... really so!" exclaimed old lady Chia. "I always said that that girl wasn't anything like that artful shrew! Well, in that case, she is to be pitied, for she has had to bear the brunt of her anger, and all through no fault of hers!" Calling Hu Po to her, "Go," she added, "and tell P'ing Erh all I enjoin you; 'that I know that she has been insulted and that to-morrow I'll send for her mistress ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin |
