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More "Peevish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feeling, which directs the tongue to eloquence, had its effect while she listened to him, and she sometimes put on the looks and gesture of assent—sometimes even spoke the language of conviction; but this the first call of dissipation would change to ill-timed raillery, or peevish remonstrance, at being limited in delights her birth and fortune ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... understand, that, as I had been brought on board half famished, he could do no less than to entertain me with what was in the locker, and the rather as he had bid the steward enter me in the mess. Whether this disappointment made Mr. Morgan more peevish than usual, or he really thought himself too little regarded by his fellow mate, I know not, but after some pause, he went on in this manner: "Mr. Thompson, perhaps you do not use me with all the good manners, and ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... her own case and 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 ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Cranky and peevish at times we grow: "Just like a man!" Now and then boastful of what we know: "Just like a man!" Whatever our failings from day to day— Stingy, or giving our goods away— With a toss of her head, she is sure to say, ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... hair, brown eyes, and too-strongly-marked eyebrows; their features are neither good nor bad; their whole aspect is uninteresting. They have no winning dimples, no speaking lines about the mouth. All that one can notice is a disappointed, somewhat peevish look in the eyes. Such was Henrietta. The fact that she had not been much wanted or appreciated hitherto began to show now she was eighteen. She was either shy and silent, or talked with too much positiveness for fear ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... becoming impossible to Isabella, she left the neighbourhood, never to revisit it, and lived near London; and there her son, whom she christened Linton, was born a few months after her escape. He was an ailing, peevish creature. When Linton was twelve, or a little more, and Catherine thirteen, Isabella died, and the boy was brought to Thrushcross Grange. Hindley Earnshaw drank himself to death about the same time, after mortgaging every yard of his land for cash; and Heathcliff was the mortgagee. So Hareton Earnshaw, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was absolutely different from the type she had imagined. Always she had seen her as one of those vapid, pretty little creatures who had become old long before her time; peevish, spoiled, inclined to be flirtatious, refusing to give up her youth, still living in the recollection of her little day ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... the old man crustily, for he was rather peevish at being cut short in his story; "how could they possibly attend to such trifles as the quality of the wares they sold? The best of them were of a lowish average, the worst were transparent make-shifts for the things asked for, which nobody ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... Julia eagerly. "It is I that am turned so cross and so peevish. I am quite a changed girl. Mamma, what is the matter with me?" And she laid her brow on her ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... disappointment to a boat's crew, generally expressed in curses both loud and deep. And no wonder. Let any man pull with might and main for hours and hours together, under a burning sun; and if it do not make him a little peevish, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... now. Your nerves are all jarred, your head's in an unwonted state of excitement, and your pulse is going—though I have not felt it—far above its normal rate. You are ill, sir, bodily and mentally, in a regular peevish state of excitement; and as your doctor, speaking perfectly honestly and straightforwardly, I say to you that the medicine you require is mental; that you have only to go to the captain and have a few words based on my advice, and you will be ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... before the child could be quieted. The peevish little whine almost angered Noel when he saw how it was cutting into Christine's heart. In the hope of diverting the baby he put out his hand and began to snap his fingers softly in front of its face. There was a ring on the hand that sparkled, and the baby ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... those cloudy looks, that labouring sigh, The peevish offspring of a sickly hour! Nor meanly thus complain of Fortune's power, When the blind Gamester throws ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... arguments, the difference in our nationalities, our standing in our home communities (which I thought an especially weak point), our lack of a common language, and several other trivial objections, all of which Swank and I demolished until Whinney got peevish and insisted that he and I ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... eyes were hollow, and there was a look of woe about her which seemed ever to be telling of her own sorrows in this world and of the sorrows of others in the world to come. Ill-nature was written on her face, but in this her face was a false face. She had the manners of a cross, peevish woman; but her manners also were false, and gave no proper idea of her character. But still, such as she was, she made life very serious to those who were called upon to ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... getting old and peevish," said Jack. "You see he lives a lonely life, and has a narrow vision. Besides, some boys have given him a lot of trouble, and he doesn't know the difference between decent fellows and scamps. We'd better let him alone, and ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... impatience as he seized the poker, but I could not but notice the skilful and almost noiseless manner in which he manipulated the coals. Then he looked round for a match, and lighted a candle on the mantelpiece, in spite of a peevish remonstrance from ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... never at all intimate with that peevish old woman," Stepan Trofimovitch went on complaining to me that same evening, shaking with anger; "we were almost boys, and I'd begun to detest him even then... just as he had me, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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
... I'm sure I shouldn't have forgotten it if you had told me. But you keep everything from me. You are just like your father. You and James are both just like your father." Her voice had grown peevish, and an expression of fury distorted ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... her head, with the peevish persistence of weak obstinacy, and continued vaguely to weep as one ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and power of God be not so abridged and abased as to be thrust into the hand or lip of a lewd old woman, whereby the work of the Creator should be attributed to the power of a creature. Secondly, that the religion of the Gospel may be seen to stand without such peevish trumpery. Thirdly, that lawful favor and Christian compassion be rather used towards these poor souls than rigor and extremity. Because they which are commonly accused of witchcraft are the least sufficient of all other persons to speak for themselves, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... baby to be mine in everything, particularly as she is a girl. I am neither wise nor clever, nor strong now. I fear I am often peevish; but you will excuse me, because I am a weak, ignorant woman. Such defects are not fatal in a mother; hundreds have overcome them for their children. I trust that I will be, if not what a better woman might have been, at least more to my child than any other ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... think I've very much," said Diana, "but Meryl has enough for two, I'm sure; and for the rest, I never grumble, and I'm only peevish with very young men. That, of course, I might work off on ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... picnics, drives, parties, etc., this summer. I am afraid I am not getting on at all. My prayers are dull and short, and full of wandering thoughts. I am brimful of vivacity and good humor in company, and as soon as I get home am stupid and peevish. I suppose this will always be so, as it always has been and I declare I would rather be so than such a vapid, flat creature as Mary Jones, or such a dull, heavy ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... even from the lips of those she loved, with patience. She knew this very well, and she thought to herself, "if I could get into the habit of hardly caring for it from those very near and dear to me, surely it will be easy enough to meet it with indifference from a poor, cross, peevish, suffering old man, whom I don't care for in the least. The way must be, to get into the habit of it from the first, to let ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... got any money or not. How'd you like to buy your grub at these war-time prices and run a hotel for nothing, and at the same time keep up the assessment work on fifteen or twenty claims? Maybe you'd get kind of peevish when a big bum laid in his blankets and wouldn't even get up ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... to which blindness will inevitably reduce him. He fears that he will be nothing in his parish. I try to cheer him; sometimes I succeed temporarily, but no consolation can restore his sight, or atone for the want of it. Still he is never peevish; never impatient; only ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... slowly, and, as I drew nearer, I saw that he looked very much worn out, very peevish, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... neurotic condition of our American women. Our physicians are saying that there is not one American woman in a hundred who is nervously normal. The profession declares that they are excitable, irritable, peevish, and that this unfortunate state is produced by the unnatural and absurd tension they ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... will, kid. Don't get peevish. I guess Mrs. Braddock knows her business. Has it ever occurred to you that there might be another Romeo lookin' at Christie? Five years is quite a ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... whole kennel of them) would be dressed up in coats of silk and satin with pockets and pocket-handkerchiefs, and then led downstairs to the drawing-room, where Alma's wheezy spaniel and my husband's peevish terrier were supposed ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... statue. He found the father the exact antithesis of the daughter, a nervous, fretful, irritable individual (gout had him by the heels at the time), who was as full of "yaps" and snarls as any Irish terrier, and as peevish and fussy as a fault-finding old woman. Added to this, he had a way of glancing all round the room, and avoiding the eye of the person to whom he was talking. And if Cleek had been like the generality of people, and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... on thus, when Sophia, with a more peevish voice than she had ever spoken to her in before, cried, "Prithee, why dost thou trouble me with all this stuff? What concern have I in what Mr Jones doth? I suppose you are all alike. And you seem to me to be angry it was not ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... of good health and spirits. She early learned to talk and walk and was considered an unusually bright and precocious girl. Her earliest months gave a hint of her love for music. If fretful or peevish with weariness or ill-health she could soon be pacified by a gentle song from her father as he carried her about in ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... sea, whilst overhead trembled a white sky set thick with blackening stars? As I live, 'twas not ill-devised for a madman's brain! ... and so solemn a ranter should serve your Majesty to make merriment withal, in place of my poor Zabastes, whose peevish jests grow somewhat stale owing to the Critic's chronic want of originality! Nay, I myself shall be willing to enter into a rhyming joust with so disconsolately morose a contemporary, and who knows whether, betwixt us twain, the chords of the major and minor may not be harmonized in some new and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... What means this peevish, this fantastic, change? Where is thy wonted pleasantness of face, Thy wonted graces, and thy dimpled smiles? Where hast thou lost thy wit and sportive mirth? That cheerful heart, which us'd to dance for ever, And cast a ray of gladness all ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... 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 heard two or three of the bridesmaids, to say nothing of the maid of honor ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... even to deaden, the sense both of trust and responsibility in the non-official members of these councils. Anybody can see how the system tends to throw the non-official member into an attitude of peevish, sulky, permanent opposition, and, therefore, has an injurious effect on the minds and characters of ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... amongst ten thousand millions of men that is accurst, disastrous, and evilly planeted, whom Fortune beats most, whom God hates most, and all Societies esteem least, that man is sure to be a husband.—Such is the peevish Moon that rules your bloods. An Impudent fellow best woes you, a flattering lip best wins you, or in a mirth who talks roughliest is most sweetest; nor can you distinguish truth from forgeries, mists from Simplicity: witness those two deceitful monsters that you have entertaind ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... the council should recommend to the king the calling of a Parliament. At the same time, they passed a resolution that, in case the Parliament "should prove peevish, and refuse to grant supplies, they would sustain the king in the resort to extraordinary measures." This was regarded as a threat, and did not help to prepossess the members favorably in regard to the feeling with ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... 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
... in the lingering tread of her weary little feet. It was a look more painful to 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 submit ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... then proposed to send for the Lord Fitz-Owen, who would see that all possible care was taken of his brother-in-law, and would assist him in settling his affairs. Lord Lovel was against it; he was peevish and uneasy, and desired to be left with only his own servants to attend him. Sir Philip quitted the room with a significant look; and the two Lords endeavoured to reconcile him to his situation. He ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... twilight. The accustomed eye knew them for the chimneys of the Fox-Wiltons' house, owned now, since the recent death of its master, Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton, by his widow, the sister of the lady with the cat and the embroidery, and mother of many children, for the most part an unattractive brood, peevish and slow-minded like their father. Hester was the bright, particular star in that house, as Stephen Barron had now ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the way you take things," said Phil. "The town's gone crazy, and there's a mob in front of your little toy bank, but you're not even peevish." ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... born artists with their responsive minds, the "home children" for whom everything centres in their own home-world, and who have in them the making of another one in the future; the critics, standing aloof, a little peevish and very self-conscious, hardly capable of deep friendship and fastidiously dissatisfied with people and things in general; the cheerful and helpful souls who have no interests of their own but can devote themselves to help ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... to the store?" Fred very naturally demanded, peevish at being wakened at three o'clock in the morning. "I saw you in ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... school, and at their play—I think that I know something about them; and I maintain that a disagreeable child is a sorrowful exception to the rule, and the result of mismanagement and foolish indulgences on the part of parents and teachers. But when this abnormal nuisance is found, a peevish, fretful child—a child who is always wanting to taste, a child who ignores the admirable purposes for which pocket-handkerchiefs were designed, such an enfant terrible as he who told the kindly mother, offering to bring her 'Gustus to join him in his play, that "if you bring your 'Gustus here ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... passion he could not restrain, But shouted out, "You're thievish!" The fox replied, with fine disdain, "Come, country, don't be peevish." (Now "country" is an epithet One can't ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... of waste paper was enough to drive a bibliophile out of his wits. Gayangos was sent back to Spain posthaste. But, alack! he found a library swept and garnished; no trace of the volume he had once held there in his hand, and on the face of his friend the librarian only a frank and peevish wonder that anybody should tease him with questions ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Stimpson, if he thinks of death at all, thinks of him as a pitiful rascal, to be kicked down stairs by the family physician; the Bible of the old lady is seldom far from her hand, and its consolations are cheering, calming, and assuring. The peevish fretfulness of age has nothing in common with man or wife, unless when Joe, exasperated with his evangelical daughters' continual absence at the class-meetings, and love-feasts, and prayer-meetings, somewhat indignantly complains, that "so long as they can get to heaven, they don't ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... give over to him all that he craved. But Olaf always shook his head and asked her if she did not think that there was wealth enough for them both in Norway. But Thyra was not satisfied with this constant delay. Whenever her husband spoke with her she always contrived to bring in some peevish mention of her estates. She wept and prayed and pleaded so often that Olaf's patience was well nigh exhausted. It seemed that if only for the sake of domestic peace an expedition to Wendland must soon be brought about. Nevertheless, all the friends ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... LAND. One is peevish, if one can't have one's proper rest. What will you bet the Major has not returned home, and you have been ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... not to trouble me again." Thus after having passed through much danger with a spirit not unbecoming—as I hope—an English gentleman, I acted, when the worst was passed, like a peevish schoolboy. I am ashamed of my conduct in this small matter, and trust it will pass without much notice in the narrative of ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... prevail on the Imperial Government to convert Kingston into the provincial capital, that the seat of government should not be at the London of General Simcoe. He was not favorable to York. A muddy, marshy, unhealthy spot, it was unfitted for a city. Lord Dorchester, peevish from age, was, to some extent, under the influence of the Kingston merchants, and was inclined, by a feeling of gratitude, to grant the wishes of Commodore Bouchette, who resided at Kingston, with his family, and to whom Lord Dorchester was indebted for safe conduct through the American camp, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... without him. Christophe suspected nothing, and went off in high delight. In his naive egoism he thought only of the pleasure of having Jacqueline all to himself. He was not suffered to rejoice for long. When she heard that Olivier was not coming, Jacqueline at once became peevish, irritable, bored, and dispirited: she lost all desire to please: she did not listen to Christophe, and answered him at random: and he had the humiliation of seeing her stifle a weary yawn. She was near tears. Suddenly she went ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... is peevish anyhow, you see," Cleopatra explained. "Baby comes home to-morrow, and if there's anything that annoys mother to exasperation, it is to have to cluck and fuss round her chick like an old hen. She loathes it, and Baby always makes her feel she ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... there was holes in the ice of the canal, just as there is to-day, for it was the same season of the year, and the children all cried; and thinks I to myself, "If it was the dog that was going to put their father into the water they would cry less." For he had a peevish temper in drink, which was most of ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... was not a dress that he did not copy from some old print, or a passade that he did not indicate to the humblest member of the troop. The marvellous diction that I had noticed during the reading at Sarah’s served him now and gave the key to the entire performance. I have never seen him peevish or discouraged, but always courteous and cheerful through all those weary weeks of repetition, when even the most enthusiastic feel their courage oozing away under the awful grind of afternoon and evening rehearsal, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... you say anything I'll be peevish," protested Courtney in advance. "Please remember that the gentleman is a ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers swaddled by ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest as much; and presently came a singing, less musical than that of many a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart in mouth. A lute accompanied the ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... not seen her since that night. Unwell? Sits at the fire perhaps with mamma's shawl on her shoulders. But not peevish. A nice bowl of gruel? ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... acknowledge their debt, we ourselves are to blame no less. We find many men ungrateful, yet we make more men so, because at one time we harshly and reproachfully demand some return for our bounty, at another we are fickle and regret what we have given, at another we are peevish and apt to find fault with trifles. By acting thus we destroy all sense of gratitude, not only after we have given anything, but while we are in the act of giving it. Who has ever thought it enough to be asked ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... after all, is rare. Here and there a chocolate Pearl or a dusky crinkle-headed Blanche escapes our logic; but who can think of a sullen Nancy? Its very sound, tossed about the nursery, would brighten a maiden even if she were peevish at the start. I once knew an excellent couple of the name of Bottom, who chose Ruby for their offspring; but I have no doubt that the infelicity was altered at the font. The fact is that most of our names grow in time to fit our figure and our character. Margaret and ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... back a smile so sweet that she had never seen one like it before. From that moment a wonderful change came over the child. He understood the new affection that had come instead of dislike and loathing in the woman's heart. That touch of human love transformed his peevish, fretful nature into gentle quiet and beauty. The woman had seen a vision of herself in that blotched, repulsive child, and of Christ's wonderful love for her in spite of her sinfulness. Under the inspiration of this vision she had become indeed as Christ to the child. The love of Christ had come ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... of giants were got together, very likely one or two of the mere six-feet-six people might be angry at the incontestable superiority of the very tallest of the party; and so I have heard some London wits, rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that he occupied too much of the talk, and so forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance to listen? To remember the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... visit, when the servants appear without calling. This proceeds from the humane and equal temper of the man of the house, who also perfectly well knows how to enjoy a great estate, with such oeconomy as ever to be much beforehand. This makes his own mind untroubled, and consequently unapt to vent peevish expressions, or give passionate or inconsistent orders to those about him. Thus, respect and love go together; and a certain cheerfulness in performance of their duty is the particular distinction of the lower part of this family. When a servant is called before his master, he does not come ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... Collins's offer was now nearly at an end, and Elizabeth had only to suffer from the uncomfortable feelings necessarily attending it, and occasionally from some peevish allusions of her mother. As for the gentleman himself, his feelings were chiefly expressed, not by embarrassment or dejection, or by trying to avoid her, but by stiffness of manner and resentful silence. He scarcely ever spoke to her, and the assiduous attentions ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... began to sizzle in the heat. The same slender figure clad in immaculate white reappeared upon the south verandah of the florid bungalow. Herr Ober-Lieutenant stood staring about the small square with a peevish glint in the fair eyes. A big negro in spotless white hurried around the house bearing a brass tray set with a cup, a liqueur glass and a decanter. Herr Lieutenant sprawled his legs on either arm of a Bombay chair. As he delicately mixed cognac with his coffee, ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the eye by calling up the most hideous images—who shews the world through a discoloured medium—who warms the heart by no generous feelings—who uniformly turns to us the worst side of men and things—who goes on his way grumbling, and labours hard to make his readers as peevish and wretched as himself. The tendency of the strain of Homer is to transform us for the moment into heroes; of Cowper, into saints; of Milton, into angels: but Lord Byron would almost degrade us into a Thersites or a Caliban; or lodge us, as fellow-grumblers, in the style ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... putting up the donkey, and getting all the valuables under lock and key, the landlady warmed up the remains of our beefsteak, and fried the cold potatoes in slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had come far that day, and was peevish and dazzled by the light. He was no sooner awake than he began to prepare himself for supper by eating galette, unripe pears, and cold potatoes—with, so far as I could judge, positive benefit ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bones. "Let me introduce you to my partner. Captain Hamilton, D.S.O.—a jolly old comrade-in-arms and all that sort of thing. My lady typewriter you know, and anyway, there's no necessity for your knowing her—— I mean," he said hastily, "she doesn't want to know you, dear old thing. Now, don't be peevish. Ham, you sit there. Becksteine will sit there. You, young miss, will sit near me, ready to take down my notes as they fall ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... kind communication of the objections you propose to make in yr. new edition to my system. Nothing can be more perfectly friendly and polite than the terms in which you express yourself with regard to me, and I should be extremely peevish and ill-tempered if I could make the slightest opposition to their publication. I am no doubt extremely sorry to find myself of a different opinion both from so able a judge of the subject and from ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... romantic ideas; and when she found herself again involved in the 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the cotillon, as closely as his girth permitted, until an old lady sent for him; and he went and talked about bishops for nearly an hour to her, until his condition bordered on frenzy, the old lady being deaf and peevish. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... much as any approach to fawning or sycophancy. As his imbecility increased, he became daily more liable to mental delusions; and, in particular, he fell into many fantastic notions about the conduct of his servants, and, in consequence, into a peevish mode of treating them. Upon these occasions I generally observed a deep silence. But sometimes he would ask me for my opinion; and when this happened, I did not scruple to say, 'Ingenuously, then, Mr. Professor, I think that you are in the wrong.'—'You think so?' he would reply calmly, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... his black velvet cloak. In age about sixty, he had nothing that at a first glance seemed to call for a second: his small pinched features, and the downward curl of the lip, which his moustache and clipped beard failed to hide, indicated a nature peevish and severe rather than powerful. On nearer observation the restless eyes, keen and piercing, asserted themselves and redeemed the face from insignificance. When, as on this occasion, their glances were supported by the terrors of the State, it was not difficult to understand why ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... last I broke forth. "Girl," I cried, "how darest thou speak thus to me? Mindest thou who and what I am that thou loosest thy peevish gibes upon me?" ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 death came ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... little ways. When the expectation of Cecily came to us we made out to be delighted, knowing that the whole station pitied us, and when Cecily came herself, with a swamping burst of expense, we kept up the pretense splendidly. She was peevish, poor little thing, and she threatened convulsions from the beginning, but we both knew that it was abnormal not to love her a great deal, more than life, immediately and increasingly; and we applied ourselves honestly to do it, with the ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... which the peevish spleen, yet bitter malice of Scottish Prelacy, found gratification in attempting to destroy. But there is a righteous retribution even in this world. Men rear their own monuments, and write inscriptions on them which time cannot obliterate. Gillespie's enduring monument is in his actions ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... and in her hard, sad face With flashes of the old fun's animation There lowers the fixed and peevish resignation Bred of a past where troubles came apace. She tells me that her husband, ere he died, Saw seven of their children pass away, And never knew the little lass at play Out on the green, in whom he's deified. Her kin dispersed, her friends forgot and gone, All simple ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... think that a man's religion is going to rid him of his natural qualities. "Bishop Hall" (as you may remember to have seen quoted elsewhere) "prefers 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 ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the back of a funny little old 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
... 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. He proved that the war was forced upon us; that ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... asked me 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 better ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... it out with Aunt Agatha, so I followed her into her room, and asked her in a peevish voice what she meant by saying Uncle Keith would be so angry with me, as he had not raised a single objection, and, of course, as silence meant consent, I should most certainly keep my appointment at ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... by the hand And lead me back again to thine own land, The nook supreme, the sanctum in the glen Where pixies walk,—unknown to peevish men And shrew-like women whom no faith uplifts! Show me the place where Nature keeps the gifts She most approves, and where the song-birds dwell, And I'll forego the land of ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... corner of one of these little stones arrested my wandering attention; there was something familiar about it, something that stirred memories in my sluggish brain. What was it? I groped in vain for some clue. The pebble worried me, and I made a peevish gesture to throw it away. No! Whatever it was, I must not do that, rather wash it, wash it. Yes! that was what we used to do. But where was the batea, for now by some strange freak I was back in Brazil, and must have my batea. We washed our gravel for ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... sunlight-destroying, sky-scraping office buildings in New York and elsewhere; nuisances of every kind that I could think of were put down—the headquarters of the Beef Trust and a few of its sponsors; the editorial offices of the peevish and bilious newspapers, which deny principles and right motives to all save themselves; a regiment of alleged humorists who make jokes about the mother-in-law and other sacred relations of life; an opera-box full of the people who hum every number of Wagner and Verdi through, and ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... other, Murray afterwards Lord Mansfield. He then went into the history of his life; or, at least, into such passages of it as were proper for the public ear. He was interrupted by the Lord High Steward, whose conduct to the unhappy State prisoner is said to have been peevish and overbearing. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... starting about the fourth month and continuing until between the twentieth and thirtieth month, when the first dentition should be complete. As a rule there is an interval of rest between the eruption of the various groups. During dentition children are generally more peevish and fretful than usual, but there should be no general constitutional disturbance. During dentition it is of especial importance to keep the bowels well opened; it is better to have them too loose than ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... evening when Sarah had been instructed to put a hot-water bottle in his bed, Henry's tone, in greeting his aunt, had been curt, fretful, peevish, nearly cantankerous. 'Don't worry me!' he had irascibly protested, well knowing that his good aunt was guiltless of the slightest intention to worry him. Here was a problem, an apparent ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... to five hundred persons of all ranks about five hundred falsehoods of this conversation, of my fears and his own brutalities, against all probability as well as fact; and some of them, as I have been assured, even in the presence of your grace. His meanings and his movements were indeed peevish enough, but his words were not. He threatened me with nothing but his pen, yet owned he had no pretence to wit. And indeed I am heartily glad for his own sake that he proceeded no farther, for the least uproar would have called his nearest neighbours ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... his shoulder leaning against them, wrapped in a grey soldier's coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidrigailov. His face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception. They both, Svidrigailov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes without speaking. At last it struck Achilles as irregular for a man not drunk to be standing three steps from him, staring ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... William. The Lieutenant-Commander coughed apologetically. "He's peevish," he said. "Thought it was us blowing up at first. Wants to know why we wasted a torpedo: thinks he could have captured her and taken the crew prisoners if we'd left it ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... 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 ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and mother were also to be seen; the latter, sour, shrewish, and solemn, in her black hood and close pinners, with a book of devotion in her hand; the former, exhibiting beneath a black silk Geneva cowl, or skull-cap, which sate as close to the head as if it had been shaven, a pinched, peevish, Puritanical set of features, terminating in a hungry, reddish, peaked beard, forming on the whole a countenance in the expression of which the hypocrite seemed to contend with the miser and the knave. "And it is to make room for such scarecrows as these," thought Ravenswood, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... now, as Steele returned to us and entered the stage, he spoke of this report. "It's the longest and the best I ever turned in," he said, with a gray flame in his eyes. "I shan't let Russ read it. He's peevish because I want his part put on record. And listen, Diane. There's to be a blank line in this report. Your father's name will never be recorded. Neither the Governor, nor the adjutant-general, nor Captain Neal, nor any one ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... in a peevish voice; 'to think of my brother Nonus serving me such a trick! What would our blessed mother have said could she have seen it? My whole kit gone, to say nothing of my venture in the voyage! And now I have kicked off a pair of new ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have I found But weeping, and alas, And sorrow, which doth now surround Me, and augment my cross. 73. Ah, bleeding conscience, how did I Thee check when thou didst tell Me of my faults, for which I lie Dead while I live in hell. 74. I took thee for some peevish foe, When thou didst me accuse, Therefore I did thee buffet so, And counsel did refuse. 75. Thou often didst me tidings bring, How God did me dislike, Because I took delight in sin, But I thy news did slight. 76. Ah, Mind, why ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bosom; his own fell 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unconsciously takes on the nature of the body. A peevish, snarling, ailing man can not develop the vigor and strength of character which is possible to a healthy, robust, cheerful man. There is an inherent love in the human mind for wholeness, a demand that man shall ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... new-made aldermen and burgesses, and they asked the reason of the hubbub and tumult; and with that every man began to tell his own tale, so that nothing could be heard distinctly. Then was a silence commanded, and the old fox Incredulity began to speak. 'My lord,' quoth he, 'here are a couple of peevish gentlemen, that have, as a fruit of their bad dispositions, and, as I fear, through the advice of one Mr. Discontent, tumultuously gathered this company against me this day, and also attempted to run the town into acts of ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... knew what it was crying about, it being merely a matter of atmosphere and unstrung nerves; but that is cause enough to turn the mind of a sick child all awry, twisting out happiness and twisting in peevish, fretful feelings. ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... was answered—answered by a very sour and peevish woman next door, who thrust her head out of the window, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... a little, and his lean face was as hard and as impassive as ever, and the bright blue eyes shone from it steady and unwinking. Stewart looked up to him with a sort of peevish resentment at the man's confidence and cool poise. It was an odd reversal of their ordinary relations. For the hour the duller villain, the man who was wont to take orders and to refrain from overmuch thought or question, seemed to have become master. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... to the Envoy on a matter which should have been left to him to arrange. He complained bitterly of the way in which he was reduced to a cypher—'degraded from a general to the "Lord-Lieutenant's head constable."' Broadfoot went from the General to the Envoy, who 'was peevish,' and denounced the General as fidgety. He declared the enemy to be contemptible, and that as for Broadfoot and his sappers, twenty men with pickaxes were enough; all they were wanted for was to pick stones from ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... dread that Mark would come too late, and then—God's other means! She trembled, and strained her ears to catch the sound of wheels. Mrs. Ardagh now seemed to be sinking into sleep—Catherine strove to rouse her. She stirred and said, "What is it?" in a voice that sounded peevish. ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... visibly aged during the year. It was only in his office that he maintained anything of the spruce appearance and 'sang froid' which had distinguished the diplomatist and the young adventurer. At home he had fallen into the slovenliness that marks a disappointed old age. Was Mrs. Mavick peevish and unreasonable? Very likely. And had she not reason to be? Was she, as a woman, any more likely to be reconciled to her fate when her mirror told her, with pitiless reflection, that she was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... he left no legacy, Save that his story teaches:— Content to peevish poverty; Humility to riches. Ye scornful great, ye envious small, Come fellow in his track; We all were happier, if we ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... jealous fears and suspicions; for where might a man not be who was so seldom at home? She had never been particularly fond of her husband, but that was no reason why she should not be particularly jealous about him; and her jealousy betrayed itself in a peevish worrying fashion, which was harder to bear than the vengeful ferocity of a Clytemnestra. It was in vain that Thomas Halliday and those jolly good fellows his friends and companions attested the Arcadian innocence of racecourses, and the perfect purity of that smoky atmosphere peculiar to tavern ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... should influence our very stride, and set its mark upon our "daily walk and conversation." It ought to make us so big that we can never speak a mean word, or do a petty and peevish thing. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... of the three occupants of the bed; she was about eight years old; her small face was delicate in its outline, her mouth peevish; she did not look a strong child, and self-control could scarcely be expected ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... "As it happens," continued the gallant, "we have lost our heads, and would be much obliged if you would recover them for us. You see, we called here about a hundred years ago and were murdered in our beds, here in this house. It was your great-grandfather's doing; he was a bit peevish that evening. We had arrived with all our trunks, had searched the whole town for lodgings; every place was crowded. Some one advised us to call here. The old gentleman, after a deal of grumbling, showed us into a room, the first floor ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... dared,—longer, indeed, than I had any right to linger, for I heard my mother's voice crying, "Janet!" and I well knew that there was nobody but myself to mix the corn-cake, spread the table, or run the dozen errands that would be needed. I slipped in by the back-door, and, escaping my step-mother's peevish complaints, passed into the little closet which served us for pantry, and, scooping up the meal, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Fy, fy, Laura, a Lady bred at Court, and Yet want complaisance enough to entertain A Gallant in private! this coy Humour Is not a-la-mode.—Be not so peevish with a Heart ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... is the misery, all that time one must be using some kind of exercise. Your fellow-servant has a blessed time on't that ever you saw. I make her play at shuttlecock with me, and she is the veriest bungler at it ever you saw. Then am I ready to beat her with the battledore, and grow so peevish as I grow sick, that I'll undertake she wishes there were no steel in England. But then to recompense the morning, I am in good humour all the day after for joy that I am well again. I am told 'twill do me good, and am content to believe ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... creatures we are! The slight bait so skilfully thrown out by Ralph, on their first interview, was dangling on the hook yet. At every small deprivation or discomfort which presented itself in the course of the four-and-twenty hours to remind her of her straitened and altered circumstances, peevish visions of her dower of one thousand pounds had arisen before Mrs Nickleby's mind, until, at last, she had come to persuade herself that of all her late husband's creditors she was the worst used and the most to be pitied. And yet, she had loved him dearly for many years, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... decided wilfulness. She turned impatiently from the nun's well-meant kindness and efforts to console her, which somehow were not what she wanted—not that, but something so different, poor child!—she was cross, peevish, fractious without intending it, scarcely knowing why; the nuns set her down as a perverse unamiable child: and so it happened, that she had not been many weeks in the convent before she came to be regarded with general disfavour and indifference instead of with the kindly feeling that had ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Mahomedans, men from Hindustan and one or two Daudi Bohras, the regular customers of the "Kasumba" saloon. There is one woman in the room—a member of the frail sisterhood, now turned faithful, nursing an elderly and peevish Lothario with a cup of sago-milk gruel, which opium-eaters consider such a delicacy: while the other customers sit in groups talking with the preternatural solemnity born of their favourite drug, and now and again ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... The peevish old man scowled, hesitated. He read the order again, hesitated again, and at last handed it back, his ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... levies. If Rais persists, he must collect our money at the edge of the sword; and this can't last, for we shall all soon die of hunger." These continual complaints make me melancholy, and added to my impatience "to be up and doing," make me very peevish. O Dio! but such is the lot of man, to suffer always, either in mind or body. Much annoyed at my taleb for eating Said's dinner, even before my face. These Moors, at least some of them, have neither honour ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... have 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 believe she expects I should tell her of the Anthropophagi, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... be captain of his team, or he will not play. If it happens to be a girl, she insists upon everybody playing the game she wants, or she will go home in a sulk. These people cannot agree long with anybody. They are quarrelsome and peevish. ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... 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 what she ought ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... custom that had unwittingly established itself, Ward C was crying itself to sleep. Not that it knew what it was crying about, it being merely a matter of atmosphere and unstrung nerves; but that is cause enough to turn the mind of a sick child all awry, twisting out happiness and twisting in peevish, fretful feelings. ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... so now, can't you? Laramie, you're powerful peevish to-day. It's that bump on your head. Who does ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... sentimental qualities. A woman who is growing old and has lost the members of her family, especially her husband, requires some object to replace them in her affection. To devote herself to social activity will be the best antidote against the peevish, querulous or sorrowful moods which so easily take possession of the aged woman. It appears that love, which is a phylogenetic derivative of the sexual appetite, and which in middle life is intimately associated with this ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... "mollified" so 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 of formal address ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... boots; and Davy was quite alarmed at seeing that a broad leathern belt about his waist was stuck full of old-fashioned knives and pistols. Davy was about to retreat quickly from the shop, when the old man looked up, and said, in a peevish voice:— ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... moment, the wind bent the long stems of grass in the direction of the declining sun, and died away. All that remained audible amid the stillness was the peevish voices ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Jim climbed into his mother's lap and said, "What's 'dead,' mamma? Where's Uncle Andy gone? Is you goin' there?" And the peevish, selfish woman took the child in her arms and went out on the sunny porch, wondering if indeed she was ever going there; whether this something which, after all, she knew had so changed Dan for the better, was ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... understand that she could not employ on my behalf an authority to which she had recourse to protect her children. I at once answered the count seriously, taking up the political question, and managing his peevish spirit with ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... for a time on the various baby-foods with which the market is so abundantly supplied, it is, nevertheless, the case that where fed in this way they are very apt to develop rickets or scurvy, and not uncommonly show evidences of bad nutrition in loss of weight and strength, becoming peevish and fretful, and ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... air of listening from an illimitable distance, which I can quite understand has an exasperating effect on people who do not understand and care. It exasperated Delphine now. I saw the blue eyes flash, and the pink lips set, with a peevish desire to "hit back!" ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the miserable, peevish, lazy, conceited, faithless, prayerless wretch that I am, but I know this too, that One is guiding me, and driving me when I would not be guided, who will make me, and has made me, go His way, and do His work, by ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... Sir William. The Lieutenant-Commander coughed apologetically. "He's peevish," he said. "Thought it was us blowing up at first. Wants to know why we wasted a torpedo: thinks he could have captured her and taken the crew prisoners if ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... men pick out their biggest shillings to lay against it, and 'tis held a favour for a gentlewoman to fill the pipe for her servant [suitor]. I have heard say some will spend three or four hundred a year after this manner, drinking it even at the table; and they that refuse be thought peevish and ill company." ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... will dissemble, a third will despise. Go, try to reclaim even the children of thine own loins, who are all trained through thy means in an evil course. Nay, even these also will scoff at thy rebuke, and say, "Our old father is grown troublesome and peevish through age; he is turned religious only because he has just done with this life, and has one foot in ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... wife of Socrates, noted for her violent temper and scolding propensities. The name is frequently applied to a shrew, or peevish, turbulent, scolding woman. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... from her room discomposed: from that she became restless and irritable; so much so, indeed, that at last Mr. Gaunt told her, good-humoredly enough, if going to church made her ill (meaning peevish), she had better go to chapel. "You are right," said she, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... approaching, and the light, falling dubiously among the woody places, gave a melancholy tone to the scene well calculated to foster any lurking feeling of awe or superstition. The night hawk, wheeling about in the highest regions of the air, emitted his peevish, boding cry. The woodpecker gave a lonely tap now and then on some hollow tree, and the firebird[1] streamed by them with his deep ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... at a feast of Heracles. Perhaps the remark of Mr. Leaf offers the real explanation of the presence of this long story in the speech of Agamemnon: "Many speakers with a bad case take refuge in telling stories." Agamemnon shows, says Mr. Leaf, "the peevish nervousness of a man who feels that he has been in the wrong," and who follows a frank speaker like Achilles, only eager for Agamemnon to give the word to form and charge. So Agamemnon takes refuge in a long story, throwing the blame ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... heedless body among risks that thou, Looking alone at the great shining God Within thy mind, seest not; but I see And sicken at them. Yet do I not require Thy purpose; whether thy proud heart must have The wound of death from steel that has not toucht The peevish misery these Jews call blood; Whether thy mind is for velvet slavery In the desires of some Assyrian lord— Forgive me, Judith! there my love spoke, made Foolish with injury; and I should be Unwise to stay here, lest it break the hold I have it in. I go, and I am humbled. But ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... life; but nods in sable plumes, Adorns our hearse, and flatters on our tombs. What is not proud? The pimp is proud to see So many like himself in high degree: The whore is proud her beauties are the dread Of peevish virtue, and the marriage-bed; And the brib'd cuckold, like crown'd victims born To slaughter, glories in his gilded horn. Some go to church, proud humbly to repent, And come back much more guilty than they went: One ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... no use being peevish. You are a great disappointment to us, but we have not given up hope. If you are not altogether with us to-day, there is to-morrow. I tell you frankly, Mannering, that I look upon you as a man temporarily led astray by a wave of sentimentality. So long as the world lasts there ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... She smiled a little now for the first time. "Partly on dat account, an' partly on his'n. Pete's wife Ca'line, she was a good 'oman, but she was mighty puny an' peevish; an' besides dat, she was one o' deze heah naggers, an' Pete is allus had a purty hard pull, an' I lay out ter give him a better chance. Eve'y bit o' whitewashin' he'd git ter do 'roun' town, Ca'line she'd swaller it in medicine. But she was ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... us. After amusing ourselves by repeatedly springing his tail and receiving the quills in a rotten stick, we made a slip-noose out of a spruce root, and, after much manoeuvring, got it over his head and led him forth. 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 ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... 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 ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the women; and their mates only shook off their pleadings with a peevish show of callousness, that was merely the dumb anguish of undemonstrativeness. For, while their throats were thick, their ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... 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 ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... dismissal of Puylaurens, but the brilliant favourite had become necessary to the existence of his frivolous master, far more so, indeed, than the wife who was no longer rendered irresistible by novelty; and the only result of her entreaties was a peevish order not to listen to any complaints against those who were attached ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... truth that none of us had the courage to brave her surprise by asking an explanation. My mother's air of surprise when any of us went wrong in any way was very terrible to us. One day, when in a fit of peevish temper, I had taken the liberty to cut off the baby's ear, her simple words, "John, you surprise me!" appeared to me so sharp a reproof that after a sleepless night I went to her in tears, and throwing myself at her feet, exclaimed: "Mother, forgive me for surprising you." So ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... perpetually—now this, now that—now disappointed and peevish because all is not exactly as I had pictured it, and now suddenly discovering that the reality is far more beautiful than I had imagined it. Oh, Helstone! I shall never love ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Sally's name. What he had wished was to have the name of the person for whom she was asking repeated. He now perceived that he had had a bit of luck. A wearying period of disappointment in the matter of keeping the paper-weights circulating while balancing the ruler, had left him peevish, and it had been his intention to work off his ill-humour on the young visitor. The discovery that it was the boss's sister who was taking up his time, suggested the advisability of a radical change of tactics. He had stooped with a frown: he returned to the perpendicular ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Catch for a Jest or a Quibble, like a Rook for a Cully; but any unprejudic'd Person that knows not the Author, to read any of my Comedys and compare 'em with others of this Age, and if they find one Word that can offend the chastest Ear, I will submit to all their peevish Cavills; but Right or Wrong they must be Criminal because a Woman's; condemning them without having the Christian Charity, to examine whether it be guilty or not, with reading, comparing, or thinking; the Ladies taking up any Scandal on Trust from some conceited ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... flesh soft and flabby; the limbs emaciated; the belly, in some cases, large, in others, shrunk; and the evacuations fetid and unnatural; and in a very few weeks, the blooming healthy child will be changed into the pale, sickly, peevish, wasted creature, whose ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... he said, fervently, "go home with that mare! She's very peevish! I wouldn't like to be looking at her! She has that way of jumping stones her nose'd nearly reach the ground before ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... ten years after Dalrymple's death. That time she passed in great poverty in some chambres garnies at Bruges, with her little girl and an old Madame Le Breton, the maid, housekeeper, and general factotum who had served them in the country. This woman, though of a peevish, grumbling temper, was faithful, affectionate, and not without education. She was certainly attached to little Julie, whose nurse she had been during a short period of her infancy. It was natural that Lady Rose should leave the child to her ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their time upon God's earth, grow old, wear out, lose their first love of what was just and true; and know not the things which belong to their peace, but grow, as the Jews grew in their latter years, more and more fanatical, quarrelsome, peevish, uncharitable; trying to make up by violence for the loss of strength and sincerity: till they come to an end, and die, often by unjust and unfair means, and by men worse than they. Shall we not believe that Christ has pity on them; that he who wept over Jerusalem going to destruction ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... The herring-gulls with peevish cries Rebuke the man who sings vain words; His sheep-dog growls a low complaint, Then turns to chasing butterflies. But when the indifferent singing-birds From midmost down to dimmest shore Innumerably confirm their songs, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... goes on the top of 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 ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... in the morning if you jiggers will close yore traps and lemme sleep," growled a peevish voice in the next room—on ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... more boisterous; the candle would then no more be thrust almost into the infant's eyes to make it take notice of the light through the mist of tears, the eternal bunch of keys would not dance and jingle at every peevish summons, nor would the roarings of passion be overpowered by insulting songs, or soothed by artful caresses; the child would then be caressed and amused when he looks smiling and good-humoured, and all ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... coming home from a dinner and concert at the Crown and Anchor found William, in a very gloomy and peevish humour, poring over the orations of Cicero. Henry asked him several times "how he did," and similar questions, marks of his kind disposition towards his beloved brother: but all his endeavours, he perceived, could not soothe or soften the ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... ails the peevish brat?" snarled the young boatman impatiently. "Rather look this way and tell me whom be these after!" The old man and his other son looked, and saw four men walking along the east bank of the river; at the sight they left rowing awhile, and gathered mysteriously in the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... relate Of fell ambition scourg'd by fate, From reason's peevish blame. Blest with thy smile, my dauntless sail I dare expand to Fancy's gale, For sure thy ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... she grew worse; for she never tried to grow better. She became more and more peevish and fretful every day—dissatisfied not only with what she had, but with all that was around her, and constantly wishing things in general to be different. She found fault with every thing and everybody, and all that happened, and grew more and more ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... I grew very peevish, and in the Dumps, notwithstanding all he could say or do to please me. I exclaimed against the Priviledge of Husbands, and vowed I would not be pulled and tumbled about. At last he hit on the only Method, which could have brought ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... companions at length recollected that, though she had embroidered a tulip and painted a peach better than they, yet that they could play as well, and keep their tempers better: she was thrown out. Walking towards the house in a peevish mood, she met ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth
... Mr. Hamilton gave vent to a suppressed exclamation of impatience as he seized the poker, but I could not but notice the skilful and almost noiseless manner in which he manipulated the coals. Then he looked round for a match, and lighted a candle on the mantelpiece, in spite of a peevish remonstrance ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... have taken unwearied pains, and have put the United States to very considerable expense, in order to give satisfaction to these people, but all we have done has not the effect; we are perpetually told of discontented speeches, and we often receive peevish letters from these persons in one place and another, that they are not treated with so much respect as they expected, nor furnished with so much money as they wanted. We should not regard these reflections if we ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... thousand acres of hilly pasture, and the undivided moiety of a lake brimful of fish. He accounted for his change of name by the favors Carruthers, deceased, had shown him. Therein he did his best to lie, but his present vein of luck turned it into the truth. Old Carruthers had become so peevish that all his relations disliked him, and he disliked them. So he left his personal estate to his heir-at-law simply because he had never seen him. The personality was very large. The house was full of pictures, and China, and cabinets, etc. There was ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... That Bacon loved Sir William Hatton's widow, and induced Essex to support his suit, and that rejecting him she gave herself to his enemy, we know; but history tells us nothing of the secret struggle which preceded the lady's resolution to become the wife of an unalluring, ungracious, peevish, middle-aged widower. She must have felt some tenderness for her cousin, whose comeliness spoke to every eye, whose wit was extolled by every lip. Perhaps she, like many others, had misread the essay 'Of Love,' and ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the dining-room, took the envelope without a word, and passed into the parlor, where, standing beneath the lamp, she tore it open, glanced anxiously at its contents, then threw it with an exclamation of peevish indignation upon the table: ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... by Lowe, whilst Mr. Disraeli leant back with a slight smile on his face, which was a blot of pallor beneath his dark, oiled ringlets. Ishmael was stirred, yet in him something felt amazement and disappointment. These were only men after all, not demigods, and some of them were peevish, some rude, some bored and inattentive. The whole thing seemed somehow childish; it was difficult to believe, except later when Bright's golden tongue was speaking, that in this place the nation was governed.... Afterwards ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Lecky, 'though somewhat peevish and very obstinate, was pure, generous, simple, and affectionate; and she displayed, under bereavements far more numerous than fall to the share of most, a touching piety that endeared her to ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... three o'clock, they came back again! And Casey neglected to send Juan after the tub to water the goats. Wherefore paw sent Humbolt, and watered the goats himself from Casey's barrel and seemed peevish because he must. Maw Smith came after coffee again, and helped herself with no more formality than a shrill, "I'm borrying some more coffee!" sent to Casey ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... from her for a moment; she caught at it painfully, and a peevish expression crossed ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... three 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 into ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... found in these. 72. But nothing, nothing have I found But weeping, and alas, And sorrow, which doth now surround Me, and augment my cross. 73. Ah, bleeding conscience, how did I Thee check when thou didst tell Me of my faults, for which I lie Dead while I live in hell. 74. I took thee for some peevish foe, When thou didst me accuse, Therefore I did thee buffet so, And counsel did refuse. 75. Thou often didst me tidings bring, How God did me dislike, Because I took delight in sin, But I thy news did slight. 76. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... impossible to Isabella, she left the neighbourhood, never to revisit it, and lived near London; and there her son, whom she christened Linton, was born a few months after her escape. He was an ailing, peevish creature. When Linton was twelve, or a little more, and Catherine thirteen, Isabella died, and the boy was brought to Thrushcross Grange. Hindley Earnshaw drank himself to death about the same ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... mess?" he observed. "Ain't he a mess? I expect he'll be right down peevish about it when ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... "Peevish person, your young friend," Ismay commented confidentially to Alison. "Still, there's something in what he says. Shall we—ah—begin ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... several nurses who appeared to look upon their work as tasks to be executed mechanically, instead of duties to be performed with pleasure. Then again, others who really preferred the work were either kept away from it entirely, or else made dull, peevish and irritable by the great number of hours they were forced to be on duty each day, thus turning what should have been pleasant employment into a drudgery. And like the nurses, so were the orderlies; their daily work hours were so long and their pay so small that only the least intelligent ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... "Name of Riley, he is. But 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 ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... that 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 girth ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... this peevish little pigmy was put into short dresses, his father resigned his position in the United States Army to accept a like position with the Czar of Russia. The first railroad constructed in Russia, from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, was built under the superintendence of Major Whistler, who also designed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... merely serving and working members of the state was thus done away— at the same time solving the social question by the most comprehensive and systematic emigration known in history. With all the determination and all the peevish obstinacy of dotage the restored oligarchy obtruded the principle of deceased generations—that Italy must remain the ruling land and Rome the ruling city in Italy—afresh on the present. Even in the lifetime of Gracchus the claims of the Italian allies had been decidedly ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband; And, when she's froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she, but a contending rebel, And graceless ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... than to bear with patience the apparently unreasonable depression and ever-varying whims of the peevish convalescent, whose powers of self-control have been prostrated by long bodily exhaustion. Nothing is more trying than to find anxious exertions for their comfort and amusement, either entirely unnoticed and useless, or met with petulant contradiction and ungrateful irritation. Those who have themselves ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... 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 tell me about ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... to struggle; he cowed there, his head drooping between his shoulders. All he did was to utter a peevish cry, as children do ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... thus far when news came of the death of Lord Byron, and put an end at once to a strain of somewhat peevish invective, which was intended to meet his eye, not to insult his memory. Had we known that we were writing his epitaph, we must have done it with a different feeling. As it is, we think it better and more like himself, to let what we had written stand, than to take up ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... you be so alarmed, Isabel? Of course I have," he continued, in a peevish, though kind tone, as he took hold of her ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... good yourself—for a Winner," Brion snapped back. His exhaustion and sudden peevish anger at this man let the insulting words slip ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... head that day; But, when he began in his artful way To talk of Insurance (Life), And asked me 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 better ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... Christian's offence against me and mine? Born a Mankesman—bred and nursed in the island—he broke the laws under which he lived, and died for the breach of them, after the fair trial which they allowed.—Methinks, Margaret, we have enough of this peevish and foolish magistrate—I attend you ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... said Cecil gravely. "Now, Duke can be ever so snappish and peevish; I'm not half so much ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... desk sergeant yawned. "Stick him in the cage. We'll call up this Lescott party later on. I guess he's still in the hay, and it might make him peevish ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... I try my hand at writing in a "happy vein." God forbid that I should be such a villain! For I once knew a man who, by reading these happy books, fell into pessimism and a sharp decline. He had wasted to a peevish shadow and had taken to his bed before his physician discovered the seat of his anaemia. It was only by cutting the evil dose, chapter by chapter, that he finally restored him to his friends. Yet neither supposition of my case is true. We who enjoy wet and windy days are ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... never pursue the solution of the great Problem, might he not change that determination at a moment when he foresaw success? He was now fifty-nine years old. At that age a predominant idea contracts a certain peevish fixedness which is the first ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... possess'd of Employments, Commissions, Pensions, and Preferments here, she makes near two Millions by the Trade with Ireland; which I know is more than she gains from the rest of the World. I am not peevish, or at least so peevish, as I used to be, when I had vile Flesh and Blood about me; but these are plain confest honest Truths, and if that generous large thoughted Nation, will consider them calmly and candidly; possibly she will make us other Returns, than cramping our Trade, making ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... the man that we prefer to think. His letters display, in passages which he would not have desired to see quoted, the depth and tenderness and thoughtfulness of his affections. He must have been a delightful friend: illness could not make him peevish, and his correspondence with old college companions could never be taken for that of a consciously dying man. He had perfect courage, and resolution even in his seeming irresoluteness. He was resolved to be, and continued ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... much ado, his Book before him laid, And Parchment with the smoother side display'd; He takes the Papers, lays 'em down agen, And with unwilling fingers tries his Pen; Some peevish quarrel straight he tries to pick, His Quill writes double, or his Ink's too thick; Infuse more Water; now 'tis grown too thin, It sinks, nor can the characters be ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... 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 no production more properly her owne, than that ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... epicurean, who after his long toil had made his bed in the sun, on which he was preparing to lie down in genial content till the end came. But he feels he must not think of rest; and that, heavy as he is, and irksome to him as it is to move, he must before long be a rover again. Still he is never peevish upon his fortune; he puts the best face on things as long as they ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... by a diminutive red-faced woman, with hair and eyes very much like his own, and a face that wore a peevish, pinched expression. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... whether Tompkins comes off or not," replied Tom Aldridge in the same peevish tone as he had spoken at first. "What's the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... illness. She is not so foolish as to expect to find a pleasant taste in physic, but she expects that it will be of service to her; and she would rather have a bitter taste in her mouth for a few moments, than endure days, weeks, and months of pain and sickness. As peevish, fretful tempers often bring disease on the body, so a patient, even temper not only lessens all suffering, but helps to cure the diseases of the body; Miss Emma, therefore, will perhaps in a short time regain her health, and ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... the play saying to his wife, 'Do you hate me? I can bear that hatred very easily, since of my dishonour I make money.' Not a whit more really in love than this husband is the one, who, not for gain but merely for the sexual appetite, puts up with a peevish and unsympathetic wife, as Philippides, the comic poet, ridiculed the orator, Stratocles, 'You scarce can kiss her if she turns her back on you.' If, however, we ought to give the name of love to this passion, then is it an effeminate and bastard love, and like at Cynosarges,[67] ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... a dozen entered; for a few paces within the doorway the Queen-Mother stood still to receive my patron, who had advanced to meet her. It seemed to me that she was not best pleased to see him at that moment; her voice rang somewhat loud and peevish as she said, "What, my lord! Is it you? I came to receive the trophies from Rocroy, and did not expect to see ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick to feel for his own dignity, slow to sympathise with the sufferings of others, and prone to the error, common in superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevish and malignant moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his direction every corner of the realm was subjected to a constant and minute inspection. Every little congregation of separatists was tracked out and broken up. Even the devotions of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the deadly blaze of August, That turns men faint and mad, She quiets the peevish urchins By telling a dream she had— A heaven with marble counters, And ice, and a singing fan; And a God in white, so friendly, Just like the ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... of depression which attacked him, Scott was the strongest combination of a strong mind in a strong body that I have ever known. And this because he was so weak! Naturally so peevish, highly strung, irritable, depressed and moody. Practically such a conquest of himself, such vitality, such push and determination, and withal in himself such personal and magnetic charm. He was naturally an idle man, he has told us so;[134] he had been a poor man, and he had a horror of leaving ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... palm, and laid his own upon it. "'T is fairly spoken," he said slowly, "and I think you mean it." Then he grew peevish. "A pest on this country!" he cried. "We are all kings in disguise, and have a monarchy hidden in our hats. And what does it amount to? No bread, no wine, no thanks; a dog's life and a jackal's death,—and all to hold some leagues of barren land for his petticoat-ridden majesty at Versailles. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... is the spirit of this prayer, Moses does not appear resigned to the divine order, but rather peevish and fretful at the disappointment of his hope, which he had till then entertained. He had expected to lead Israel to the land of promise; if not indulged, seems not to have cared what became of himself or his family; and is thought here to address his maker, ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... the large bony hand which Peter had imposed upon his shoulder, and was about to say something peevish, upon so unpleasant and insolent a mode of interruption, when the door opened, a treble voice saying to the sentinel, 'I tell you I maun be in, to see if Mr. Nixon's here;' and little Benjie thrust in his mop-head and keen ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... of Mr. Collins's offer was now nearly at an end, and Elizabeth had only to suffer from the uncomfortable feelings necessarily attending it, and occasionally from some peevish allusions of her mother. As for the gentleman himself, his feelings were chiefly expressed, not by embarrassment or dejection, or by trying to avoid her, but by stiffness of manner and resentful silence. He scarcely ever spoke to her, and the assiduous attentions which he ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Georgette had been more feverish and consequently more peevish; she was crying, and would not be pacified. I thought a particular draught ordered, disagreed with her, and I doubted whether it ought to be continued; I waited impatiently for the doctor's coming in order to ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... like that, no business to have jumped into a moving train, no business to put that huge hand-bag into a rack which was 'for light baggage only,' and no business to be wearing, at this hour and in this place, a top-hat. These four peevish objections floated sleepily together round my brain. It was not till the man turned round, and I met his eye, that I awoke fully—awoke to danger. I had never seen a murderer, but I knew that the man who was so steadfastly peering at me now...I ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... with sighs and groans To ease my limbs, to rest my bones, As if my bed were stuffed with stones, No peevish murmur tips my tongue— Ah no! for every sound upflung Says: "Lad, you're free and ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... what we can do to avoid falling under the dominion of these uncanny fears and fancies, as we fall from middle age to age. A dreary, dispirited, unhappy, peevish old man or old woman is a very miserable spectacle; while, at the same time, generous, courteous, patient, modest, tender old age is one of the most beautiful things in the world. We may of course ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... without reporting, placed two armed soldiers in the car, and ordered us sent back. It was futile to point out to him that passes issued by the Military Governor General did not need to conform to the local rules; in fact, it only made him peevish. We scorched back over the road to Liege, but I succeeded in making the soldiers stop at a small town where there was a local headquarters of some sort with a colonel in command, I got him to look at our pass which had been ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... you take things," said Phil. "The town's gone crazy, and there's a mob in front of your little toy bank, but you're not even peevish." ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... follows a "cold in the head," with running nose and a cough. The child is indisposed and peevish because of the cold. In a few days the cough becomes worse, fever develops, the breathing is quicker, and the baby looks and acts sick. The cough may be constant and severe; sometimes the cough does not seem to bother the baby, although ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... made a preacher peevish to have you land in the pit of his stummick with them sharp hoofs of yourn. But you're only an innercent little sheep, and they wan't no sense in his tryin' to stomp ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... National Gallery we cannot possibly see its beauty—see what the picture really is. No man is a hero to his own valet. And that is not because a man is not a hero, but because the valet is too close to see the real man. Cecil Rhodes at close quarters was peevish, irritable, and like a big spoilt child. Now at a distance we know him, with all his faults, to have been a great-souled man. Social reformers near at hand are often intolerable bores and religious fanatics frequently a pestilential nuisance. We have to get well away from ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... that a man's religion is going to rid him of his natural qualities. "Bishop Hall" (as you may remember to have seen quoted elsewhere) "prefers 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 ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... days ago," answered Bart, who turned moodily away like a peevish child angered with half sleep, and a pang from the ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... and peevish," said Jack. "You see he lives a lonely life, and has a narrow vision. Besides, some boys have given him a lot of trouble, and he doesn't know the difference between decent fellows and scamps. We'd better let him alone, and talk of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... Brown and Brandwhite), who had a position in the financial world which could not well be ignored, two places in the country, and a yacht. His long, lined face, with very heavy moustaches, wore habitually a peevish look. He had retired from his firm, and now only sat on the Boards of several companies. Next to him was Mrs. Hussell Barter, with that touching look to be seen on the faces of many English ladies, that look of women who are always doing their ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... affliction. And the philosopher Bion said pleasantly of the king, who by handfuls pull'd his hair off his head for sorrow, "Does this man think that baldness is a remedy for grief?" Who has not seen peevish gamesters worry the cards with their teeth, and swallow whole bales of dice in revenge for the loss of their money? Xerxes whipt the sea, and wrote a challenge to Mount Athos; Cyrus employ'd a whole army several days at work, to revenge himself of the river Gnidus, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... appear wrong side up. Hence arises most of the complaints, grumbling and murmurings, about the times, the weather, the government, the people, &c. To one who possesses, or is possessed of a malignant, peevish disposition himself, most of the conduct of others, and the times and circumstances in general, will to him appear wrong side up, and he will not infrequently find his own calculations up side down. Could we at once, view each circumstance in all ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... afterwards Lord Mansfield. He then went into the history of his life; or, at least, into such passages of it as were proper for the public ear. He was interrupted by the Lord High Steward, whose conduct to the unhappy State prisoner is said to have been peevish and overbearing. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... so tense as to become attenuated, but of a most rare and wistful beauty. His humor which is his weakest point is a thing of almost feminine perceptions but quaintly pliable, as the sense of humor in women often is, to an odd strain of peevish extravagance. ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... fancy he was clerk of the kitchen, for the quality and the quantity of our dinner generally depended on the state of his humour. When the report of the Embassador's making conditions with regard to the ceremony of introduction first reached Yuen-min-yuen, he was more than usually peevish, and conceived, as he thought, a notable piece of revenge. Some pains had been taken to arrange the presents in such a manner in the great hall as to fill the room well, and set them off to the best advantage. The old creature, determined to give us additional trouble and to break through the arrangement ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... at his ease upon a neighboring chair, with a pillow behind his head, a huge fur coat around his body, and a rug over his feet, had all the appearance of being very comfortable indeed. His reply, however, was a little short—almost peevish. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of good humour and fair play not prevalent among the Gafsa boys; there was no peevish squabbling, and I only saw one fight which was a perfectly correct transaction—nobody interfering with the two combatants who hammered lustily at each other's faces, and at last separated, satisfied and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... without superlatives they could not gaze upon the "view"; not with any satisfaction, that is. But this tourist could be heard moving here and there among the rocks, with long lapses of silence when she just stood and gazed. Jack listened and waited, and grew more peevish as the lagging minutes passed. If he went out now, he would have to go ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... alone, unless he, like myself, had some disagreeable experiences there, and I remembered that he had usually gone out when I had, and was seldom, if ever, alone in the studio when I returned. His tone was so peevish and impatient that I thought discussion was injudicious, and simply replied, "Oh, you're bilious; I'll be home early," and went away. I have often thought since that it was the one occasion when I could have easily broached the subject of my mental trouble, and I have always regretted I ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... at ten months unless he is unwell at the time or the weaning comes in the heat of the summer, when there is danger of his becoming sickly or peevish. Preparatory to weaning, the baby should be accustomed to the bottle. Provided the bottle holds half a pint or four glasses, the number of bottles may be increased from one a day at four months to two or six at eight months. The baby should certainly be weaned by the ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... careful not to trouble me again." Thus after having passed through much danger with a spirit not unbecoming—as I hope—an English gentleman, I acted, when the worst was passed, like a peevish schoolboy. I am ashamed of my conduct in this small matter, and trust it will pass without much notice in the narrative of events of ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... called. Remain by my side and sustain me, to prevent many a wicked thing and bring to pass much that is good. I shall always be grateful to you in my heart for it; that you can depend upon even if my weather-beaten face looks ill-humored, and my voice is peevish. Remember that I am a fretful old man, who is daily wasting away, approaching that bourne from which ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... an instant in her work to look at him, and her look revived that former pain in her father's breast; in his poor weak breast, so full of contradictions, vacillations, inconsistencies, the little peevish perplexities of this ignorant life, mists which the morning without a night only can ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... were missed, the damsel began to cry: Lady Catherine(100) grew frightened, lest her infanta should vex herself sick, and summoned a jury of matrons to consult whether she should give her hartshorn or lavender drops? Mrs. Selwyn,(101) who was on the panel, grew very peevish, and said, "Pho! give her brilliant drops." Such are the present anecdotes of the court ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... as he passed with a certain speculative interest. These eyes belonged to a woman, plain, no longer young, her sole attractions a soft voice and pleasing manner; and a small, meagre man, wiry as a grasshopper, with gray hair, a yellow skin, large nose, and a peevish mouth. In the faces of both husband and wife was a hungry, pinched look. Years of poverty sometimes sets such a ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... matter about that! They are old people: they recover in their own way, they laugh in their own way; mine ears have already endured worse and have not become peevish. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... demonstrated by Dr. Tanner to be utterly without foundation. What possible good did it do the world for Christ to go without food for forty days? Why should we follow such an example? As a rule, hungry people are cross, contrary, obstinate, peevish and unpleasant. A good dinner puts a man at peace with all the world—makes him generous, good natured and happy. He feels like kissing his wife and children. The future looks bright. He wants to help the needy. The good in him predominates, and he wonders that any man was ever stingy or cruel. Your ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... struggle. True, 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. He proved that the war was forced ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... for an astonishing fact,—Philip Withers married Josephine! Truly, the ways of Providence are as just as they are inscrutable. The meanness of Withers, mated to the selfish, helpless, peevish stupidity of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... sir, accept my love; Command me, use me; O, you are to blame, That do neglect, my everlasting zeal, My dear, my kind affect;" when (God can tell) A sudden puff of wind, a lightning flash, A bubble on the stream doth longer 'dure, Than doth the purpose of their promise bide. A shame upon this peevish, apish age, These crouching, hypocrite, dissembling times! Well, well, God rid the patrons of these crimes Out of this land: I have an inward fear, This ill, well-seeming ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... him to 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
... if he must be disturbed, he must; but he does like to be alone sometimes," said the girl, in a peevish tone. She seemed to think it very foolish to admit such an ill-looking fellow into her master's presence. However, she wiped her hands, and bade him follow. Opening the ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... fagged after his long walk from the Elevated road, carrying his heavy suitcase, that he worried about nothing save his own discomfort. Unable to find a taxi, he had been compelled to tramp the entire distance, and the fatigue of it had made him peevish. He could have saved himself at least a mile if he had taken a more direct road, but Keralio's orders were explicit. He must always follow a circuitous route so as to throw possible pursuers off the ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the observation of national peculiarities. I am not so sure. A man on a holiday generally takes his goodwill with him, and endeavours, at least, to restrain his temper and his prejudices. He may fail in the attempt, and be a peevish thing at play, but the attempt will show him at his best. From the hotels below, where the crowds of cosmopolis stayed en pension at reasonable and unreasonable terms, the sound of music and songs visited me in the evening. The nations were waltzing. International ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... "I have now given what testimony I could find in our English authors, to prove the practice of immersion from the time the Britons and Saxons were baptized, till King James' days, when the people grew peevish with all ancient ceremonies, and through the love of novelty and the niceness of parents, and the pretense of modesty, they laid aside immersion." (History ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... will not need it. Come, you've all betrayed me,— My friend too!—to receive some vile conditions. My wife has bought me, with her prayers and tears; And now I must become her branded slave. In every peevish mood, she will upbraid The life she gave: if I but look awry, She cries,—I'll ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... has lost an s at the beginning. Even wee, as the phrase "a little wee bit" hints, is thought (by Skeat) to be nothing more than a Scandinavian form of the same word which appears in our English way. Skeat also tells us that "a little teeny boy," meant at first "a little fractious (peevish) boy," being derived from an old word teen, "anger, peevishness." Analogous to tiny is pettish, which is derived from pet, "mama's pet," "a spoiled child." Endless would the list of words of this class be, if we had at our ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... exorbitant heats of spirit, or transports of unbridled passion. When a man is keenly peevish, or fiercely angry, or eagerly contentious, then he blustereth, and dischargeth his choler in most tragical strains; then he would fright the objects of his displeasure by the most violent expressions thereof. This is sometime alleged in excuse of rash swearing: ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... seated. The eldest, a woman of thirty-three, held a book open in her lap and was reading aloud from it; reading with admirable expression and a voice almost masculine, rich as a deep-mouthed bell. And, while she read, the glory of the verse seemed to pass into her handsome, peevish face. ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... made useful, and, so far as money could do it, faithful to his designs—diabolical as they were. He accordingly went one night, about the hour mentioned by Donnel, to the cabin of that worthy man; and knocking gently at the door, was replied to in a peevish voice, like that of an individual who had been interrupted in the performance of some act of piety ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... waiting for Mother Johnson who grumbled and fussed before she could be persuaded to take the walk the doctor had recommended. But, once outside, the sky was so blue, the air so pleasant, and Mary Rose so sociable that her face grew less peevish. ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... to his conscience, and could prevent himself from thinking uncomfortably of the future, as well as most young men. His secret, unadmitted voluptuous eagerness was alloyed only by an apprehension that after the scene over the telephone Lois might be peevish and ungracious. The ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... she approached the cidevant butler, with the purpose of decoying him out of the garden. But John Gudyill's temper was not improved by his decline in rank and increase in years. Like many peevish people, too, he seemed to have an intuitive perception as to what was most likely to teaze those whom he conversed with; and, on the present occasion, all Jenny's efforts to remove him from the garden served only to root him in it as fast as if ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... still in his bath. At length he arrived on the scene, beaming, with a sulky chameleon in his pocket, and flew about giving last directions, until he suddenly discovered that there was a violent hurry, whereupon he began to be boyishly peevish with the chauffeur for not getting off an hour ago. No sooner had the car started, however, than he fell into a serious mood, telling Stephen of many things which he had thought out in the night—things which might be helpful in finding ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... near as I can recollect. Perhaps my readers would like to know something about the occasion which called for this speech; but it is a long story, and hardly worth telling. The truth is, when little boys and girls get very angry, or peevish, or fretful, they sometimes blow out a great deal of ill-humor, something after the manner that an overcharged steam boiler lets off steam—with this difference, however, that the steam boiler gets cooler by the operation, while the boy or girl gets more heated. ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... 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. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... wife one day, and leaving her depressed by their galling situation, though she was never peevish, but very sad and thoughtful, he found his father and Julia Clifford in the library. Julia had been writing letters for him; she gave Walter a deprecatory look, as much as to say, "What I am doing is by compulsion, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... wherever she arrives, She builds our quiet as she forms our lives; Lays the rough paths of peevish nature even, And opens in ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Peter was in latitude 46 deg., far below the supposed location of the strait of Juan de Fuca, and there was in sight neither Gamaland nor the sister ship. The scientists with Bering were in such a peevish mood {19} over the utter disproof of their mythical continent that they insisted on the commander wasting a whole month pottering back and forth looking for Chirikoff's ship. By this time the weather had become very warm, the drinking water very rank, and ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... came home and repeated her triumphs and comicalities to this faithful friend, but receiving no answering smile, but, on the contrary, a solemn word of reproof or warning, she would often burst into a flood of peevish tears, saying that Dora was getting cross, and did not love her as formerly. In this the good woman saw signs less fearful than those of moral disease, but no less true; saw that this exposure and excitement were rapidly wearing away the frail foundations ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... narrow sphere, within which he wandered incurably idealistic, pursuing prosaic or utilitarian objects—the favor of princes, place at Courts, the recovery of his inheritance—in a romantic and unpractical spirit.[82] Vacillating, irresolute, peevish, he roamed through all the towns of Italy, demanding more than sympathy could give, exhausting friendship, changing from place to place, from lord to lord. Yet how touching was the destiny of this laureled exile, this brilliant wayfarer on the highroads of a world he never understood! Shelley's ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... as the event amply proved, were not those likely to wage a successful war. He was regarded as a timid man, incapable of a burst of passion or a bold act. In place of resolute opinion he courted argument; with an inclination to be peevish and fretful, he was at times arrogantly pertinacious. Although his health, moreover, was delicate and he looked worn and feeble, he exhibited no consciousness of needing support, declining to reconstruct his Cabinet that abler men ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of garish prosperity, wherein they sicken 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 father does not theorize about it. He says, "Nancy ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... is himself, however, delicate, overgrown, with a narrow chest, a small head, and babyish features, while mentally he is backward, with very defective memory and scant powers of assimilation. He is intensely nervous, peevish, and subject to fits of childish rage. He takes violent fancies to persons of his own sex. But he appears to have only one way of obtaining sexual excitement and gratification. It is his custom to get ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
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