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More "Peevishness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Whitty's, at the monastery, obvious chances had offered themselves and he had not taken them. Then there were the small acts of courtesy, the bearing of Gertie's bundles two or three times. Finally, there was a certain change in Gertie's manner—a certain silent peevishness towards himself, a curious air that fell on her now and then as she spoke to Frank ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... did not seem to hear him. She leaned back in the corner of the sofa like a wooden figure. The immovable peevishness of the face, framed in the limp, rusty lace, had a character ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... in Scotland acted with such folly, violence, and tyranny, as rendered them equally odious and contemptible. The transactions in their general assembly were carried on with such peevishness, partiality, and injustice, that the king dissolved it by an act of state, and convoked another for the month of November in the following year. The episcopal party promised to enter heartily into the interests ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... disliked by the austere brother, was silent. Amphion is thought to have given way to his brother's humors; so do you yield to the gentle dictates of your friend in power: as often as he leads forth his dogs into the fields and his cattle laden with Aetolian nets, arise and lay aside the peevishness of your unmannerly muse, that you may sup together on the delicious fare purchased by your labor; an exercise habitual to the manly Romans, of service to their fame and life and limbs: especially when you are in health, and are able either to excel the dog in swiftness, or ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... moralist; but he could be ductile, I may say, servile; and I will give you an instance. We had a large dinner-party at our house; Johnson sat on one side of me, and Burke on the other; and in the company there was a young female (Mrs. Piozzi named her), to whom I, in my peevishness, thought Mr. Thrale superfluously attentive, to the neglect of me and others; especially of myself, then near my confinement, and dismally low-spirited; notwithstanding which, Mr. T. very unceremoniously begged of me to change place with Sophy ——, who was threatened with a sore throat, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Milton engaged, and prosecuted it with vigour; but the most enthusiastic admirer of that poet, upon reading it will not fail to discover a spirit of bitterness, an air of peevishness and resentment to run through the whole. Milton has been charged with interpolating the prayer of Pamela into the King's Meditations, by the assistance of Bradshaw, who laid his commands upon the printer so to do, to blast the reputation of the King's book. Dr. Newton is of opinion that ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... noble nature, that my love was founded, and these will never change;—and if, at times, unpleasant circumstances should arise, into which my sex and age unfit me to inquire to throw a cloud over his features, or a transient peevishness into his humour, it would ill become me—in short," continued she in a trembling voice, and throwing her arms around Lady Percy's neck, to conceal her tears, "in short, dear Madam, you must remember that dearly, tenderly, dutifully, as Helen loves her mother, the wife of Greville can ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... pain) with astonishing fortitude and composure. Nothing ruffled his temper or disturbed his serenity. His faculties were unclouded, his memory retentive, his perceptions clear to the last; no murmur of impatience ever escaped him, no querulous word, no ebullition of anger or peevishness; he was uniformly patient, mild, indulgent, deeply sensible of kindness and attention, exacting nothing, considerate of others and apparently regardless of self, overflowing with affection and kindness of manner and language to all around ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... exquisite is this whole speech!—And that profound nature of noble pride and grief venting themselves in a momentary peevishness of resentment toward Florizel:— ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... boys—nice little fellows—are great friends of Edna's brothers, and often come out to spend Saturday with Frank and Charlie. Louis sometimes comes for a holiday, and shows himself much more manly; he is gradually outgrowing his peevishness and selfishness, so that he bids fair to be a ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... a distressing excitement and a gloomy depression, her temper gives way; and even the words of the Divine Master lose their influence over her. She becomes fretful, and yet full of remorse for yielding to her peevishness; she seeks for sympathy, without being able to give reasons for needing it; she annoys those around her by groundless fears, and is angered when they show their annoyance. In fine, she is utterly wretched, without any ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... had gone out, I threw it with some peevishness into the grate. Judith's expression had changed from mock to real gravity. She sat bolt upright and looked at ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... carry home on his shoulders a sick and starving girl from the streets. He turned his house into a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old creatures who could find no other asylum; nor could all their peevishness and ingratitude weary out his benevolence. But the pangs of wounded vanity seemed to him ridiculous; and he scarcely felt sufficient compassion even for the pangs of wounded affection. He had seen and felt so much of sharp misery that he ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... is very conducive to health. A disordered, or an over-loaded stomach, is a frequent cause of peevishness. Appropriate treatment in such a case will, of ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... promises of the Gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them, too; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read and meditate.... And he that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loves all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... to command her attention to listen, and scarcely waited for the end of the letter before her own disclosure was made. Francis was sickening with diphtheria; he had been left behind in the morning on account of some outbreak of peevishness, and Alison, soon becoming convinced that temper was not solely in fault, had kept him apart from his brothers, and at last had sent for the doctor, who had at once pronounced it to be the same deadly complaint which had already declared itself in Rachel ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of his still curly hair. It was the second rash, together with Henry's emphatic and positive statement that he was perfectly well, which had finally urged his relatives to a desperate step—a step involving intrigue and prevarication. And to justify this step had come the crowning symptom of peevishness—peevishness in Henry! ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... not to hear from those who have lived longer, of wrongs and falsehoods, of violence and circumvention; but such narratives are commonly regarded by the young, the heady, and the confident, as nothing more than the murmurs of peevishness, or the dreams of dotage; and, notwithstanding all the documents of hoary wisdom, we commonly plunge into the world fearless and credulous, without any foresight of danger, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... often arguing against the text of his own earlier editions. Webster's well-known complaints of Murray's unfairness, had a far better cause than requital; for there was no generosity in ascribing them to peevishness, though the passages in question were not worth copying. On perspicuity and accuracy, about sixty pages were extracted from Blair; and it requires no great critical acumen to discover, that they are miserably deficient in both. On the law of language, there are fifteen pages from Campbell; which, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... I know. Everything depends on her, and I think she can no longer have any reasons for hesitation. . . . At all events," he added, after a moment's silence and with a touch of peevishness, "I cannot see any that she could allege ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... to enforce his own opinion by peevishness, whining, or complaining, with the result that he ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... art, too, used by the nurses; they had no swaddling bands; the children grew up free and unconstrained in limb and form, and not dainty and fanciful about their food; nor afraid in the dark, or of being left alone; without any peevishness or ill humor or crying. Upon this account, Spartan nurses were often bought up, or hired ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... that minister of state, who so feelingly describes his horror at the first appearance of the secretary with the great portfolio, ever experienced sensations so oppressive as mine were, when my steward began to talk to me of my own affairs. In the peevishness of my indolence, I declared that I thought the pains overbalanced the pleasures of property. Captain Crawley, a friend—a sort of a friend—a humble companion of mine, a gross, unblushing, thorough-going ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... and elaborate work of a Lexicon. A story has been raised to account for it, and it has been ascribed to the impatient interjection of the lexicographer to his scribe, who, taking no offence at the peevishness of his master, put it down in the Dictionary. The article alluded to is, "CONCURRO, to run with others; to run together; to come together; to fall foul of one another; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... doer (c. vi., s. i.), and being bad, it breeds bad consequences. But the badness of the act is moral; the badness of the consequences, physical. There is an evident intrinsic irrationality, and thereby moral evil, in such sins as intemperance, peevishness, and vanity. But let us take an instance of an act, apparently harmless in itself, and evil solely because of the consequences. Supposing one insists upon playing the piano for his own amusement, to the disturbance of an invalid who is lying in a critical state in the next room. Do the mere ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... with a chaplet of asparagus, for as the asparagus gives most excellent fruit from a thorny stalk, so the bride, by not being too reluctant and coy in the first approaches, will make the married state more agreeable and pleasant. But those husbands who cannot put up with the early peevishness of their brides, are not a whit wiser than those persons who pluck unripe grapes and leave the ripe grapes for others.[156] On the other hand, many brides, being at first disgusted with their husbands, are like those that stand the bee's sting ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... evidence before all others, we see no hope for the faithful and earnest historian; he must give himself up to swim as he may on the frothy stream of private letters, anecdotes, and pamphlets, the puppet of the ignorance, credulity, peevishness, spite, of any and every ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... of ruin, and in a state of decay. In my seventy-fourth year, I am not sure that avarice may not lay hold of me, and tempt me to stay where I am, until I feel or am made to feel, by being told that I have stayed too long; and that peevishness too, an attendant upon old age, may not put an end to that command of temper, which I have ever endeavoured to preserve; and that, with such enemies to fair fame, I may soon impair and sully the character and esteem which I may ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... banished, and yet there is more whining in it than in any other country on the face of the globe. If we are to die, "Nibbled to Death by Ducks" may well be put on the tombstone. Little things are permitted to bring about paroxysms of peevishness. Even our pleasures have come to be taken sadly. We are irritable at picnics, snarly at clambakes, and ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... parables, like a detective out of a book," said Thornton, with a peevishness that his covering smile could not entirely conceal. "But I know you'll have your own way when you don't want to be too precise. How do you regard the burnt paper? ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... not continuous. Sometimes his spirits rose to exceeding liveliness, and then he laughed at the young man and joked him about Miss Miller. But a single word, however lightly spoken, served to turn him back to peevishness. One evening Henry remarked that he was compelled to leave town on the day following and that he might ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... married, I have pitied them from my heart. It is doubtless well—very well—if Fate decrees them a happy marriage; but, if otherwise, give their existence some object, their time some occupation, or the peevishness of disappointment and the listlessness of idleness will ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... contempt expressed (however natural) would destroy the balance of delight in the spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor who plays the annoyed man must a little desert nature; he must, in short, be thinking of the audience, and express only so much dissatisfaction and peevishness as is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. In other words, his perplexity must seem half put on. If he repel the intruder with the sober set face of a man in earnest, and more especially if he deliver his expostulations in a tone which in the world must necessarily provoke a duel; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... memorial lines, melodious, but a very little impotent—the English utterance of what Sainte-Beuve, I think, called "the discouraged generation of 1850." Now mere discouragement, except as a passing mood, though extremely natural, is also a little contemptible—pessimism-and-water, mere peevishness to the "fierce indignation," mere whining compared with the great ironic despair. As for Consolation, which in form as in matter strongly resembles part of the Strayed Reveller, I must say, at the risk of the charge of Philistinism, that I cannot ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... and austere, that disappointments have soured, or prosperity has elated you, or that habits of command have rendered you quick in expression, and impatient of contradiction; or if, from whatever other cause, you have contracted an unhappy peevishness of temper, or asperity of manners, or harshness and severity of language, (remember that these defects are by no means incompatible with an aptness to perform services of substantial kindness); if nature has been confirmed by habit till at length ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... worked like a mouse, her brain exulting in its vivid memories of her time with Toby; and she did not think of Gaga at all. She only hoped that he would not come to the office. She was feeling too tired to deal effectively with any peevishness from Gaga; although, the causes of her hysteria having been removed, she was not likely to repeat the failure of that other restless night. A heaviness hung upon her as the day wore on; a kind of thick readiness for sleep. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... through, and nursed him to convalescence. I thought I knew something of the peevishness of convalescents: but Farrell beat anything I had ever seen, or heard, or read of. By this time I was worn weak as a rat with night-watching and day-watching: but of this he made no account whatever. He started by using his greater ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The remotest chance. He was—he assured me—considered to be infinitely more useful than dangerous, and so . . . "But the Rajah is afraid of you abominably. Anybody can see that," I argued with, I own, a certain peevishness, and all the time watching anxiously for the first twist of some sort of ghastly colic. I was awfully disgusted. "If I am to do any good here and preserve my position," he said, taking his seat by my side in the boat, "I must stand the risk: I take ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... his shoulders and hanging down to his heels, a swallow-tail, tight pantaloons, and Hessian boots—extracting from his bosom his father's portrait and expressing filial sentiments to it. One was less likely to accuse Corinne of peevishness when one beheld the delineation of family worship in the Edgermond household from which she fled. And the faithful eyes remonstrated with the petulant brain for scoffing at excessive sentiment, when they saw how everybody was always at somebody else's feet, or supporting somebody ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... be married before she met him, Car'line, of them all, was the most influenced by Mop Ollamoor's heart-stealing melodies, to her discomfort, nay, positive pain and ultimate injury. She was a pretty, invocating, weak-mouthed girl, whose chief defect as a companion with her sex was a tendency to peevishness now and then. At this time she was not a resident in Mellstock parish where Mop lodged, but lived some miles off at Stickleford, farther down ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... was gentle, tender, and affectionate; of a disposition sensitive and attuned to all those rare virtues in her sphere, which form at once the treasures of domestic life and the ornaments of society. She it was who soothed the nervous irritability of her mother's sick chamber and perpetual peevishness, and graced her father's drawing-room by a presence that was attractive to both old and young, from its sweetness and unpretending modesty; her two younger sisters called forth all her tenderness, from the extreme delicacy of their health; but her brothers ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... you true; 'tis the fashion on my knowledge: Yet the good lord, to please your peevishness, Must put ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... resort in moods of depression, Pen, at that time, composed a number of poems suitable to his misery—over which verses he blushed in after days, wondering how he could have ever invented such rubbish. He had his hot and cold fits, his days of sullenness and peevishness, and occasional mad paroxysms of rage and longing, in which fits his horse would be saddled and galloped fiercely about the country, bringing him back in such a state of despair as brought much ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride or design in their ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... had. She rather enjoyed the excitement of keeping a firm hand over the elder ones, and she soon learned to have patience with the noise and heedlessness of the little ones. But the peevishness and wayward fancies of a nervous, excitable child, whom weakness made irritable, and an over-active imagination made dreams, she could neither understand nor endure; and so the first year after the mother's death was a year of ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... indeed, a darkened lot to the young bride. Her husband was a reckless, unsatisfied being, and though he ever loved her with all the affection of which such natures are capable, the warm expressions of his love, varied by fits of peevishness and ill-humor, were so unlike the calm, unchanging devotedness of her nature that she felt a bitter disappointment. Soon after the birth of their daughter his health failed, and he repaired to Italy for the benefit of a more genial climate, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... head, which nodded with self-importance; the features, in which an irritable peevishness, acquired by habit and indulgence, strove with a temper naturally affectionate and good-natured; the coif; the apron; the blue-checked gown,—were all those of old Ailie; but laced pinners, hastily put on to meet the stranger, with ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... conscious of their own. Every one makes mistakes, and these are often provoking or irritating to one who knows better; but a mild and pleasant explanation of the error is far more likely to lead to amendment, than a sharp reproof, leaving hard feeling or bitterness behind. Under no circumstances is peevishness or passion justifiable. Library assistants in their bearing toward each other, should suppress all feelings of censoriousness, fault-finding or jealousy, if they have them, in favor of civility and good manners, if not of good fellowship. They are all public servants engaged ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... proud, resentful) and ungovernable. At Essex House, he had to calm the rage of a young hero incensed by multiplied wrongs and humiliations) and then to pass to Whitehall for the purpose of soothing the peevishness of a sovereign, whose temper, never very gentle, had been rendered morbidly irritable by age, by declining health, and by the long habit of listening to flattery and exacting implicit obedience. It is hard to serve two masters. Situated as Bacon was, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with a suspicion of peevishness in his voice; "that is not very much. What do you think they mean to do with us? That is what I am trying to get at. Of course I remember that the gist of Mitchell's homily to us was: 'Don't go, if you value your lives, because those people don't like strangers.' ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... treacherous persons and mockers have run the credulous into such mischief. But this of mine proceeds from a certain gentleness and uprightness of mind and comes nearer to virtue than its opposite, austerity, or a morose and troublesome peevishness, as Horace calls it. This supports the dejected, relieves the distressed, encourages the fainting, awakens the stupid, refreshes the sick, supplies the untractable, joins loves together, and keeps them so joined. It entices children to take their learning, makes old men frolic, ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... exclaimed, 'What! have they given him a pension? Then it is time for me to give up mine.' Whether this proceeded from a momentary indignation, as if it were an affront to his exalted merit that a player should be rewarded in the same manner with him, or was the sudden effect of a fit of peevishness, it was unluckily said, and, indeed, cannot be justified. Mr. Sheridan's pension was granted to him not as a player, but as a sufferer in the cause of government, when he was manager of the Theatre Royal ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... All this gave me great unhappiness, and I discovered, to my further distress, that in my attempt to return to the old familiar footing I was neglecting the committee and losing interest in the affairs of the library. A certain peevishness took possession of me; I was no longer myself, and I lost the gayety and sprightliness which had been always my ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... big and burly like thyself, Thomas—nearly as thick-headed, but without thy indifference to danger and carelessness of offence? I tell thee that Austria has in all that mass of flesh no bolder animation than is afforded by the peevishness of a wasp and the courage of a wren. Out upon him! He a leader of chivalry to deeds of glory! Give him a flagon of Rhenish to drink with his ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... and very peevish wakenings. However, this shall be remedied, and last night I was distinctly better than the night before. There is, my dear Mr. Stevenson (so I moralise blandly as we sit together on the devil's garden-wall), no more abominable sin than this gloom, this plaguey peevishness; why (say I) what matters it if we be a little uncomfortable - that is no reason for mangling our unhappy wives. And then I turn and GIRN on the unfortunate ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. There was a touch of peevishness in her voice. "And we've had such a hunt to find you. Do you know what ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... absolutely above reproach. Unlike Nero, they quite properly ignored the merely social side of the event, and were evidently intent upon the serious struggle before them; and equally unlike Queen and Baldy, they showed neither the peevishness of the one, nor the apathy of ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... a low broken tone, some words of a language which I could not understand, and groped in a corner among a pile of singular-looking instruments, and decayed charts of navigation. His manner was a wild mixture of the peevishness of second childhood, and the solemn dignity of a God. He at length went on deck, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... we nowadays do, to call peevishness and inward discontent, that spring from private interest and passion, duty, nor a treacherous and malicious conduct, courage; they call their proneness to mischief and violence zeal; 'tis not the cause, but their interest, that inflames ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... been discreet. But on the other hand he was possessed of an almost Spartan courage; and through sorrow and suffering, through disappointment and failure, he bore himself with a high and stately tenderness, without a touch of acrimony or peevishness. He never questioned the love or justice of God; he never raged against fate, or railed at circumstance. He gathered up the fragments with a quiet hand; he never betrayed envy or jealousy; he never deplored the fact that he had not realised his own ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... the name uncertainly, still with that suggestion of peevishness, hanging over the rail and peering down at us. "Oh! By gracious!" he exclaimed, abruptly. "I'm glad to see you, Ridgeway. I had a boatman coming out before this, but I guess—well, I guess he'll be along. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... religion. Often, during the solemn hours of public worship, he beguiles our hearts with some scheme for doing good; taking care, however, that self be uppermost in it. When we are in a bad frame, he stirs up the unholy tempers of our hearts, and leads us to indulge in peevishness, moroseness, harshness, and anger, or in levity and ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... own Mind, than any Dislike he had taken at the Company. Upon hearing his Name, I knew him to be a Gentle man of a considerable Fortune in this County, but greatly in Debt. What gives the unhappy Man this Peevishness of Spirit is, that his Estate is dipped, and is eating out with Usury; and yet he has not the Heart to sell any Part of it. His proud Stomach, at the Cost of restless Nights, constant Inquietudes, Danger of Affronts, and a thousand nameless Inconveniences, preserves this Canker ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... his humourous way, gives his friend an account of the Lady's peevishness and dejection, on receiving a letter with her clothes. He regrets that he has lost her confidence; which he attributes to his bringing her into the company of his four companions. Yet he thinks he must excuse them, and censure her for over-niceness; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... men began to straighten their shoulders. The peevishness of one of their number seemed to bring out ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... every congregation in England—who is devoting herself for the good of others; giving up the joys of life to take care of orphans who have no legal claim on her; or to nurse a relation, who perhaps repays her with little but exacting peevishness; or who has spent all her savings, in bringing up her brothers, or in supporting her parents in their old age,—then let her read the story of Ruth, and be sure that, like Ruth, she will be repaid by the Lord. Her reward ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... women, and the very children whose voices I can just hear, are living by an outlook in which the values are different from those of easy-going people, and in which, especially, hardships have never been met by peevishness, but ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... degree, at random. At length I reached a spacious building in Fourth Street, which the signpost showed me to be an inn. I knocked loudly and often at the door. At length a female opened the window of the second story, and, in a tone of peevishness, demanded what I wanted. I told ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... passed within which the stranger's return to the borough had been so anxiously expected by his female companion. The disappointment occasioned by his non-arrival was manifested in the convalescent by inquietude, which was at first mingled with peevishness, and afterwards with doubt and fear. When two or three days had passed without message or letter of any kind, Gray himself became anxious, both on his own account and the poor lady's, lest the stranger should have actually ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... gardening. He therein thus addresses the reader:—"These cursory observations upon gardening, shall be closed with some reflections that must touch every reader. Rough uncultivated ground, dismal to the eye, inspires peevishness and discontent: may not this be one cause of the harsh manners of savages? A field richly ornamented, containing beautiful objects of various kinds, displays in full lustre the goodness of the Deity, and the ample ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... example that the pain of disappointment will be much increased by ill-temper, and that to yield to the force of necessity will be found wiser than vainly to oppose it. The contrast between the principal character with the peevishness of her cousins' temper is intended as an incitement to that placid disposition which will form the happiness of social life in every stage, and which, therefore, should not be thought beneath anyone's attention or undeserving ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... together. I was once apt to believe him a complete Cynic; and that nothing but the necessity of his occasions could compel him to get within the pale of society — I am now of another opinion. I think his peevishness arises partly from bodily pain, and partly from a natural excess of mental sensibility; for, I suppose, the mind as well as the body, is in some cases endued with ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Gentleness is a wonderful agency in managing a Negro: I know it tells powerfully upon white folks. The psalmist, addressing his Maker, says, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." It is a mighty lever; it moves the world; it moved it before Archimedes; it moves it still; but peevishness, fault-finding, scolding, cursing, premature censure, haughty and assuming ways, sullenness, ill-temper, whether in the field, the kitchen, the nursery, or parlor, will legitimately result in thriftlessness, revolt, departure, and contempt ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... of peevishness with Paw Coburn, and he was moved to say—answering only by implication what she had unconsciously implied, and seeming to take his theme from the landscape ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... heavily and damply in his heart. A stranger is at first unaware of the cause of the mental misery he endures; his temper sours as his spirits sink; every person, and every circumstance, annoys him; it affects even his dreams; sleep itself is not a refuge from querulous peevishness, and every motion ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... other tormenting passion which can agitate the human mind. Therefore to express jealousy well, requires that one know how to represent justly all these passions by turns, (see Love, Hatred, &c.) and often several of them together. Jealousy shews itself by restlessness, peevishness, thoughtfulness, anxiety, absence of mind. Sometimes it bursts out in piteous complaint and weeping; then a gleam of hope, that all is yet well, lights up the countenance into a momentary smile. Immediately the face, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... face, the horses exchanging friendly neighs. For a moment, while one could count twenty, the two rivals sat and looked at each other. Half unconsciously, Ida noticed the pallor and the worn look of the beautiful face, the wistful peevishness of the delicately cut lip; then suddenly Maude's face flushed, her eyes grew hard and scornful, and with something like a sneer she said, in ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... battle-field. The evils of war have generally something to lighten the burden of them in a sense of necessity, or of rights or honour invaded; but there is nothing of like importance to alleviate the sufferings caused by fretfulness, impatience, want of temper. The excitable peevishness which kindles at trifles, that roughens the daily experience of a million families, that scatters its little stings at the table and by the hearth-stone, what does this but unmixed harm? What ingredient does it furnish but of gall? Its fine wounding may be ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... his eyes at this unusual peevishness on Patricia's part, but he went on mixing his ingredients without comment, while Elinor, who had been bringing in the rest of the picnic supper, flitted about, straightening the room preparatory to lighting ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... dialogue, his daughter had been observant of him, with something more than her usual interest. It would seem as though he had a changed or worn appearance in her eyes, and he perceived and resented it; for he said with renewed peevishness, when he had divested himself of his travelling-cloak, and had come to the fire: 'Amy, what are you looking at? What do you see in me that causes you to—ha—concentrate your solicitude on me ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... uproar, and began clamouring for the absent dog. The audience took up the cry, the dogs barked more excitedly, and five minutes of hilarity delayed the turn which, when at last started, was marked by rustiness and erraticness on the part of the dogs and by great peevishness on the part of ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... tenderly and tranquilly that Chris was hardly able to keep back his tears. It seemed that the soul still kept its serene poise in that wasted body, and was independent of it. There was no weakness nor peevishness anywhere. The very room with its rough walls, its cobwebbed roof, its uneven flooring, its dreadful chill and gloom, seemed alive with a warm, redolent, spiritual atmosphere generated by this keen, pure soul. Chris had never been near so real ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... cutting their first set of teeth, often suffer severe constitutional disturbance. At first there is restlessness and peevishness, with slight fever, but not unfrequently these are followed by convulsive fits, as they are commonly called, which are caused by the brain becoming irritated; and sometimes under this condition the child is either cut off suddenly, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... into a woman too if there were a series of resolutions passed to that effect. The west wind is hopeful; it has promise and adventure in it, and is, except to Atlantic voyagers America-bound, the best wind that ever blew. The east wind is peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling, and curls one up in the chimney-corner like a cat. And if the chimney ever smokes, it smokes when the wind sits in that quarter. The south wind is full of longing and unrest, of effeminate suggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps we might say ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... peevishness, the ill nature, and the ambition of many clergymen has sharpened my spirits perhaps too much against them; so I warn my reader to take all that I say on these heads with some grains of allowance.—Swift. I ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... under God's blessing, profiting by his teacher's guidance, and trying to do his duty and please God. He will perceive that there is much in him which ought not to be in him. His own natural sense of right and wrong tells him that peevishness, sullenness, deceit, and self-will, are tempers and principles of which he has cause to be ashamed, and he feels that these bad tempers and principles are in his heart. As he grows older, he will understand this ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... Henry's favor for Cranmer rendered fruitless all accusations against him, his pride and peevishness, irritated by his declining state of health, impelled him to punish with fresh severity all others who presumed to entertain a different opinion from himself, particularly in the capital point of the real presence. Anne ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... complained with a smiling peevishness. ("Ye've got—ye've got remarkable eyebrows. The way they grow makes me feel all—all desperate.") "I've had a lie-down since four. You woke me up with your knocking. Dear, I've never been woken up so beautifully before. Now I ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... physiognomist would have resolved his temperament to an intense sanguine. He was fitfully impulsive, as all his movements attested, and liable to fluctuations of peevishness, melancholy, and enthusiasm. This was "Meagher of the Sword," the stripling who made issue with the renowned O'Connell, and divided his applauses; the "revolutionist," who had outlived exile to become the darling of the "Young Ireland" populace in his adopted country; the partisan, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... throne, refused to accept any part of it, and commanded him to use, without scruple, the present of fortune. The cautious Athenian still insisted, that the treasure was too considerable for a subject, and that he knew not how to use it. Abuse it then, replied the monarch, with a good-natured peevishness; for it is your own. [67] Many will be of opinion, that Atticus literally obeyed the emperor's last instructions; since he expended the greatest part of his fortune, which was much increased by an advantageous ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... under the sun, than sound and invigorating sleep to the weary, nor in our opinion, a greater grievance than the loss of it; because wakefulness at those hours, which nature has destined for repose, is, in nine cases out of ten, sure to be the harbinger of peevishness, discontent, and ill humour, and not unfrequently induces languor, lassitude, and disease. No two individuals in the world have greater reason to complain of disturbed slumbers or nightly watching, than ourselves. Heretofore, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... de Vere, and the first part of Maud, behave in a manner that quite justifies the woman. They whine, they rave, and they seem most of all to be astonished at the woman's lack of judgment in not recognising their merits. Instead of a noble sorrow, they exhibit peevishness; they seem to say, "You'll be sorry some day." Browning's rejected lovers never think of themselves and their own defeat; they think only of the woman, who is now more adorable than ever. It never ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... cannot," replied Arthur: and he felt vexed with himself that his tone should savour of peevishness. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... being requested in a peevish voice to explain what he meant by saying, 'Oh, I don't know,' condoned the peevishness. He then bent his mind to the task of trying to ascertain what ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... the enchanting hours which I passed in Mr. Garrick's society; he appeared to me as one who possessed more power, both to awe and to attract, than any man I ever met with. His smile was fascinating, but he had at times a restless peevishness of tone which excessively affected his hearers; at least it affected me so that ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... But poor relations don't do anything to keep you in mind of them. Why don't they? The king could not see into the garret she lived in, could he? She was a sour, spiteful creature. The wrinkles of contempt crossed the wrinkles of peevishness, and made her face as full of wrinkles as a pat of butter. If ever a king could be justified in forgetting anybody, this king was justified in forgetting his sister, even at a christening. And then she was ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... his people should not cheerfully, according to their duties, meet him in that, especially in this exigent when his kingdom and person are in apparent danger, the world might see he is forced, contrary to his own inclination, to use extraordinary means rather than, by the peevishness of some few factious spirits, to suffer his state and ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... summer, and one day, when the wind was whispering, he cried out: "Mother Carey, when I have done with my working life, and go into the Great Sleep, grant that it may never rain on me for I hate rain, and it has done nothing but pour all summer long." And he shivered the red knobs on his head with peevishness. ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... words burst from Maggie, in spite of herself, with a sudden drop from patronizing instruction to simple peevishness. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... dissembling behavior, as was to be expected, was greatly condemned by the rest of the spectators, as it was principally by the poor woman who was to suffer; for at the first she gave her not a word, nor was discomposed at her peevishness, and only looked at her, yet did she out of a greatness of soul discover her concern for her mother's offense, and especially for her exposing herself in a manner so unbecoming her; but as for herself, she went to her death with an unshaken firmness ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... now convinced that my brain was in some measure affected; for I had a kind of Coma Vigil upon me from April to November, without intermission. In consideration of this circumstance, I know you will forgive all my peevishness and discontent; tell Mrs. Moore that with regard to me, she has as yet seen nothing but the wrong side of the tapestry." Thus it happens in the life of authors, that they whose comic genius diffuses cheerfulness, create a pleasure which they cannot ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... in the parched air and stung more sharply their bloodshot, aching eyeballs. The dust settled smotheringly upon them, filled nostrils and lungs and roughened their patience into peevishness. A calf bolted from the herd, and a "hold-up" man pursued it vindictively, swearing by several things that he would break its blamed neck—only his wording was more vehement. A cinder got in Slim's eye and ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... could be given them. Charles was now seven years old, and had learned to submit, but his longing eyes pleaded for more; little Alice was clamorous, and the mother felt tears overflow her eyes to think that there was no possibility of yielding to that childish peevishness, and that the absolute non-existence of water must punish her poor child's wilfulness. When Paulett had set his instruments to work, to renew if possible the supply, and when Ellen had removed the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... view was due in part to the constant and wearing difficulty of getting Fred Wentworth to be civil to him; yet May Gaston was half-inclined to fall in with it. The attitude of offence which he had at first maintained towards her was marked by peevishness, not by dignity, and when it was relaxed his old excessive politeness revived in full force. He had few 'moments' either; and the one reported to her with enthusiasm by Dick Benyon took place on Duty Hill while she was gossiping on the lawn. Disappointed in the ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... of Folly treats of serious Matters, in such a gay, familiar, ingenious and pleasant manner, as makes it a Work proper to be read by intelligent People, to remove out of their Minds all Bigotry contracted by Ignorance and an evil Education, all Peevishness, Hatred, and Ill-nature towards one another, on account of different Sentiments in Religion; and to form in them the natural Principles of Moderation, Humanity, Affection and Friendship. Our learned and ingenious Bishop Kennet could not do ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... sometimes forget and wound the hearts of your children with frowns and the dagger of cruel words, and sometimes with a blow? Do you sometimes, in your own peevishness, and your own meanness, wish yourself away from their fretful cries and noisy sports? Then think that to-morrow may ripen the wicked wish; tomorrow death may lay his hand upon a little fluttering heart and it will be stilled forever. 'Tis then you will ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... having nothing on the earth to do, she became a torment to the King, the Court, and every body. Idleness is the vice of high life, and discontent its punishment. The Princess became proverbial for peevishness, sarcasm, and scandal. Of course, fashion took its revenge; and where every one was shooting an arrow, some struck, and struck deep. The Princess grew masculine in her manners, and coarse in her mind. Her appointment as ranger in Richmond Park, one of those sinecure offices ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... passed through his memory, and seemed to mock the base and chaotic reality around him. He felt angry with the old man for having broken his dream; he longed to believe that his complaints were only exaggerations of cynic peevishness, of selfish disappointment; and yet, had not Arsenius warned him? Had he not foretold, word for word, what the youth would find-what he had found? Then was Saint Paul's great idea an empty and an impossible dream? No! God's word could not fail; the Church could ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... to fidget about her brother. "He certainly meant to be home for dinner," she said several times, with increasing peevishness. ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... very careful, fearing for my life. And suddenly, I struck my hands together, and I cried: Ha! what a fool I am! Why, she told me so herself, when I saw her for the second time, and yet I had forgotten it. And all this while, in the peevishness of my own oblivion and presumption, I have been blaming her, expecting things utterly unreasonable, and loading her extraordinary sweetness with miserable suspicions arising from my own imagination, and the blindness of my insatiable passion. Ah! Tarawali, forgive me if I wronged ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... pride, the peevishness, the jealousy of the elder brother in the close of the parable represent, in its most distinctive features, the character of the Jewish people and their leaders, in the beginning of the Gospel. One of their leading reasons for refusing to own Jesus as the Messiah ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... she cried. "Come, let us walk. It grows cold. I enjoy that, but it is not very safe for you. And, pardon me, dear friend, I spoke harshly just now. I told you I was getting old. Put my words down to the peevishness of old age then." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... must have discovered one master passion amongst the others of his soul. She had tried so hard, and could only find a lot, none much bigger or much less than the others. Some vanity, some selfishness, some distrust and weariness, some peevishness, some indolence, and a lapful of omissions. Since she married," continued my aunt, slowly pulling her thick black eyelashes, after a fashion she had, "I believe she has found the long-lost failing. It is impatience ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Beech-Oil-Company this year have made abundance of sharers peevish; the natural effect of peevishness is clamour, and clamour like a tide will work itself a passage, where it has no right of flowing; some gentlemen, misled by false conceptions both of the affair and its direction, have driven their discontent through a mistaken chanel, and inclined abundance who ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... weight of the Vicomte de Turenne's vengeance awaited me, occurred to me strongly; and I ventured, though with a little shame, to mention it. But M. de Rosny, after gazing at me a moment in apparent doubt, put the objection aside with a degree of peevishness unusual in him, and continued to press on his arrangements as earnestly as though they did not include separation from a wife equally loving ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... a boy does anything," sez I, with peevishness. "Now you set there an' think up all you can about ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... my particular desire to cultivate a good understanding between our two countries, made me now press him for an explicit answer. He told me that he was convinced that I did not wish to embarrass him, but observed, with some peevishness, —— as Mr Elfried is by the Russian. He cites precedent and you ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... preparations, of which there had been many. For one who expected to be unclothed that she might be clothed upon, she certainly made a tolerable to-do about the garment she was so soon to lay aside; especially seeing she often spoke of it as an ill-fitting garment—never with peevishness or complaint, only, as it seemed to me, with far more interest than it was worth. She had even, as afterwards appeared, given her husband—good, honest, dog-like man—full instructions as to the ceremonial of its interment. Perhaps I should have been considerably ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... human, but superhuman, and too altogether virtuous; and it remained true that home life may be lovely under the lowliest roof, although he liked to paint it without a shadow on its beauty there. It is still a fact that the sick are very often saintly, although he put no peevishness into their patience with their ills. His ethical intention told for manhood and fraternity and tolerance, and when this intention disappeared from the better holiday literature, that literature was sensibly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... find her husband in love with another woman. Then my lord besought her submission to the king; but she remained unshaken in the resolution she had formed. She was ready to ask his majesty's pardon for tiny passion or peevishness she had been guilty of, but added, "the fire appearing in her eyes where the water was," she would never endure the presence of his mistress; and rather than submit to such insult she would "put herself on board any little vessel" ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... that Rebecca rose and knew Henry was gone till the following summer, she wished she could have laid down again and slept away the whole long interval. Her sisters' peevishness, her father's austerity, she foresaw, would be insupportable now that she had experienced Henry's kindness, and he was no longer near to fortify her patience. She ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... accustomed to Mrs. Delarayne's occasional affectation of valetudinarian peevishness, alleged ill-health as a fact. As a rule it was the prelude to the request for a favour on a grand scale, and being a man of very great wealth, and therefore somewhat tight-fisted, he was always rendered unusually solemn by his friend's ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... part of this book, and indeed the best work Miss DELL has yet done, is her treatment of the romantic friendship between Christine and Bertrand de Montville. It is handled so touchingly and so surely that I resent with all the more peevishness the banality of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... him at liberty and send him to Oxford. There he might have stayed, tortured by his own diabolical temper, hungering for Puritans to pillory and mangle, plaguing the Cavaliers, for want of somebody else to plague with his peevishness and absurdity, performing grimaces and antics in the cathedral, continuing that incomparable diary, which we never see without forgetting the vices of his heart In the imbecility of his intellect minuting ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Had she been a vicious woman nothing would have troubled her, but she was not vicious. She was not even less than good in her moral instincts. Only she was weak, hopelessly weak, and so all these things drove her to a shrewish discontent and peevishness. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... inferiority—to be in itself unwifely, indecent. "A woman's voice has no business to be heard outside of her own house; nor there, if her lord decrees otherwise," say they. It is asserted that she has been induced to give publicity to her sorrows—indeed, has occasioned them—by peevishness or imprudence, or by something worse; and thus, by an, unfair, sometimes an altogether false, issue being raised, the unhappy victim not merely of oppression, but of downright brutality, is shut off from justly merited sympathy. ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... with the greatest composure and gravity, as if satisfied with having punished the child for crying, and with the hope of indulging in a comfortable nap. No doubt she had often seen the child punished in this manner for peevishness; and as there was no one near who seemed disposed to administer correction in this instance, Puss determined to take the law ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... with herself, having come into the world with the wings of the angel in her well glued down and prevented from spreading by a multitude of little defects, had been helped without her knowing it by his example out of many a pit of peevishness and passion. Who shall measure the influence of one kind and blameless life? His wife, in her gustier moments, thought it sheer weakness, this persistent turning away from evil, this refusal to investigate and dissect, to take sides, to ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... and screaming after the fashion of a sacrificed pig. The mood of a Schopenhauer or a Nietzsche—and in a less degree one may sometimes say the same of our own sad Carlyle—though often an ennobling sadness, is almost as often only peevishness running away with the bit between its teeth. The sallies of the two German authors remind one, half the time, of the sick shriekings of two dying rats. They lack the purgatorial note which religious ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... a mountain-man, nae less!" said Caleb, with a peevishness he could not suppress. "I hae seen the day, Luckie, when worthy Mr. Cuffcushion and the service-book would hae served your turn (to the elder dame), or ony honest ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... old man shook his bald head and shrugged his small shoulders with almost French vivacity. He had been handsome once, and delicately featured, but now the left eye drooped, and the face had a strong look of peevishness and ill-health. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... himself from the pallet-bed with the assistance of one hand, and scratching his cap with the other, exclaimed in a voice in which as much peevishness as he was capable of feeling, contended with drowsiness, "I'll tell you what, Mr. Dug-well, or whatever your name may be, the sum-total of the matter is, that if my natural rest is to be broken in this manner, I must complain to the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a feeling somewhat akin to it, provoked by untoward events and inevitable happenings, such as the weather, accidents, etc. It is void of all spirit of revenge. Peevishness is chronic impatience, due to a disordered nervous system and requires the services of a competent physician, being a ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... times, or through their ignorance in not taking notice of their grievance and danger of it, contempt, supine negligence, extenuation, wretchedness and peevishness; they undo themselves. The citizens, I know not of what city now, when rumour was brought their enemies were coming, could not abide to hear it; and when the plague begins in many places and they certainly know it, they command silence and hush it up; but ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... But my friend Horace has very well said: "Every year takes something from us;" and instructed me to form my pursuits and desires according to the stage of my life; therefore, I have no more to value myself upon, than that, I can converse with young people without peevishness, or wishing myself a moment younger. For which reason, when I am amongst them, I rather moderate than interrupt their diversions. But though I have this complacency, I must not pretend to write to a lady civil things, as Maria desires. ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... remotest chance. He was—he assured me—considered to be infinitely more useful than dangerous, and so . . . "But the Rajah is afraid of you abominably. Anybody can see that," I argued with, I own, a certain peevishness, and all the time watching anxiously for the first twist of some sort of ghastly colic. I was awfully disgusted. "If I am to do any good here and preserve my position," he said, taking his seat by my side in the boat, "I must stand the risk: I take ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... the long stone wall while Berta stumped conceitedly along the path in her new rubber boots. Gertrude wondered aloud why two presumably intelligent young women insisted upon spending every morning in foolish journeys over muddy country roads. Noting an unaccustomed accent of peevishness in the energetic voice, Berta began to worry a bit over the likelihood that such petulance was due to impending sickness. Bea jeered at this, though with covert side glances to detect any signs of fever. In her secret soul, where she hid the notions which she dimly felt ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... used by the nurses; they had no swaddling bands; the children grew up free and unconstrained in limb and form, and not dainty and fanciful about their food; nor afraid in the dark, or of being left alone; without any peevishness or ill humor or crying. Upon this account, Spartan nurses were often bought up, or hired by people of ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... heart with which, as has been seen, Antonio ruthlessly interfered. Marietta was not unwilling to give to Charles the footman, who was a handsome young fellow, the means of avenging himself, but as yet this expedient for a little amusement had not succeeded, and there had been a touch of peevishness in the tone with which she asked whether it was true that the Contessa intended remaining here. Madame di Forno-Populo was a woman who disliked the bondage of question ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... was a mixture of passion and peevishness, two things that seldom go together; but he would fret himself into a passion, and then through weariness of spirits cool into fretfulness, till he was sufficiently recovered to rise again into rage. This was the common ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... old source of peevishness with Paw Coburn, and he was moved to say—answering only by implication what she had unconsciously implied, and seeming to take his theme from the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the peevishness of this remark, her friend continued: "Are you quite sure that you have not been more frequently than you would have been, if you had acted merely in reluctant obedience to the will of Phidias. I am not surprised that Philaemon is offended ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... is a part of their royal prerogative; but it is only a great king who can be weary gracefully. And Leopold was not a great king; indeed, he was many inches short of the ideal; but he was philosophical, and by the process of reason he escaped the pitfalls which lurk in the path of peevishness. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... screws, denotes that tedious tasks must be performed, and peevishness in companions must be combated. It also denotes that you must ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... calmly, "You must pay the penalty for loving a parvenu's son. Come, Julia, no peevishness, no more romance, no more vacillation. You have tried Pride and failed pitiably: now I insist on your trying Love! Child, it is the bane of our sex to carry nothing out: from that weakness I will preserve you. And, by-the-bye, we are not going to marry Mr. Richard Hardie, but Mr. Alfred. Now, Mr. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... insulting and contumelious to a good man, when they are puffed up with prosperity and success. But the contrary often happens; afflictions and public calamities naturally embittering and souring the minds and tempers of men, and disposing them to such peevishness and irritability, that hardly any word or sentiment of common vigor can be addressed to them, but they will be apt to take offense. He that remonstrates with them on their errors, is presumed to be insulting over their misfortunes, and any free spoken expostulation is construed ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... it seems even to depend upon a certain freshness and navet of impulse and vision which civilisation tends to destroy. Hence comes, to those who have been nourished on the literary and artistic productions of former ages, a certain peevishness and undue fastidiousness towards the present, from which there seems no escape except into the deliberate vandalism which ignores tradition and in the search after originality achieves only the eccentric. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... became more erect, my step lighter, and I had the sensation of treading on air. Unconsciously, I was smiling, for I caught myself in the act once or twice. I looked into the faces of the women I passed and there saw so much trouble and anxiety, discontent, even to peevishness, that my heart went out to them, and I wished I could impart to them a wee bit of the sunshine I felt ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... pleasures, as our tastes were vastly different, and his health on the whole rather delicate, he was a pretty boy in a sailor costume, when I saw him after our long separation, with mild blue eyes and a pallid countenance. He was sickly looking, with an expression of helpless peevishness about his otherwise pleasing mouth; his hair was wavy and of a golden colour, and his hands were thin and white, like those of a ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Combe,[1] that to teach any one how to take care of his own health, is sure to do harm, by making him constantly think of this and the other precaution, to the utter sacrifice of every noble and generous feeling, and to the certain production of peevishness and discontent. The result, however, he adds, is exactly the reverse; and it would be a singular anomaly in the constitution of the moral world were it otherwise. He who is instructed in, and is familiar with grammar and ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... sun, than sound and invigorating sleep to the weary, nor in our opinion, a greater grievance than the loss of it; because wakefulness at those hours, which nature has destined for repose, is, in nine cases out of ten, sure to be the harbinger of peevishness, discontent, and ill humour, and not unfrequently induces languor, lassitude, and disease. No two individuals in the world have greater reason to complain of disturbed slumbers or nightly watching, than ourselves. Heretofore, this has ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... necessary for me to assure my St. Julian, that I really felt those sentiments of filial sorrow which he ascribes to me. Never did any son sustain the loss of so indulgent a father. I have nothing by which to remember him, but acts of goodness and favour; not one hour of peevishness, not one instance of severity. Over all my youthful follies he cast the veil of kindness. All my imaginary wants received a prompt supply. Every promise of spirit and sensibility I was supposed to discover, was cherished with an anxious ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... promote the happiness of all around him, may sometimes, perhaps, from an ill habit of body, an accidental vexation, or from a commendable openness of heart, above the meanness of disguise, be guilty of little sallies of peevishness, or of ill humor, which, carrying the appearance of ill nature, may be unjustly thought to proceed from it, by persons who are unacquainted with his true character, and who, take ill humor and ill nature to be synonymous terms, though in reality they bear not the least analogy to ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... natural result that those who had sent him honest bills before, after one or two experiences with him, made it a practice to add thirty per cent. or so to the total, in order that they might later on gracefully reduce their demands without loss. Thus my client, by his peevishness, actually created the very condition regarding which, out of an overactive imagination, he had complained originally without ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... he returned. Then, with a smile of peevishness not unmingled with contempt, he added: "He's getting too uppish for me. I don't think the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... evidence of inward passion, unless there be also unceasing efforts at self-control, commit not your destiny to the individual. When the restraints of unfamiliar acquaintance are at length thrown off, what can you anticipate, but captiousness, and peevishness, if not actual violence? "Where surfaces," says one, "are contiguous, every little prominence is mutually felt." How fearful that minds subject to unrestrained anger, should be brought in so near collision, as may ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... letters, I am sure you want it in everything; for you will constantly observe that you have the most leisure when you do the most business. Negligence of one's duty produces a self-dissatisfaction which unfits the mind for everything, and ennui and peevishness ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Negro. Gentleness is a wonderful agency in managing a Negro: I know it tells powerfully upon white folks. The psalmist, addressing his Maker, says, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." It is a mighty lever; it moves the world; it moved it before Archimedes; it moves it still; but peevishness, fault-finding, scolding, cursing, premature censure, haughty and assuming ways, sullenness, ill-temper, whether in the field, the kitchen, the nursery, or parlor, will legitimately result in thriftlessness, ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... exhausting nights and very peevish wakenings. However, this shall be remedied, and last night I was distinctly better than the night before. There is, my dear Mr. Stevenson (so I moralise blandly as we sit together on the devil's garden-wall), no more abominable sin than this gloom, this plaguey peevishness; why (say I) what matters it if we be a little uncomfortable - that is no reason for mangling our unhappy wives. And then I turn and GIRN on the unfortunate Cassandra. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Delarayne's occasional affectation of valetudinarian peevishness, alleged ill-health as a fact. As a rule it was the prelude to the request for a favour on a grand scale, and being a man of very great wealth, and therefore somewhat tight-fisted, he was always rendered unusually solemn by his friend's ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... anticipated. This pessimistic view was due in part to the constant and wearing difficulty of getting Fred Wentworth to be civil to him; yet May Gaston was half-inclined to fall in with it. The attitude of offence which he had at first maintained towards her was marked by peevishness, not by dignity, and when it was relaxed his old excessive politeness revived in full force. He had few 'moments' either; and the one reported to her with enthusiasm by Dick Benyon took place on Duty Hill while she was gossiping on the lawn. Disappointed ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... rash, together with Henry's emphatic and positive statement that he was perfectly well, which had finally urged his relatives to a desperate step—a step involving intrigue and prevarication. And to justify this step had come the crowning symptom of peevishness—peevishness in ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... clamouring for the absent dog. The audience took up the cry, the dogs barked more excitedly, and five minutes of hilarity delayed the turn which, when at last started, was marked by rustiness and erraticness on the part of the dogs and by great peevishness on ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... station. Almost culpably careless in all things that concerned his health and comfort, he spent his earnings for the welfare of his brothers, in order that an honourable posterity might carry on the name he bore, and which he made illustrious. We may smile at his peevishness in repudiating the title of sculptor after bearing it through so many years of glorious labour; but when he penned the letters I have quoted, he was the supreme artist of Italy, renowned as painter, architect, military engineer; praised as a poet; befriended with the best and ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Servants are commanded to be subject to their masters, "not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward." The non-observance of this command on the part of servants, has frequently engendered that peevishness and perverseness in masters to which the apostles alludes, viz. forwardness among servants, has engendered frowardness in masters. It is the duty of servants, to oppose the evil tempers and dispositions, and the inhumanity of masters, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... valley the men and women, and the very children whose voices I can just hear, are living by an outlook in which the values are different from those of easy-going people, and in which, especially, hardships have never been met by peevishness, but ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... Mr. Pelham was not sixty-one; his florid, healthy constitution promised long life, and his uninterrupted good fortune as long power; yet the one hastened his end, and the other was enjoyed in its full tranquillity but three poor years! i should not say, enjoyed, for such was his peevishness and suspicions, that the lightest trifles could poison all that stream of happiness! he was careless of his health, most intemperate in eating, and used no exercise. All this had naturally thrown him into a most scorbutic habit, for which last summer he went to Scarborough, but ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... be affable, and always superior to peevishness or ill-humor; he must not know, or at least seem not to know, what a spirit of resentment is; and when he is under the necessity of inflicting military chastisement, he must see the guilty punished without compromise or foolish humanity; and if the delinquent be from among the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... . ." he went on musing, "I wonder what they would say? . . . Come back to the lamp," he cried with sudden peevishness. "Don't look out there . . . this circle of light on the pavement . . . like ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... cause of the mental misery he endures; his temper sours as his spirits sink; every person, and every circumstance, annoys him; it affects even his dreams; sleep itself is not a refuge from querulous peevishness, and every motion ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... say," answered Sam, with something of peevishness; "losses is losses: there's no use talking about 'em ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the bulletins of Napoleon's health, produced an order from the governor for the arrest of O'Meara. There was a vast quantity of peevishness exercised on the subject, and Napoleon attempted to raise this trifling affair into a general quarrel of the commissioners. But on his declaring that he would no longer receive the visits of O'Meara while under arrest, the governor revoked the order, and O'Meara continued his attendance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... God, and all the promises of the Gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them, too; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read and meditate.... And he that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loves all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... in a peevish voice to explain what he meant by saying, 'Oh, I don't know,' condoned the peevishness. He then bent his mind to the task of trying to ascertain what he ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... contact with him. They retarded this event, by keeping Charles in the north as long as possible. In the mean time, they endeavored to alienate his regards from the minister by exaggerated reports of his arbitrary conduct and temper, rendered more morose by the peevishness of age. Charles showed a facility to be directed by those around him in early years, which gave little augury of the greatness to which he afterwards ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... have the victory I cannot yet say the old man is dead; some seeds of peevishness yet remain to be destroyed. Praise God, I hate the garment spotted by the flesh. 'All peace, all love,' is the desire of my heart, and the longing of my soul.—A day of fasting and prayer; but separation from every thing that defileth is what is pleasing ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... Folly treats of serious Matters, in such a gay, familiar, ingenious and pleasant manner, as makes it a Work proper to be read by intelligent People, to remove out of their Minds all Bigotry contracted by Ignorance and an evil Education, all Peevishness, Hatred, and Ill-nature towards one another, on account of different Sentiments in Religion; and to form in them the natural Principles of Moderation, Humanity, Affection and Friendship. Our learned and ingenious Bishop Kennet could ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... find all their happiness in children, husband and household. And of those who really enjoy their homes most are remarried after a divorce, or even after two or more. Our society suffers from a plague worse than the pestilence itself, a plague of greed for excitement, eagerness for novelty, of peevishness and fickleness. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... the discomfort experienced, there is likely to be a change of disposition, irritability of temper, fretfulness and peevishness; a tendency to an irascibility all out of proportion to the real provocation. In many cases there is dizziness, and frequently noises in the head, ringing in the ears, spots before the eyes, twitching of the muscles, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... operation of which even minds the most strictly regulated by reason are not wholly exempt, misery disposes us to hatred, and happiness to love, although there may be no person to whom our misery or our happiness can be ascribed. The peevishness of an invalid vents itself even on those who alleviate his pain. The good humour of a man elated by success often displays itself towards enemies. In the same manner, the feelings of pleasure and admiration, to which the contemplation ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are!" exclaimed Mrs. Elliot. There was a touch of peevishness in her voice. "And we've had such a hunt to find you. Do you know what the ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... would have troubled her, but she was not vicious. She was not even less than good in her moral instincts. Only she was weak, hopelessly weak, and so all these things drove her to a shrewish discontent and peevishness. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... depends on her, and I think she can no longer have any reasons for hesitation. . . . At all events," he added, after a moment's silence and with a touch of peevishness, "I cannot see any that ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... hear the leaves complaining to one another that they must die, and commiserating the hardness of their lot in having ever been induced to bud forth, we should, I imagine, despise them for their peevishness more than we should pity them. We should tell them that though we could not see reason for thinking that they would ever hang again upon the same-or any at all similar-bough as the same individual leaves, after they had once faded and fallen ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... opinion is subject to equal difficulties with the former. It rests on no ancient testimony: it is refuted by the conduct of the ancient clergy. No instance is to be found of any one of these conspirators as they are represented, who in an unguarded moment, or of any false brother who, in the peevishness of discontent, revealed the secret to the ears of their dupes. On the contrary, we see them in their private correspondence holding to each other the same language which they held to their disciples; requesting from each other those prayers which ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... the head, which nodded with self-importance; the features, in which an irritable peevishness, acquired by habit and indulgence, strove with a temper naturally affectionate and good-natured; the coif; the apron; the blue-checked gown,—were all those of old Ailie; but laced pinners, hastily ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... authority and self-control, endures with a rare patience the proud, commanding bearing of Barbarina. Even yesterday evening when the king did me the honor to sup with me in the society of the Barbarina, in spite of her peevishness and ever-changing mood, he was the most ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... her will. The two met almost face to face, the horses exchanging friendly neighs. For a moment, while one could count twenty, the two rivals sat and looked at each other. Half unconsciously, Ida noticed the pallor and the worn look of the beautiful face, the wistful peevishness of the delicately cut lip; then suddenly Maude's face flushed, her eyes grew hard and scornful, and with something like a sneer she said, in ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... and had learned to submit, but his longing eyes pleaded for more; little Alice was clamorous, and the mother felt tears overflow her eyes to think that there was no possibility of yielding to that childish peevishness, and that the absolute non-existence of water must punish her poor child's wilfulness. When Paulett had set his instruments to work, to renew if possible the supply, and when Ellen had removed the silver cups and dishes which had held their corn and water, he and she sat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... point, it may be loud, but it is not very severe. When a gentleman is cudgelling his brain to find any rhyme for sorrow, besides borrow and to-morrow, his woes are nearer at an end than he thinks for. So were Pen's. He had his hot and cold fits, his days of sullenness and peevishness, and of blank resignation and despondency, and occasional mad paroxysms of rage and longing, in which fits Rebecca would be saddled and galloped fiercely about the country, or into Chatteris, her rider gesticulating wildly on ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Further, in place of remembering that compact made between them for an avoidance of the subject, she constantly alluded to her daughter's marriage as a proof of her being an incomparable mother; and all this, with the weakness and peevishness of such a state, always serving for a sarcastic commentary on her ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... severe, or word of Holy Writ Announcing immortality and joy To the assembled spirits of the just From imperfection and decay secure: Thus soothed at home, thus busy in the field, To no perverse suspicion he gave way; No languour, peevishness, nor vain complaint. And they who were about him did not fail In reverence or in courtesy; they prized His gentle manners, and his peaceful smiles; The gleams of his slow-varying countenance Were met with answering sympathy and love. At length when sixty years and five were told A slow ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... generally something to lighten the burden of them in a sense of necessity, or of rights or honour invaded; but there is nothing of like importance to alleviate the sufferings caused by fretfulness, impatience, want of temper. The excitable peevishness which kindles at trifles, that roughens the daily experience of a million families, that scatters its little stings at the table and by the hearth-stone, what does this but unmixed harm? What ingredient does it furnish but of gall? Its fine wounding ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... a time—I am pregnant again—and Calyste loves her so that I foresee a total abandonment. When she hears of it she will be furious. Ah! I suffer such tortures that I cannot endure them long. I know when he is going to her, I know it by his joy; and his peevishness tells me as plainly when he leaves her. He no longer troubles himself to conceal his feelings; I have become intolerable to him. She has an influence over him as unhealthy as she is herself in soul and body. You'll ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... some preliminary discomfort before the apparent onset. Thus, in children, restlessness, peevishness, languor, nausea, loss of appetite, chilliness, fever, and convulsions may usher in an attack. Mumps begins with pain and swelling below the ear on one side. Within forty-eight hours a large, firm, sensitive lump forms under the ear ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... the pain of disappointment will be much increased by ill-temper, and that to yield to the force of necessity will be found wiser than vainly to oppose it. The contrast between the principal character with the peevishness of her cousins' temper is intended as an incitement to that placid disposition which will form the happiness of social life in every stage, and which, therefore, should not be thought beneath anyone's attention ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... us." In Peter's watery stare was abject fright. "Lorelei wouldn't let us suffer," he ventured, tremulously. "I'm sick. I may die any time, so the doctor says." He was indeed a changed man; that easy good humor that had been his most likable trait had been lost in habitual peevishness. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... breeding, and hast shown many sparkles of a gentle and manly spirit. Moreover, it were ungenerous, having bred thee up freakish and fiery, to dismiss thee to want or wandering, for showing that very peevishness and impatience of discipline which arose from thy too delicate nurture. Therefore, and for the credit of my own household, I am determined to retain thee in my train, until I can honourably dispose of thee elsewhere, with a fair prospect of thy going through the world with credit ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... asparagus, for as the asparagus gives most excellent fruit from a thorny stalk, so the bride, by not being too reluctant and coy in the first approaches, will make the married state more agreeable and pleasant. But those husbands who cannot put up with the early peevishness of their brides, are not a whit wiser than those persons who pluck unripe grapes and leave the ripe grapes for others.[156] On the other hand, many brides, being at first disgusted with their husbands, are like those that stand the bee's ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... event he can never return. Children in cradles are frequently snatched away by the fairies, who leave, instead, imps of their own called "changelings." A changeling may always be recognized by its peevishness and backwardness in learning to walk and speak. If well treated, the fairies will sometimes show their gratitude by bestowing on their favorites health, wealth, and long life. Lucky the child who can ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... there is more whining in it than in any other country on the face of the globe. If we are to die, "Nibbled to Death by Ducks" may well be put on the tombstone. Little things are permitted to bring about paroxysms of peevishness. Even our pleasures have come to be taken sadly. We are irritable at picnics, snarly at clambakes, and ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... fearing for my life. And suddenly, I struck my hands together, and I cried: Ha! what a fool I am! Why, she told me so herself, when I saw her for the second time, and yet I had forgotten it. And all this while, in the peevishness of my own oblivion and presumption, I have been blaming her, expecting things utterly unreasonable, and loading her extraordinary sweetness with miserable suspicions arising from my own imagination, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... from Maggie, in spite of herself, with a sudden drop from patronizing instruction to simple peevishness. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... "persuades himself he is not destitute of originality," he is often arguing against the text of his own earlier editions. Webster's well-known complaints of Murray's unfairness, had a far better cause than requital; for there was no generosity in ascribing them to peevishness, though the passages in question were not worth copying. On perspicuity and accuracy, about sixty pages were extracted from Blair; and it requires no great critical acumen to discover, that they are miserably deficient ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the South, where the full weight of the Vicomte de Turenne's vengeance awaited me, occurred to me strongly; and I ventured, though with a little shame, to mention it. But M. de Rosny, after gazing at me a moment in apparent doubt, put the objection aside with a degree of peevishness unusual in him, and continued to press on his arrangements as earnestly as though they did not include separation from a ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... to draw blood. Then she walked back, with the greatest composure and gravity, as if satisfied with having punished the child for crying, and with the hope of indulging in a comfortable nap. No doubt she had often seen the child punished in this manner for peevishness; and as there was no one near who seemed disposed to administer correction in this instance, Puss determined to take the law into ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... could have inflicted on him would have been to set him at liberty and send him to Oxford. There he might have stayed, tortured by his own diabolical temper, hungering for Puritans to pillory and mangle, plaguing the Cavaliers, for want of somebody else to plague with his peevishness and absurdity, performing grimaces and antics in the cathedral, continuing that incomparable diary, which we never see without forgetting the vices of his heart In the imbecility of his intellect minuting ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Bassompierre was to play, I looked for his coming as anxiously as anyone. And probably the King shared this feeling; but he affected indifference, and continued to sit over the fire with an air of mingled scorn and peevishness. ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... preferred to spend in a tavern, beyond the reach of his lady's sharp querulousness. "All his misfortune," says Roger North, "lay at home, in perverse consort, who always, after his day-labor done, entertained him with all the chagrin and peevishness imaginable; so that he went home as to his prison, or worse; and when the time came, rather than go home, he chose commonly to get a friend to go and sit in a free chat at the tavern, over a single bottle, till ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... person has grown up and is able to express himself in literary language, he is freed from these wholesome restraints. He may indulge in peevishness to his heart's content, and it will be received as a sort of esoteric wisdom. For we are simple-minded creatures, and prone to superstition. It is only a few thousand years since the alphabet was invented, ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... name uncertainly, still with that suggestion of peevishness, hanging over the rail and peering down at us. "Oh! By gracious!" he exclaimed, abruptly. "I'm glad to see you, Ridgeway. I had a boatman coming out before this, but I guess—well, I guess he'll be ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... way, gives his friend an account of the Lady's peevishness and dejection, on receiving a letter with her clothes. He regrets that he has lost her confidence; which he attributes to his bringing her into the company of his four companions. Yet he thinks he must excuse them, and censure her for over-niceness; for that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... you leave my chamber in such a condition as this?" was the salutation that met her ear, as she entered the presence of Mrs. Smith, who, half raised upon the bed, and leaning upon her hand, looked the very personification of languor, peevishness, and ill-humor. "You had plenty of time while we were eating breakfast to have put ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... everybody else to be so too and to impose on everybody their decrepit way of living.... The first of all virtues is joy. Virtue must be happy, free, and unconstrained. He who does good must give pleasure to himself. But this perpetual upstart Duty, this pedagogic tyranny, this peevishness, this futile discussion, this acrid, puerile quibbling, this ungraciousness, this charmless life, without politeness, without silence, this mean-spirited pessimism, which lets slip nothing that can make existence poorer than it is, this vainglorious ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... was a fellow of Lincoln whilst Johnson was an undergraduate, and was learning at Oxford the necessity of rousing his countrymen from the religious lethargy into which they had sunk. "Have not pride and haughtiness of spirit, impatience, and peevishness, sloth and indolence, gluttony and sensuality, and even a proverbial uselessness been objected to us, perhaps not always by our enemies nor wholly without ground?" So said Wesley, preaching before the University of Oxford in 1744, and the words in his mouth imply more than the preacher's ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... plebeian goddesses of Chastity were thenceforward worshipped in Rome. Doubtless caprices of this sort were of very little moment, and the better portion of the clans kept themselves entirely aloof from this miserable policy of peevishness; but it left behind on both sides a feeling of discontent, and, while the struggle of the commons against the clans was in itself a political and even moral necessity, these convulsive efforts to prolong the strife—the aimless combats of the rear-guard after the battle had been ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a head-grace and governing. There are several lusts in the soul that cannot be mastered, if hope be not in exercise-especially if the soul be in great and sore trials. There is peevishness and impatience, there is fear and despair, there is doubting and misconstruing of God's present hand; and all these become masters, if hope be not stirring; nor can any grace besides put a stop to their ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... that if his people should not cheerfully, according to their duties, meet him in that, especially in this exigent when his kingdom and person are in apparent danger, the world might see he is forced, contrary to his own inclination, to use extraordinary means rather than, by the peevishness of some few factious spirits, to suffer his state and government ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... as you might talk to a sick child whose peevishness prolongs, unreasonably, its pain. Bartie's manner almost amounted to a public repudiation of her. The whole house vibrated to the shutting of his door at Good-night time. Yet when Bartie came down in the morning, late, and more morose than ever, ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on his little handful of thorns. Such a person is fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppea's hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia's ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... of his peevishness her husband may be trying hard to minimize his defects and be a reasonable, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... alone; and most scared of all was the fool: never earned jester fairer his ass's ears. So rubbed I their foible, who first rubbed mine; for of all a traveller's foes I dread those giants twain, Sir Noise, and eke Sir Stench. The saints and martyrs forgive my peevishness. Thus I write to thee in balmy peace, and tell thee trivial things scarce worthy ink, also how I love thee, which there was no need to tell, for well thou knowest it. And oh, dear Margaret, looking ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... sour, spiteful creature. The wrinkles of contempt crossed the wrinkles of peevishness, and made her face as full of wrinkles as a pat of butter. If ever a king could be justified in forgetting anybody, this king was justified in forgetting his sister, even at a christening. She looked very odd, too. Her forehead was as large as all the rest ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... for Cranmer rendered fruitless all accusations against him, his pride and peevishness, irritated by his declining state of health, impelled him to punish with fresh severity all others who presumed to entertain a different opinion from himself, particularly in the capital point of the real presence. Anne Ascue, a young woman of merit as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... was only an instant's work; snatching up the forlorn fisher, she shook him unmercifully, and set him upon the floor, dripping and breathless. I saw nothing of them until night. His mother had then recovered her usual peevishness, weakness, and inefficiency; the ebullition of energy had entirely subsided. I was curious to know whether the summary punishment had had any effect upon Jacques; but he was asleep, as soundly as usual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... and the symptoms soon became so alarming, that he (Dr. Grummidge) was called in. At this period the prominent tokens of the disorder were sullenness, a total indisposition to perform domestic duties, great peevishness, and extreme languor, except when pearls were mentioned, at which times the pulse quickened, the eyes grew brighter, the pupils dilated, and the patient, after various incoherent exclamations, burst into a passion of tears, and exclaimed that nobody cared for her, and that she ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... began to forget what had happened on the previous day. Sally worked like a mouse, her brain exulting in its vivid memories of her time with Toby; and she did not think of Gaga at all. She only hoped that he would not come to the office. She was feeling too tired to deal effectively with any peevishness from Gaga; although, the causes of her hysteria having been removed, she was not likely to repeat the failure of that other restless night. A heaviness hung upon her as the day wore on; a kind of thick readiness for sleep. She yawned over her work. The workroom seemed stuffy, ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... the order was carried out; then he returned to his room. He felt that though he had conquered in this instance, he had adopted the wrong tone, and that he must offer something else than peevishness and irritation to ward off Westby's humor; already it gave indications of becoming too audacious. Yet on the whole Irving was pleased because he had at least asserted himself—and had rather enjoyed doing it. And an hour later it seemed to him that he had lost all that ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... pocket. In this manner, the unforeseen disagreeableness of a situation I had chosen entirely led me back to literature, to which unsuspectedly I had recourse as a means of releaving my mind, and thus, in the first works I wrote, I introduced the peevishness and ill-humor which were the cause of my undertaking them. There was another circumstance which contributed not a little to this; thrown into the world despite of myself, without having the manners of it, or being in a situation to adopt and conform myself ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... to be rather an inward Dissatisfaction in his own Mind, than any Dislike he had taken at the Company. Upon hearing his Name, I knew him to be a Gentle man of a considerable Fortune in this County, but greatly in Debt. What gives the unhappy Man this Peevishness of Spirit is, that his Estate is dipped, and is eating out with Usury; and yet he has not the Heart to sell any Part of it. His proud Stomach, at the Cost of restless Nights, constant Inquietudes, Danger of Affronts, and a thousand nameless Inconveniences, preserves ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fellows—are great friends of Edna's brothers, and often come out to spend Saturday with Frank and Charlie. Louis sometimes comes for a holiday, and shows himself much more manly; he is gradually outgrowing his peevishness and selfishness, so that he bids fair ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... speech and steeling himself against its pitiful appeal. "All that. And then some. And it's generous of you not to blame me for being just the very tiniest least bit riled by it. That helps. I was afraid my peevishness might displease you. My temper isn't what it should be. If it were I should be apologizing to you for getting your nice ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... petition, when she found resistance was vain. "I fear," said she, "that I am parting with the most valuable possession on earth—a friend, and that I shall get nothing in return but a lover." Her suspicions were well founded: he had not enjoyed his double capacity long, when he showed a degree of peevishness, of which he had before thought himself incapable; as a friend he demanded her esteem; as a lover he claimed her undivided affection; and as a man of sense and education, he expected rational and pleasing conversation. These complicated claims, however, ill accorded with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... Maud, with his clandestine wooing of a girl of sixteen, has this apology, that the match had been, as it were, predestined, and desired by the mother of the lady. Still, the brother did not ill to be angry; and the peevishness of the hero against the brother and the parvenu lord and rival strikes a jarring note. In England, at least, the general sentiment is opposed to this moody, introspective kind of young man, of whom Tennyson is not to be supposed to approve. We do ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... "His peevishness had promptly put aside Such honor and refused the proffered boon," . . . II. Half Rome (R. and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... series of resolutions passed to that effect. The west wind is hopeful; it has promise and adventure in it, and is, except to Atlantic voyagers America-bound, the best wind that ever blew. The east wind is peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling, and curls one up in the chimney-corner like a cat. And if the chimney ever smokes, it smokes when the wind sits in that quarter. The south wind is full of longing and unrest, of effeminate suggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... would be so far from being able to bear with others, that he would be burthensome to himself, and consequently incapable of any ease or satisfaction. Nature, that toward some of her products plays the step-mother rather than the indulgent parent, has endowed some men with that unhappy peevishness of disposition, as to nauseate and dislike whatever is their own, and much admire what belongs to other persons, so as they cannot in any wise enjoy what their birth or fortunes have bestowed upon them: for what grace is there in ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... you say, she has fallen into an unrequited passion for him, and this accounts for her peevishness? Well, if she has, we have only Mr. SHAW'S word for it, and she gets no sympathy from us for her deplorable taste in men. There was another man who was always about the house, a man with a habit of courtesy, but this gallant soldier left her cold. Such is the perversity of women—and Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... never could look with pleasure at your untutored Rockies. They're so unintentional, you know. Nature is nothing until history has touched her. And as for this geological display outside my windows—you'll kindly permit me to turn my back on it. It's not peevishness." She lifted her hand protestingly. "Only, for weeks, I stared myself blind to see the beauty you talk of. I can't see it. That's honest. I've tried. But there is none that I can see. I am very conventional, you know, very self-distrustful. I have to wait for a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the parched air and stung more sharply their bloodshot, aching eyeballs. The dust settled smotheringly upon them, filled nostrils and lungs and roughened their patience into peevishness. A calf bolted from the herd, and a "hold-up" man pursued it vindictively, swearing by several things that he would break its blamed neck—only his wording was more vehement. A cinder got in Slim's eye and one would think, ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... the people in France?—blown up. Where is that of the people in Arragon, and the rest of the Spanish kingdoms?—blown up. On the other side, where is the King of Spain's power in Holland?—blown up. Where is that of the Austrian princes in Switzerland?—blown up. This perpetual peevishness and jealousy, under the alternate empire of the prince and of the people, are obnoxious to every spark. Nor shall any man show a reason that will be holding in prudence, why the people of Oceana have blown up their King, but that their kings did not first blow ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... are too clear-sighted to neglect home duties, yet leave this difficulty unfaced, in that they look for all the pleasure of their life outside home, and within that home allow themselves to live in an atmosphere of friction and peevishness. The girl who does that has left the riddle of home life unsolved: she was meant to wrestle with that difficulty till she wrung from it the blessing, the peace which comes only from self-conquest and acceptance of all ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... labour and harshness of invective, but with very little wit or spirit. He expresses a great deal of anger and contempt, but you cannot tell very well why—except that he seems to be sore and out of humour. His satire is mere peevishness and spleen, or something worse—personal antipathy and rancour. We are in quite as much pain for the writer, as for the object of his resentment. His address to Peter Pindar is laughable from its outrageousness. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Christian must have discovered one master passion amongst the others of his soul. She had tried so hard, and could only find a lot, none much bigger or much less than the others. Some vanity, some selfishness, some distrust and weariness, some peevishness, some indolence, and a lapful of omissions. Since she married," continued my aunt, slowly pulling her thick black eyelashes, after a fashion she had, "I believe she has found the long-lost failing. It is impatience with Mr. Rampant, ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... the old man is peevish,—says that my disobedience of his orders has caused us to lose De Wet. That he has washed his hands of me, and that it only remains to report me to a higher authority. To be philosophical, he has some grounds for his peevishness if he really believes that he has ever been nearer to De Wet than the latter gentleman desired. But you get no return in an argument with seniors—they have the whip hand of you every time; so here, ole ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... will, when concentrated, produce, if taken medicinally, effects very similar to those brought about by taking mercurial salts, viz., an ulcerative-state of the mouth, with a profuse flow of saliva, and with excessive stimulation of the liver: peevishness also on the following day, with a depressing backache in men, suggesting paralysis, and with a profuse fluor albus in women. When given in moderation as food, or as physic, the fruit will remedy ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and generosity. They were economical, and therefore could afford to be generous. All the wants of this destitute widow were supplied from the profits of their industry: they nursed her with daily humanity, bore with the peevishness of disease, and did all in their power to soothe the anguish ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... to have indulged his favourite propensity to punning so far as even to introduce a pun in the grave and elaborate work of a Lexicon. A story has been raised to account for it, and it has been ascribed to the impatient interjection of the lexicographer to his scribe, who, taking no offence at the peevishness of his master, put it down in the Dictionary. The article alluded to is, "CONCURRO, to run with others; to run together; to come together; to fall foul of one another; to CON-cur, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... humanity and charity, his morality and religion.' The last sentence we may consider as the general and permanent opinion of Bishop Newton; the remarks which precede it must, by all who have read Johnson's admirable work, be imputed to the disgust and peevishness of old age. I wish they had not appeared, and that Dr. Johnson had not been provoked by them to express himself, not in respectful terms, of a Prelate, whose labours were certainly of considerable advantage both ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... she complained with a smiling peevishness. ("Ye've got—ye've got remarkable eyebrows. The way they grow makes me feel all—all desperate.") "I've had a lie-down since four. You woke me up with your knocking. Dear, I've never been woken up so beautifully before. Now I want my supper. I never ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... two spirits equally proud, resentful) and ungovernable. At Essex House, he had to calm the rage of a young hero incensed by multiplied wrongs and humiliations) and then to pass to Whitehall for the purpose of soothing the peevishness of a sovereign, whose temper, never very gentle, had been rendered morbidly irritable by age, by declining health, and by the long habit of listening to flattery and exacting implicit obedience. It is hard ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... came in from his carpentry, his sleeves rolled up, his waistcoat hanging open. He was still a good-looking man, with black, wavy hair, and a large black moustache. His face was perhaps too much inflamed, and there was about him a look almost of peevishness. But now he was jolly. He went straight to the sink where ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... engaged, and prosecuted it with vigour; but the most enthusiastic admirer of that poet, upon reading it will not fail to discover a spirit of bitterness, an air of peevishness and resentment to run through the whole. Milton has been charged with interpolating the prayer of Pamela into the King's Meditations, by the assistance of Bradshaw, who laid his commands upon the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... be at peace with your neighbours, through Christ Jesus. When you see God stooping to make peace with sinful men, you will be ashamed to be quarrelling with them. When you see God full of love, you will be ashamed to keep up peevishness, grudging, and spite. When you see God's heaven full of light, you will be ashamed to be dark yourselves; your hearts will go out freely to your fellow- creatures; you will long to be friends with every one you meet; ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... brave Sir Damian, I have a mighty secret still to impart, and as this Saxon churl understands no French, this is no unfit opportunity to communicate it. Know that thine uncle is a changed man in mind, as he is debilitated and broken down in body. Peevishness and jealousy have possessed themselves of a heart which was once strong and generous; his life is now on the dregs, and I grieve to speak it, these dregs are foul ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... glory of the universe! And when I might stretch that hand out most boldly, it is fettered down by a secret and inextricable bond! And here I have letters from Amy," he would say, catching them up with a movement of peevishness, "persecuting me to acknowledge her openly—to do justice to her and to myself—and I wot not what. Methinks I have done less than justice to myself already. And she speaks as if Elizabeth were to receive the knowledge of this matter with the glee of a mother hearing ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... truth. If these public documents are not to be admitted in evidence before all others, we see no hope for the faithful and earnest historian; he must give himself up to swim as he may on the frothy stream of private letters, anecdotes, and pamphlets, the puppet of the ignorance, credulity, peevishness, spite, of any and every ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... ridiculous follies, peevishness, and perversity of our masters; we have been behind the shows and shams ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Saturday morning in the spring of the year, Peggy happened to be peevish. The cause of her peevishness was a swarm of intensely active flies. Mr. Fry was accustomed to an occasional swish of her tail across his face. He even welcomed it, for the flies bothered him almost as much as they did Peggy. On mornings when he felt unusually tired, ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... affluent homes, families of daughters sitting waiting to be married, I have pitied them from my heart. It is doubtless well—very well—if Fate decrees them a happy marriage; but, if otherwise, give their existence some object, their time some occupation, or the peevishness of disappointment and the listlessness of idleness will ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... may go back again, to that great-souled man, of whom I spoke just now—did we not leave out one thing in his character? or at least, one thing by which his character might be proved and tried? We said that he should be generous and forgiving; we said that he should bear patiently folly, peevishness, ingratitude: but what if we asked of him, that he should sacrifice himself utterly for the peevish, ungrateful men for whose good he was toiling? What if we asked him to give up, for them, not only all which made life worth having, but to give up life itself? To die for them; and, ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... than acute pain) with astonishing fortitude and composure. Nothing ruffled his temper or disturbed his serenity. His faculties were unclouded, his memory retentive, his perceptions clear to the last; no murmur of impatience ever escaped him, no querulous word, no ebullition of anger or peevishness; he was uniformly patient, mild, indulgent, deeply sensible of kindness and attention, exacting nothing, considerate of others and apparently regardless of self, overflowing with affection and kindness of manner and language to all around him, and exerting all his moral and intellectual energies ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... natural engrossment of her own ardent and devoted love, had not of late spared much observation to the tokens of her sister's. She was therefore dismayed, if not surprised, as she now perceived the cause of the peevishness Ellinor had just manifested, and by the nature of the love she felt herself, she judged, and perhaps somewhat overrated, the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not merely in humble but in affluent houses, families of daughters sitting waiting to be married, I have pitied them from my heart. It is doubtless well—very well—if Fate decrees them a happy marriage; but, if otherwise, give their existence some object, their time some occupation, or the peevishness of disappointment, and the listlessness of idleness will infallibly degrade their nature.... Lonely as I am, how should I be if Providence had never given me courage to adopt a career...? How should I be with youth past, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... not seem to hear him. She leaned back in the corner of the sofa like a wooden figure. The immovable peevishness of the face, framed in the limp, rusty lace, had ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... reproachful. All this gave me great unhappiness, and I discovered, to my further distress, that in my attempt to return to the old familiar footing I was neglecting the committee and losing interest in the affairs of the library. A certain peevishness took possession of me; I was no longer myself, and I lost the gayety and sprightliness which had been ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... forget the enchanting hours which I passed in Mr. Garrick's society; he appeared to me as one who possessed more power, both to awe and to attract, than any man I ever met with. His smile was fascinating, but he had at times a restless peevishness of tone which excessively affected his hearers; at least it affected me so that I never ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... he came in with a pleased exclamation, his voice had no longer the thin, worn sound, as if only resolute resignation prevented peevishness; there was a cheerfulness and solidity in the tone, as he came fondly to her side, regretted having missed her first appearance, and feared she ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quarrel. I felt, and probably showed, displeasure and dissatisfaction; and Fanny— But how shall I presume to tell what Fanny felt? She showed occasional tears, and what I grew to think rather frequent sulks and peevishness. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... very short time, it became apparent that passion and peevishness were also the traits of this unfortunate child, who had been indulged in the free exercise of a railing tongue, and even of a clawing hand, towards the numerous negro dependants that swarmed in her father's mansion, over whom she had exercised all the despotic ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... trials and duties of life. The body of your child has not the blooming, blushing form of nature, but the cold marble cast of a statue; and it imprints itself upon the disposition, the spirit, the mental faculties. It shows itself in peevishness, in imbecility, in such a passive, slavish subjection to the rules and interests of mere artificial life, as to admit no ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... good sentence stood like a mill-post at my back: yet towards the evening of the next day, I felt this word begin to leave me, and to withdraw its supportation from me, and so I returned to my old fears again, but with a great deal of grudging and peevishness, for I feared the sorrow of despair; nor could my faith ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... and a mountain-man, nae less!" said Caleb, with a peevishness he could not suppress. "I hae seen the day, Luckie, when worthy Mr. Cuffcushion and the service-book would hae served your turn (to the elder dame), or ony honest ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... enforce his own opinion by peevishness, whining, or complaining, with the result that he ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... yet—I hardly know why,—I did not feel the appeal to her as hopeless as to Mother Ada. To entreat the latter was like beseeching a stone wall. Mother Gaillarde's very peevishness (if I dare call it so) showed that she was a woman, ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... read in a train," reply I, dolorously, "it makes me sick!" Then feeling rather ashamed of my peevishness—"Never mind me!" I say, with a dusty smile; "I am quite happy! ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Pedestal piedestalo. Pedestrian piediranto. Pedigree deveno, genealogio. Pediment fruntajxo. Peel (fruit, etc.) sxelo. Peel sensxeligi. Peep rigardeti. Peer nobelo. Peer esplori, sercxi. Peerage nobelaro. Peerless senegala, nekomparebla. Peevish malafabla, cxagrena. Peevishness malafableco. Peg (a hook) krocxilo, lignanajlo. Peg sxtopileto. Pelerine manteleto. Pelf mono. Pelican pelikano. Pelisse pelto. Pellet kugleto, buleto. Pellicle membraneto. Pell-mell intermiksita, e. Pellucid diafana. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... made him find rest and refreshment in his Cuman villa. In his mouth the saying, that public affairs were a burden which he threw off so soon as he might and could, was no mere phrase. After his resignation he remained entirely like himself, without peevishness and without affectation, glad to be rid of public affairs and yet interfering now and then when opportunity offered. Hunting and fishing and the composition of his memoirs occupied his leisure hours; ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... as Mignon La Salle strolled out of school between her two satellites, Susan and Muriel, she was heard to declare with disappointed peevishness that that priggish Miss Dean was either too stupid to resent or too thick-skinned to feel a plain ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... relieve me, and I can still discourse; and, unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance and my cheerful spirit and a good conscience.... And he that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... in the academies and scientific centers, while his backwardness and his parish-house politics drove him from the clubs disgusted, vexed, seeing nothing clearly but that there they were forever borrowing money and gambling heavily. He missed the submissive servants of Manila, who endured all his peevishness, and who now seemed to be far preferable; when a winter kept him between a fireplace and an attack of pneumonia, he sighed for the Manila winter during which a single quilt is sufficient, while in summer he missed the easy-chair and the boy to fan ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... that the beginnings of all Science are difficult to Children (who cannot like grown People fix their Attention) it is justly to befear'd that they should by the ill usage they receive from the impatience and peevishness of such Teachers, as Servants, or Young Tutors, take an Aversion to Learning (and we see in effect, that this very frequently happens). For the Teaching of little Children so as not to disgust them, does require much greater Patience and Address, than common People are often capable ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... merrily sung the lark, when Lisardo quitted his bed-chamber at seven in the morning, and rang lustily at my outer gate for admission. So early a visitor put the whole house in commotion; nor was it without betraying some marks of peevishness and irritability that, on being informed of his arrival, I sent word by the servant to know what might be the cause of such an interruption. The reader will readily forgive this trait of harshness and precipitancy, on my part, when he is informed that I was then just ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... children, as Riches, Arts, Learning, Trade, and many others, was at last delivered of her youngest daughter, called Faction; whom Juno, doing the office of the midwife, distorted in its birth, out of envy to the mother, from whence it derived its peevishness and sickly constitution. However, as it is often the nature of parents to grow most fond of their youngest and disagreeablest children, so it happened with Liberty, who doted on this daughter to such a degree, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... choler, impatience, passion, resentment, displeasure, indignation, peevishness, temper, exasperation, ire, pettishness, vexation, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Summoning all my resolution, I repaired without my uncle's knowledge to the poet's house at an early hour, and after much difficulty was admitted to his room. He was still in bed. Every body has heard of Byron's peevishness, when disturbed or intruded on. He demanded my business in a petulant and offensive tone. I replied, respectfully, that on the preceding day I loaned him a silver pencil,—strongly emphasizing and repeating the word silver,—which, I was grieved ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
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