"Bickering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unseen, Where bickering through the shrubs its waters run, Shines with the image of its golden screen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... of his presence, a bickering match took place between them, one of them playing the part of a citizen's wife and the other ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... beastie, Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin and chase ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... proceeds, and these enchantments vanish, you will find yourself upon the farther side in yet another Alpine valley, snow white and coal black, with such another long-drawn congeries of hamlets and such another senseless watercourse bickering along the foot. You have had your moment; but you have not changed the scene. The mountains are about you like a trap; you cannot foot it up a hillside and behold the sea as a great plain, but live in holes and corners, and can ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... systematic opposition of the legislative and executive councils, which were generally formed exclusively from the old conservative party. Whenever the conservatives obtained the majority in the House of Assembly, the reformers, in retaliation, as systematically opposed every measure. Thus a constant bickering was kept up between the parties in Parliament; while the people, amidst these attentions, lost sight of the true interests of the country, and improvements of all kinds came nearly to a stand-still. As matters were then conducted, it would have been much better had ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... tim'rous beastie. Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou needna start awa' sae hasty. Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin and ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... and that an Englishman can readily tell a Yankee. He began to praise America. He said that Uncle Sam was only a child yet, that America was destined to be the greatest country in the world; that her trouble with Spain was only a bickering; that the present engagement was only his maiden warfare, and that he "walked along like ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... gone so far that Lipotchka is gorgeously arrayed to receive her nobly born suitor, and accept him. Her mother is feasting her eyes on her adored child, in one of the intervals of her grumbling and bickering with her "ungrateful offspring," and warning the dear idol not to come in contact with the door, and crush her finery. But the match-maker announces that the man has beaten a retreat; Lipotchka falls in a swoon. Her father declares that there is no occasion for ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... disgrace, I will make her my footstool to honour and wealth. And, then, to the devil with the footstool! Yes! two years I have borne what was enough to turn my whole blood into gall,—inactivity, hopelessness, a wasted heart and life in myself; contumely from the world; coldness, bickering, ingratitude from the one for whom (oh, ass that I was!) I gave up the most cherished part of my nature,—rather, my nature itself! Two years I have borne this, and now will I have my revenge. I will sell her,—sell her! God! I will sell her like ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Burn up the little Glen, which was in all the melancholy beauty of autumn, the little brook brawling and bickering in fine style over its falls ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... father—hence his name—but, as John Hamlin knew, his father was a great grey timber wolf. But the mother of Batard, as he dimly remembered her, was snarling, bickering, obscene, husky, full-fronted and heavy-chested, with a malign eye, a cat-like grip on life, and a genius for trickery and evil. There was neither faith nor trust in her. Her treachery alone could be relied upon, and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... starters was pulled up and down the line in a skiff to criticise. Not every girl was as fair-minded to her opponents as the girls from Green Knoll Camp, and there was some little bickering before the starter shouted for the whole crowd—both cedars ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Accomack, but they hoyse up there sayles, and back againe to Yorke River, where with a Marvellous celerity they surprise one Major Cheise-Man, and som others, amongst whom one Capt. Wilford, who (it is saide) in the bickering lost one of his eyes, which he seemed little concern'd at, as knowing that when he came to Accomack, that though he had bin starke blinde, yet the Governour would take care for to afford him a guide, that should show him the way ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... listened, but all was still, save here and there a low whistle from some of the watchmen. He said that night was a specimen of every night now. But it had not always been so. During slavery these villages were oftentimes a scene of bickering, revelry, and contention. One might hear the inmates reveling and shouting till midnight. Sometimes it would be kept up till morning. Such scenes have much decreased, and instead of the obscene and heathen songs which they used to sing, they are learning ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... know, Jane, that this cannot be. You never will enjoy peace under your mother's roof. The sighing heart and the saddened features will forever upbraid her, and bickering and repining will mar every domestic scene. Your mother's aversion to me is far from irreconcilable, but that which will hasten reconcilement will be marriage. You cannot forfeit her love as long as you preserve your integrity; and those scruples which no ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... EDY BOARDMAN: (Bickering) And says the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... already turned to leave the room. Anne, held by the blind woman, looked again round the big room with its clean floor and battered inmates. The uneventful peace broken by the bickering of the old women, the babies bringing a double burden to their mothers, the blind woman, to whom all days were alike, seemed to be imprisoned ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... expected any such bickering as I have indicated, between the soldiers of the two sections; and, fortunately, there has been none between the politicians. Possibly I am the only one who thought of the liability of such a state ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... far as General and I are concerned, nothing is changed. We shall continue to the utmost to fulfill your father's trust in us. Now, once and for all, we will drop the subject. I must insist on no more bickering and quarreling in my house. That applies to ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou needna start awa sae hasty Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin and chase ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... so great as it might seem at first glance. Trials would probably be much shorter than the endless, senseless bickering in courts, the long time wasted in selecting juries and the many irrelevant issues on which guilt or innocence are often determined, make necessary now. Most of the criminal cases would likewise be prevented if the state would undertake to improve the general social ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... her, flashing a swift look over her as he did it. "Well, Olga mia. I trust there has been no more bickering in ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... his horn, whereupon Oliver bitterly rejoins, had his friend only done so at first, they would have been reinforced by now, and that the emperor can no longer reach them in time. He can, however, avenge them and give them an honorable burial, Roland argues, and he and his friend continue bickering until the archbishop silences them, bidding Roland blow his horn. Placing Olifant to his lips, the hero, after drawing a powerful breath, blows so mighty a blast that it ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... thundering clash, The lightnings of the waters flash In awful whiteness o'er the shore, 630 That shines and shakes beneath the roar; Thus—as the stream and Ocean greet, With waves that madden as they meet— Thus join the bands, whom mutual wrong, And fate, and fury, drive along. The bickering sabres' shivering jar; And pealing wide or ringing near Its echoes on the throbbing ear, The deathshot hissing from afar; The shock, the shout, the groan of war, 640 Reverberate along that vale, More suited to the shepherd's tale: Though few the numbers—theirs the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Lodge and other historians, there was much rivalry for the office, and it was only allotted to the South as a political deal after much bickering. Washington had been a passive but very willing candidate, and after a struggle his friends secured him the prize—and now what to do with Martha! Writing to her, among other things he says, "You ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... my neighbors of the Iroquois. They drank little or no rum, save as English traders furtively plied them with it, for the French laws were against its sale. They lived most amicably with the French, too, neither hating nor fearing them; and this was in agreeable contrast to the wearisome bickering eternally going on in New York between the Indians striving to keep their land, and the English and Dutch forever planning to trick them out of it. So ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... I'll do with you if you don't stop that constant bickering," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "You ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... of magnanimity, he resembled the great Emperor. M. Paul would have quarrelled with twenty learned women, would have unblushingly carried on a system of petty bickering and recrimination with a whole capital of coteries, never troubling himself about loss or lack of dignity. He would have exiled fifty Madame de Staels, if, they had annoyed, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... controlled. The Emperor Frederick II. had not only succeeded to the government of Germany, and to some influence over the north of Italy, but had inherited Naples and Sicily from his mother. The Pope thus found himself, as it were, between two fires. There was constant bickering between Frederick and Gregory IX., a fiery old man who became Pope in 1227, and in 1238 Gregory excommunicated Frederick, and called on all Europe to assist him against the man whom he stigmatised as the enemy of God and the ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... starting in to answer this indictment when Trimalchio, who was delighted with his fellow-freedman's tirade, broke in, "Cut out the bickering and let's have things pleasant here. Let up on the young fellow, Hermeros, he's hot-blooded, so you ought to be more reasonable. The loser's always the winner in arguments of this kind. And as for you, even when you were a young ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... not brook the opposition of men less competent than he was, and when he was provoked his arrogance became intolerable. In broader domains of political action he would soon have out-generaled his adversary, but in these petty fields of neighborhood bickering Duchesneau, particularly with the occasional nudgings which he received from Laval, proved no unequal match. The fact remains that neither was able or willing to sacrifice personal animosities nor to display any spirit of cordial cooperation ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... shotgun over his shoulder. He shot into a tree-top full of bickering blackbirds and brought three down, torn, flopping, bleeding. He thrust them into his sack, which reddened through, and we went on ... still in silence. The silence began to make me tremble but I was glad, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... suspended from one of its many twinkling points, glittered between the fringes of the clouds, or the white moon diffused soft light among the wreathing vapours that twisted and rolled athwart the heavens. In the shelter of the pines on the margin of the river, a ringdove, awakened by a bickering mate, fluttered from bough to bough; and his angry, muffled coo of defiance marred the stillness of the night. The gurgling call of a moorhen, mingling with the ripple of the stream over the ford, came from the reeds at a distant bend of the river. Nearer, the river, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... there who wrote like geniuses and quarreled like children. Father Taylor said that if Emerson were sent to hell, he would start emigration in that direction. The refugees from France made Geneva popular, and all the bickering added spice to existence ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... truth of the misunderstanding suddenly came home to Nancy, and after some bickering between the lawyers, she was allowed to narrate, in her own homely way, the current of events from the first time she had noticed the illness coming over Mr. Moore, until she had stood by the switch watching the train going to ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... of tongues began to chatter as the red-faced waiters rushed between the tables, taking orders. It was after eleven o'clock, and through the swinging doors passed a throng of motley people, fanning, gossiping, bickering—all eager and thirsty. Clarence Steyle pointed out the celebrities with conscious delight. Over yonder—that man with the mixed gray hair—was a composer who came every night for inspiration,—musical and otherwise, Clarence added, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... But further bickering was prevented by the doctor. At this moment he rose almost to the greatness which his associates claimed for him. Bitter as his feelings were at thus openly being defied and flouted, he refused to blind himself to the justness of the other's plea. He even acquiesced with a decent grace, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on high, But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reel Behind the steadfast Gunnar: but lo, have ye seen the corn, While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind streak overborne When the sudden rain sweeps ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Carl start quarreling the first thing about the stamp. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Who had the last one? Carl? Then this one goes to you and there must be no more bickering about it. If there is I shall keep it myself. One would think you boys were a pair of Kilkenny cats the way you squabble with each other! Now are you going to be quiet and listen to what Uncle Frederick has to say or are you not? Then don't let me ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... adventuring, white men and indigenous black men from day to day lived life in the Solomons, bickering and trafficking, the whites striving to maintain their heads on their shoulders, the blacks striving, no less single-heartedly, to remove the whites' heads from their shoulders and at the same time to keep ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... the human lair, I heard the hucksters bawl, I stifled with the thickened air Of bickering ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... profits of the "Northwestern," Mr. Lovejoy's road. In brief, the Truro Railroad found itself very advantageously placed, as Mr. Worthington and Mr. Flint had foreseen. There followed a period of bickering and recrimination, of attempts of the other two railroads to secure representation in the Truro directorate, of suits and injunctions and appeals to the Legislature and I know not what else—in all of which affairs Mr. Bijah Bixby and other ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... abuses. They are the snares and pitfalls of official jobbery; and there would be no end of bickering and complaining on the merits of this and the shortcomings of that man. Not to say that such a system as this writer recommends would place a Government in the false position of rewarding extravagance and offering a premium for profusion, and holding up for an example to our colonial fellow-subjects ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Over the bickering gonfalons, * far-ranged as for Tartarean wars, Went a waver of ribbed fire *—as night-seas on phosphoric bars Like a flame-plumed fan shake slowly out * their ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... back his words with his sword. Gonzague, studying the lowering faces of his adherents, and smiling compassionately at the boyish insolence of Chavernay, interposed and stifled the threatened brawl. "Come, gentlemen," he said, graciously, "let there be no bickering. Chavernay has a sharp tongue, and spares no one, not even me, yet I am always ready to forgive ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... you freshmen, cut it out, too," warned the athletic first classman. "This is descending to a low level. We don't want a lot of bickering or mouth-fighting, and we don't intend to have anything but ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... Through this quaint desert the railway cars drew near to Monterey from the junction at Salinas City - though that and so many other things are now for ever altered - and it was from here that you had the first view of the old township lying in the sands, its white windmills bickering in the chill, perpetual wind, and the first fogs of the evening drawing drearily around it ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lectures, theatricals, and dances are got up; while, as there is generally a due admixture of the sexes, not a little flirting and downright courting is carried on; and, lastly, if there is any quarrelling and bickering, the differences of those who engage in it afford much ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... station. Being magnificently dressed, they suffered much inconvenience from narrow doorways, which were not built to admit more than one dame in the costume of the period. The times were not yet too serious to forbid such petty bickering, and there was a certain section of society quite frivolous enough to enjoy the ridiculous ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... current of the intrigue had not, however, flowed on with perfect smoothness until this placid termination. On the contrary, here had been much bickering, heart-burning, and mutual suspicions and recriminations. There had been violent wranglings among the claimants of the royal rewards. Lalain and Capres were not the only Malcontents who had cause to complain of being cheated of the promised largess. Montigny, in whose ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that I had been born an Esquimaux. They are very fond of their children and take the greatest care of them. The children never require to be chastised and are very obedient. One never sees any quarrelling or bickering amongst them. They show the true sport in their games of football and baseball. The other day I noticed a crowd of little tots, in their skin clothes, playing on the snow for several hours as though they were in a bed ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... I noticed lack of cordiality in the response of the House—not from want of agreement, but from a profound depression. The old temper of bickering had revived, especially between some of our party and those who disagreed with them. One was glad to get back to France for Christmas, even ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... did warn young Erskyll of the dangers of overwork and emotional over-involvement. Each time, the Proconsul would pour out some tale of bickering and rivalry among the chief-freedmen of the Managements. Citizen Khouzhik and Citizen Eschkhaffar—they were all calling each other Citizen, now—were contesting overlapping jurisdictions. Khouzhik ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... north line of the Flying U, the chain of newly-filed claims remained unbroken. It had taken some careful work upon the part of the Happy Family to do this and still choose land not absolutely worthless except from a scenic viewpoint. But they had managed it, with some bickering and a good deal of maneuvering. Also they had hauled loads of lumber from Dry Lake, wherewith to build their monotonously modest ten-by-twelve shacks with one door and one window apiece and a round hole ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... sentimental, were, in their private lives, persons of the most depraved morals. Why this should be the case, it is impossible even to conjecture, the fact only remaining that it is so. Perhaps there are so many different standards of morality, that humanity, weary of the eternal bickering consequent upon the conflicts entered into for their enforcement, have made for themselves a new interpretation which they find less difficult to observe, and find more peace and ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... the ocean wave Through realms that rove not, clouds that cannot save, Sinks in the sunshine; dazzles o'er the tomb And mocks the mutiny of Memory's gloom. Oh! who can feel the crimson ecstasy That soothes with bickering jar the Glorious Tree? O'er the high rock the foam of gladness throws, While star-beams lull Vesuvius to repose: Girds the white spray, and in the blue lagoon, Weeps like a walrus o'er the waning moon? Who can declare?—not thou, pervading boy Whom pibrochs pierce not, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Miss Taylor I would try to fix things for her. I went upstairs and plotted with Elfreda. Then she and I bearded the dragon in her den. After I had finished telling her that it would be better to take little Miss Taylor without further bickering, Elfreda rose to the occasion and gave her a much-needed lecture. She is very shrewd, I think. She evidently realized she had gone too far. She objected to Miss Taylor because it is her nature to object to everything. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... their unsparing tyrannies and persecutions, their calculated courage and bravado or sedulously hidden cowardice, it might all be some human chapter from the annals of the old Rhineland or medieval Italy. And then, outside their own bickering wars and hates, the grim enemies that come up against them from the woodlands; the hawk that dashes among the coops like a moss-trooper raiding the border, knowing well that a charge of shot may tear him to bits at any moment. And the stoat, a creeping slip of brown ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Spitz and the culprits; but he did it craftily, when Francois was not around, With the covert mutiny of Buck, a general insubordination sprang up and increased. Dave and Sol-leks were unaffected, but the rest of the team went from bad to worse. Things no longer went right. There was continual bickering and jangling. Trouble was always afoot, and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept Francois busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehension of the life-and-death struggle between the two which he knew must take place sooner ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... a passion, and they conspired with his conversation, to make me form an ideal picture of life. I shall pass over the tyranny of my father, much as I suffered from it; but it is necessary to notice, that it undermined my mother's health; and that her temper, continually irritated by domestic bickering, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... pays for the drink. Come, none of this bickering; we must agree upon business, and do the thing up brown under the old system," ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Kings authoritie, who hauing with them a conuenient power, incountred the enimies, slue part of them, and chased the other to their ships. They that escaped and got once to their ships, obteined of Makbeth for a great summe of gold, that such of their friends as were slaine at this last bickering, might be buried in Saint Colmes Inch. In memorie whereof, manie old sepultures are yet in the said Inch, there to be seene grauen with the armes of the Danes, as the maner of burieng noble men still is, and ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... was very hard the doctors should pass such a censure upon me, for which they had no ground; and that it was still harder, considering the circumstances I was under in the family; that I hoped I had done nothing to lessen her esteem for me, or given any occasion for the bickering between her sons and daughters, and I had more need to think of a coffin than of being in love, and begged she would not let me suffer in her opinion for anybody's mistakes but ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... battell at Thrasimenus, betweene Hannibal and the Romanes, by the fighting together of the Sunne and Moone. In birds, what time Brute brought forth the remnant of his army at Philippi, against Caesar and Anthony, by the furious bickering betweene two Eagles. In men, against the destruction of Hierusalem, by the encountring of Chariots and armies in the ayre. And before Alexanders battel with Darius; first, by a casual skirmish of the camp-straglers, vnder two Captaines, borrowing the names of those Princes; and then ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... this home, the like of which it would be hard to find in our generation: "No bickering or dissention was ever permitted. Love was the habit, the life of the household rather than the law.—A querulous tone, a complaint, a slight word of dissention, was met by that awful frown of my father's. Jove's thunder ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... between British and French colonists and traders in America and in India, during the thirty years which followed the treaty of Utrecht, was added the continuous bickering which grew out of the Asiento concluded in 1713 between Great Britain and Spain. Spaniards complained of British smugglers and protested with justice that the British outrageously abused their special privilege by keeping the single stipulated vessel in the harbor ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... even of relatives who were not local residents, was a frequent source of bickering between citizens and magistrates, as well as a constant cause of arbitration between towns. A widow in Dorchester was not permitted to entertain her own son-in-law from another town, and her neighbor was fined in 1671 "under distress" for ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... and trousers, are decorated with elaborate designs—birds, animals, and geometrical figures—worked in various colors. Even in purchasing examples of these clothes, we were compelled to make a vigorous display of our civil and religious orders. After some bickering, we arranged for carriers to San Carlos, which is the cabecera of the district. Starting by moonlight, at two o'clock in the morning, we struck out over the enormous mountain mass to which we have already referred. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of the straight with time. Not but what he was on his best behaviour with us, as everybody was; for we had no bickering among us, for'ard or aft. I only mean to say, he was not the man one would have chosen for a messmate. If choice there had been, one might even have gone a few points out of one's course, to say, "No! Not him!" But, there was one curious ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... gives an account of the bickering and recrimination at Southampton, when all parties had arrived. Pastor Robinson had rather too strenuously given instructions, which it now began to be seen were not altogether wise. Cushman was very much censured, and there was evidently some acrimony. See Cushman's ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... of common hardships and dangers—to say nothing of other bonds of union—and they clung together with great tenacity. On the slightest alarm of Indian invasion, they all made common cause, and flew together to the rescue. There was less selfishness, and more generous chivalry; less bickering, and more cordial charity, then, than at present; ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... tone was very exasperating, and Eleanor straightened haughtily. "I don't think either of us need worry about being too charitable just yet awhile," she began. Then she caught herself up sharply. "Don't let's get to bickering, Jean. You know I ought to ask her, and you know how much I want to. But I'm going to do it, and I expect every girl on my program to help make her have just as good a time as if she were one of us." And Eleanor was off down ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... without any razzle-dazzle this time. The only thing you'll get out of it is a chance to fight for a better chance for others some day—and a promise that there'll be more, until you get old enough to sit at a desk on Earth and fight against every bickering nation there to keep the planets clean. There's a rocket waiting to transship you to the Moon on the way to ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... immigrants finally led to those conflicts with which we are familiar. At the time we regarded it as a triumph of American diplomacy when Japan, in the face of California's threatening attitude, apparently gave in after a little diplomatic bickering and issued the well-known proclamation concerning emigration to Hawaii and the Pacific States, at the same time dissolving several ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... the theatres rose, a lull brooded in the London streets; in this quiet narrow one, the town's hum was only broken by the clack of a half-drunken woman bickering at her man as they lurched along for home, and the strains of a street musician's fiddle, trying to make up for a blank day. The sound vaguely irritated Winton, reminding him of those two damnable foreigners by whom she had been so treated. To have them at the point of a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... kings of Barbary, and my portly bassoes, [130] We hear the Tartars and the eastern thieves, Under the conduct of one Tamburlaine, Presume a bickering with your emperor, And think to rouse us from our dreadful siege Of the famous Grecian Constantinople. You know our army is invincible; As many circumcised Turks we have, And warlike bands of Christians renied, [131] As hath the ocean or the Terrene [132] ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... The sparrows bickering on the floor Fled at his entering in; The swift flew past the empty door His winged meat ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... And hoofs of glancing flame, With helm and sword and pennon bright The long procession came. And all the starry spaces, Height above height outshone, And the bickering clang of their armour rang Down ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... soothingly; "there certainly is nothing in that body of old women and lunatics, perpetually bickering with thirteen sovereign, disobedient, and jealous States, to tempt the ambition of any man; nor, ordinarily, to appeal to his sense of usefulness. But just at present there are several questions before it with which it is thought you can cope more successfully than any man living. So I think ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... after all," cried Hsi Jen, at these words, "bickering with me, or with Master Secundus? If you bear me a grudge, you'd better then address your remarks to me alone; albeit it isn't right that you should kick up such a hullaballoo in the presence of Mr. Secundus. But if you have a spite against Mr. Secundus, you shouldn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... say, Vicar," said the Major, "that it would be better to throw the four packs into two. Then you would have less squabbling and bickering about the different boundaries, and you would kill the same number of hares ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... had been planned and executed. On the Army of the Potomac the people had looked as the bulwark of the country—the central force that should in good time take Richmond and give the last blow to the rebellion. The miserable bickering and paltry fears which had detached McDowell's division from the grand army, to defend Washington when never threatened, had been comparatively unknown or little understood. Many and disastrous months were yet to elapse, before ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... close beside it, but it was nearly daylight the following morning before the hide had thawed sufficiently for the combined efforts of Connie and the Indian to unroll it. All night the two tended the fire and listened to the petty bickering and quarrelling of the two helpless partners, the man in the bunk taunting the other with being a fool for wrapping up in a green moose hide, and being in turn called a fool for chopping his own foot. It was disgusting in the extreme to Connie but at last the ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... blithe and ready to lay lance in rest for England's cause, it would ill be-seem me to prate of service done. It is sooth that I have received seven and twenty wounds. There is the more reason that I should be thankful that I am still long of breath and sound in limb. I have also seen some bickering and scuffling. Six great land battles I count, with four upon sea, and seven and fifty onfalls, skirmishes and bushments. I have held two and twenty towns, and I have been at the intaking of thirty-one. Surely then it would be bitter shame to me, and also to you, since my fame ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to eye one another with scant sympathy, the fisher population of the one and the mining population of the other having little in common beyond the liquor which they uniformly sought at The Three Tuns by the shore. Green never permitted any bickering, and they were all alike in their respect for him, but a species of armed neutrality which was very far removed from comradeship existed between them. Fights at The Three Tuns were by no means of unusual occurrence and the miners ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... beneath his legs. The great headlines in the newspaper announced that the troops were arriving. Columns of childish, reportorial prattle followed, describing the martial bearing of the officers, the fierceness of the "bronzed Indian fighters." The city was under martial law. He read also the bickering telegrams exchanged between the state authorities and the federal government, and interviews with leading citizens, praising the much-vilified President for his firm act in upholding law and order. The general managers were ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... conductor could imagine what was going on in the minds of his players or singers, and could see things from their viewpoint; if he could forecast the effect of his explanatory directions or of his disciplinary rulings, nine-tenths of all the quarreling, bickering, and general dissatisfaction that so frequently mar the work of any musical organization could easily be eliminated. We might also add that if the conductor could only foresee the effect upon his audiences of certain works, or of certain interpretations, ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... put you to that inconvenience," he retorted hotly; then his manner changed. "Ah, Kathleen, do not let us waste the precious seconds bickering. Tell me what I ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... the Diet at Wollin, nor all the doctors from Stettin, nor even Doctor Pomius, who had been sent from Wolgast by the old Duchess, to attend her dear son; and as the doctor (as I have said) was a formal, priggish little man, he and the fool were always bickering and snarling. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... of that extraordinary vividness in the speech of the Scotch peasantry?" said Allan—more to keep the blades from bickering than from any ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... that he was "but a weak and wearisome traveller." He was, however, "passing well used at the King's charge, and that by express orders from my Lord Salisbury," and "had always the best horse in the company." Garnet adds, "I had sorde bickering with ministers by the way. Two very good scholars, and courteous, Mr Abbott and Mr Barlow, met us at an inn; but two other rude fellows met us on the way, whose discourtesy I rewarded with plain words, and so adieu." The Jesuit Superior apparently rather enjoyed a little brisk brushing ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... I heard, upstairs, that unmistakable sound instantly recognized the world over—a bickering woman's voice, rising as her anger and fury grew. I could hear, between the gusts, the temperate rumble of Bell's tones, striving to oil the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... they managed to live together comfortably enough. They each had their reservations, but especially after Jim's death they tacitly agreed to stop bickering and to make their mutual concessions. What Nina never suspected was that he corresponded with Beverly Carlysle. Not that the correspondence amounted to much. He had sent her flowers the night of the New York opening, with the name of his club on his card, and she wrote there in acknowledgment. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was a very pretty river, Or rather stream, as ever could be seen— If not so wide as the great Guadalquiver, Its banks were nearly always clothed in green, (Save when in winter the winds made you shiver,) While the waves, bickering so bright and sheen, Put you in mind of Avon, Rhine, or Hellespont, Or any other stream to admire ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... part, but the whole of the Scriptures, if therein they think they will find eternal life; I, as an advocate of free thought and untrammelled opinion, dispute the authority of those uncharitable, bickering, and ignorant Ecclesiastics who first suppressed these gospels and epistles; and I join issue with their Catholic and Protestant successors who have since excluded them from the New Testament, of which they formed a part; and were venerated ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... An act of the new government, therefore, for opening a loan in Holland for the purpose, laying taxes at the same time for paying annually the interest and a part of the principal, will answer the two valuable purposes, of ascertaining the degree of our credit, and of removing those causes of bickering and irritation, which should never be permitted to subsist with a nation, with which it is so much our interest to be on cordial terms as with France. A very small portion of this debt, I mean that part due to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to hear you say so much, sir," she answered gently. "I have often envied my companions at the Ursulines when they talked of their brothers. It was so strange to hear them tell of bickering and ill-will between brother and sister. Had God given me a brother, I would not ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... explanations, I myself learn to recognise some of the gods at sight. The figure seated upon a lotus, holding a sword in its hand, and surrounded by bickering fire, is Fudo- Sama—Buddha as the Unmoved, the Immutable: the Sword signifies Intellect; the Fire, Power. Here is a meditating divinity, holding in one hand a coil of ropes: the divinity is Buddha; those are the ropes which ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... afternoon—a miserable, bickering row. He got on his hind legs and snarled and snapped at me, and made me mad, I guess. So I got to thinking why I should be against him, and it came to me that a man who had violated the decencies as he has and whose decisions for the old spider have been so raw, shouldn't ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... positions. If it appeared that the John of five centuries before had been under the Peter of that period, the modern Peter was too proud to accept a similar position under the modern John. And so it went, until court life became a constant scene of bickering and discontent, and of murmurs at the most trifling slights and neglects. In short, it became necessary that an office of genealogy should be established at court, in which exact copies of the family trees and service registers of the noble families were ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of Knoxville beyond the railway and the station buildings. He also occupied a line of hills, but pushed forward strong skirmish lines and detachments to cover the making of intrenchments closer to the town. There were frequent bickering combats, but no general engagement. The enemy made efforts to destroy the pontoon bridge by sending down logs and rafts from above. These were met by an iron cable boom stretched across the river above ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... The bickering discussion became general for a moment, then, still disputing, Casson and Wye walked off toward camp, and Stephen and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... viewpoint. What mine is, you can't be expected to know. But believe me when I say that I consider it of vital importance to the investigation of the murder of Mrs. Selim that this particular bridge hand, with all its attending remarks, the usual bickering, and its interruptions of arriving guests for cocktails, be played out, exactly as it was this afternoon. I thought I had made myself clear before. If you don't wish me to believe that you have something to conceal by refusing to take part in a ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... the crop and offered it. As he did so, the horse became restive, and there was quite a substantial bickering before his mistress could accept the whip. Anthony, if he thought about it at all, attributed the scene to caprice. In this he was right, yet wrong. Caprice was the indirect reason. The direct cause was the heel of a little hunting-boot adroitly applied to a somewhat sensitive flank. There is ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... hot and tired after an exhausting day. It chanced that at a meeting of the Ministry, which he attended late in the afternoon, the question of Beliani's appointment as Minister of Finance came up for settlement. It was not determined without some bickering, and an undercurrent of dislike if not of positive hatred of the man quickly made ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... Koku were rapidly outliving the sudden friendship of Rad's sick days, when it was thought he might be blind for life, and were dropping back into their old ways of bickering ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... least of the mediaeval Church, which we cannot too carefully remember is little more represented by modern Catholicism than by modern Protestantism. The contest, therefore, between the Crown and the Church was a mere bickering between two bodies, without any essential antagonism between them, as to how far the administration of either reached; neither dreamed of subordinating one to the other, far less of extinguishing ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... people just like these relatives of hers. She was both ashamed and amused,—ashamed of their ill-breeding and amused by their useless bickering. ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... and Prussia's king, Wearied, at length with bickering, Resolv'd to end the strife; And homewards, then, their separate routs The armies took, with songs and shouts, With cymbals, drum ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... deals. This is a prudent precaution as the Manbo is not very methodical in his affairs nor quick in his movements. A thousand and one things—omens, sickness, bad weather—may delay him in the fulfillment of his contract. It is this tardiness that gives rise to the ill feeling and bickering that are not infrequently the outcome of this system of trading. The Manbo, moreover, has long since become aware of the stupendous gain made by the traders, and, when not dealt with gently, becomes ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Clark boys, whose sensibilities had likewise been harassed; and with all the world against him Bill Lightfoot retired in a huff to his blankets. So the rodeo ended as it had begun, in disaster, bickering, and bad blood, and no man rightly knew from whence their misfortune came. Perhaps the planets in their spheres had cast a malign influence upon them, or maybe the bell mare had cast a shoe. Anyhow they had ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... the cave, which here rose very high, was illuminated by torches made of pine-tree, which emitted a bright and bickering light, attended by a strong though not unpleasant odour. Their light was assisted by the red glare of a large charcoal fire, round which were seated five or six armed Highlanders, while others were ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... his heart had sunk within him at the prospect. For what was in front? What could be? Shearing and waiting for shearing—that was his life. Working over the sweating sheep under the hot iron shed in the sweltering summer time; growing sick and losing weight and bickering with the squatter till the few working months wore over; then an occasional job, but mostly enforced idling till the season came round again; looking for work from shed to shed; struggling against conditions; agitating; organising; and in the future years, aged too soon, wifeless ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... temperaments seem to have been poles apart. There arose a "scandalous report, that Smith meant to reach Virginia only to usurp the Government, murder the Council, and proclaim himself King." The bickering deepened into forthright quarrel, with at last the expected explosion. Smith was arrested, was put in irons, and first saw ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... fellows here," the Major's lady continued. "There's not a regiment in the service where you'll find a more united society nor a more agreeable mess-room. There's no quarrelling, bickering, slandthering, nor small talk amongst us. We ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unquestionably, much unhappiness in families where polygamy prevails,—daily bickering, jealousies, and heart-burnings,—but it is carefully concealed from the knowledge of the public. If domestic troubles become so aggravated as to be unendurable, recourse is usually had to Brigham Young for a divorce. There are women in Salt Lake City who have been married and divorced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Disagreement. — N. disagreement; discord, discordance; dissonance, dissidence, discrepancy; unconformity &c. 83; incongruity, incongruence[obs3]; discongruity[obs3], mesalliance; jarring &c. v.; dissension &c. 713; conflict &c. (opposition) 708; bickering, clashing, misunderstanding, wrangle. disparity, mismatch, disproportion; dissimilitude, inequality; disproportionateness &c. adj[obs3].; variance, divergence, repugnance. unfitness &c. adj.; inaptitude, impropriety; inapplicability &c. adj.; inconsistency, inconcinnity[obs3]; irrelevancy ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and have found fellowship and comfort and courage and that sense of God within them, that inner light which is the quintessence of the religious experience, it was the True God that answered them. For the True God is a generous God, not a jealous God; the very antithesis of that bickering monopolist who "will have none other gods but Me"; and when a human heart cries out—to what name it matters not—for a larger spirit and a stronger help than the visible things of life can give, straightway the nameless Helper is with it and the God of Man ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... panoply all armed Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought, Ascended; at his right hand Victory Sat eagle-winged; beside him hung his bow And quiver with three-bolted thunder stored; And from about him fierce effusion rolled Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire: Attended with ten thousand thousand Saints, He onward came; far off his coming shone; And twenty thousand (I their number heard) Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen; He on the wings of Cherub rode ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... against the bogles which still haunted his imagination. I rejected his proffer somewhat peevishly, trimmed the wood-fire, and placing myself in one of the large leathern chairs which flanked the old Gothic chimney, I watched unconsciously the bickering of the blaze which I had fostered. "And this," said I alone, "is the progress and the issue of human wishes! Nursed by the merest trifles, they are first kindled by fancy—nay, are fed upon the vapour of hope, till they consume the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... bickering. And I'm not rising to any heights of courage which would be impossible to your husband. It's consoling, however, to know how matters stand. And Duncan will probably act according to his ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer |
