"Cantankerous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that doesn't stand to reason. Every day the sun inches a little higher in the heavens. His rays strike us more directly and for a longer time each day. But it's the cantankerous fact, and it simply has to stand to reason. That's the answer, and the sum has to be figured out somehow in accordance with it. Like one time, when I was about sixteen years old, and in the possession of positive and definite information about the way ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... common scold. When a man plunges into a river to save somebody from drowning, if you do not plunge in yourself, at least do not jeer at him for his method of swimming. So Roosevelt, who shrank from no bodily or moral risk himself, held in scorn the "timid good," the " acidly cantankerous," the peace-at-any-price people, and the entire tribe of those who, instead of attacking iniquities and abuses, attacked those who are desperately engaged in fighting these, For this reason he probably failed to absorb from ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... sides the controversies were petty, and were conducted in a petty spirit. The popular assembly described itself as "the Commons House of Assembly in Parliament assembled"; whereupon it was ordered forthwith to strike out the word "Parliament." The Legislative Council appears to have been the more cantankerous, and the less prone to compromise. At last matters reached an impasse, for the Council began to throw out Supply and Revenue Bills. In the first year of the Queen's reign, when Canada was already full of trouble, delegates from the ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... since his return from the royal tiger-hunt this morning, notwithstanding that his unerring spear slew two goodly and most furious animals. He is wondrous sullen,-and only the divine Sah- luma is skilled in the art of soothing his troubled spirit. Therefore,—if thou hast aught of crabbed or cantankerous to urge against thy master's genius, thou hadst best reserve it for another time, lest thy withered head roll on the market-place with as little reverence as a dried gourd flung ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... disappointment and pettishness. So the captain was compelled to treat them more amiably than usual. At the very outside their contract would only be for nine months. Sometimes when he showed signs of being in a cantankerous mood because the haul of shells did not please him, the serang would say to him defiantly, "Come on; take it out of me if you are not satisfied." But Jensen never accepted the challenge. As the days passed, I thought the weather showed indications ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... been a schoolteacher in her early life and she'd never got over it. Then she hated to see me eating with my knife. Well, there it was, pick and nag everlasting. But I s'pose, Anne, to be fair, I was cantankerous too. I didn't try to improve as I might have done . . . I just got cranky and disagreeable when she found fault. I told her one day she hadn't complained of my grammar when I proposed to her. It wasn't an overly tactful thing to say. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... you say, George," persisted his wife; "he may be a disagreeable, cantankerous old brute—I don't say he isn't. All the same, the man is going away, and we may ...
— The Cost of Kindness - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... such a d—— cantankerous fellow, and perhaps Lady C. may say that I oughtn't to have taken advantage of her absence. But, what's the odds? If she takes me there'll be an end of it. If she don't, they can't ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... been a cantankerous heifer a breaking into my lot, and I've been a lookin' for her, and I've ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... hear you," replied the other angrily, "for a more bad-natured, cross-grained, cantankerous person than yourself I never met among womankind. It's what I said to a man only yesterday, that thin ones are bad ones, and there isn't any one could be ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... perhaps the most divided pair that ever were yoked by Hymen. D. was a good-humored fellow, a jovial blade, full of high spirits—while his wife was one of the most cross-grained and cantankerous bodies that ever man was blessed with—and yet, to hear the sweet diminutives which they both employed in their dialogues, the world would have concluded that they were ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... Hudson Cavour had been one of those tragic men whose personalities negate the value of their work. A solitary, cantankerous, opinionated individual—a crank, in short—he withdrew from humanity to develop the hyperspace drive, announcing at periodic intervals that he was ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... the letter, in which he assured her of his love, could not counterbalance the harshness of its contents. Madame Balzac, be it granted, was cantankerous; but how many sons who have never sponged on their mothers have supported them cheerfully, gladly, for long years out of meagre resources, and have borne with a smile the natural peevishness of old age, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... They're devils to handle and as fierce as wild cats. We had one just like him. Unusually big brute. He was our 'wheeler.' The most vicious dog of the lot. The resemblance is striking. By Jove!" he went on reminiscently, "he was a sulky, cantankerous cuss. His name was 'Sitting Bull,' after the renowned Sioux Indian chief. We had to be very careful of the other dogs on account of his 'scrapping' propensities. He killed one poor beast I think we nicknamed him rather appropriately. He was ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... cannot but think that all the characters of a region help to modify the children born in it. I am fond of making apologies for human nature, and I think I could find an excuse for myself if I, too, were dry and barren and muddy-witted and "cantankerous,"—disposed to get my back up, like those other natives of ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of harm you do yourself by your impetuosity. You complain of the authorities, you even complain of the government—you are always pulling them to pieces; you insist that you have been neglected and persecuted. But what else can such a cantankerous ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... know animals are pretty much like people. There are some good ones and some bad ones. Now, this dog is a snarling, cross-grained, cantankerous beast, and when I heard Joe was coming, I said: 'Now we'll have a good dog about the place, and here's an end to the bad one.' So I tied Bruno up, and to-morrow I shall shoot him. Something's got to be done, or he'll be biting ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... "A cantankerous old woman," I remember he had called her on that occasion, and had made no further effort ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... mighty cantankerous, quar'lsome, aggervatin' critter!" Byers broke out irritably. "Ain't ye 'shamed o' this hyar hurrah ye hev kicked up fur nuthin'? accusin' o' Birt wrongful, ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... swinging his cane, not as though he needed it for walking, but merely for occupation and companionship. He did not delude the villagers by these sorrowful deceptions, but they made believe he did. There were a few people who did not like him; but they were of that cantankerous minority who put thorns in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dropping all concealment, Eva springs to her feet: "Yes, elsewhere shall fortune bloom for him than in the neighbourhood of you repulsive envy-ridden creatures!—elsewhere, where hearts still have some warmth in them, in spite of all cantankerous Master Hanses!—Directly, yes, I am coming!" (This to Magdalene, who has been calling to her from her father's door.) "I go home much comforted! It reeks of pitch here till God take pity on us! Kindle a fire with it, do, Master Sachs, and get a little warmth ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... cantankerous little man, with dishevelled hair and haggard countenance, bad-tempered and irritable, penurious and dishonest, at least in his claims for priority in discoveries—this is the picture usually drawn, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... present war. It is natural enough, though not particularly edifying, that in a war each party ascribes all the guilt thereof to the opponents and poses as the innocent who maliciously was surprised when not dreaming of any harm. But the cantankerous way in which almost the whole political and intellectual Germany has handled this question and has treated it as a crime not to take in every respect the German view of the case and of all the details of warfare has strengthened the feeling that this nation has come to regard itself ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... cleverer or less clever; there is no scale of measurement between you: but he is wholly void of ambition, and might possibly assist yours. He can do what he likes with Sir Peter; and considering how your poor father—a worthy man, but cantankerous—harassed and persecuted Sir Peter, because Kenelm came between the estate and you, it is probable that Sir Peter bears you a grudge, though Kenelm declares him incapable of it; and it would be well if you could annul that grudge ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Who reignest where The weather's seldom bleak and snowy, This boon I urge: In anger scourge My old cantankerous ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... was pointing out the chief figures. "There's Grant... and Stanton, looking more cantankerous than ever. They say he's brokenhearted." But Mr. Hamilton had no eye for celebrities. He was thinking rather of those plain mourners from the west, and of the poorest house in Washington decked with ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... of course, it is all a trick of yours. You didn't want to sing. We made you. This is your revenge, eh? I didn't know you had it in you to be so—so beastly and cantankerous." ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... office and fumed and chattered for an hour or more about the extra three dollars on his trousers. If he had been less abusive the tailor might have overlooked the matter; but even a tailor has a soul, and this time the man swore to have the law on his cantankerous customer. ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Walraven, uneasily, "don't be cantankerous. Let by-gones be by-gones. I'm sorry for the past—I am indeed, and am willing to do well for the future. Sit down and be sociable, and tell me all about it. How came you to let the little one go ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... small clerk is that we want somebody who knows how to deal with men, and especially young men on the one hand, and especially cantankerous (more or less) old scientific buffers on ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... had puffs round her eyes, and swollen lips, and a cat-like expression of geniality. Behind her agreeable smile there was suspicion of all mankind, suspicion and wariness, due to her constant need of self-control in the difficult business of managing noisy or cantankerous guests. Sally did not like her. "Tabby!" she thought at once. But immediately afterwards she knew that it would be worth while to make a friend of Mrs. Tennant. She gave her little friendly grin, and saw its effect. "That's that," reflected Sally. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Blyth's I may say that the caracal differs very much from the European lynx, who, according to Tschudi, betrays his presence by horrible howlings audible at a great distance. Professor Kitchen Parker writes that the specimen now in the Zoological Gardens is a most cantankerous beast.[16] "If the American lynx, who is unfortunate enough to live in the same cage with him, dares to come betwixt the wind and his nobility, or even if he, in the course of his peregrinations, should, by chance, get sufficiently near his companion to be ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... the soul of the place, with its eternal youth and eternal antiquity. It should introduce us to its charming ghosts—it is difficult to name one disagreeable person in this pageant; even the cantankerous Smollett was soothed when he came under its spell. It should enable us to touch finger-tips, perhaps make closer acquaintance, with Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, Hans Holbein, Thomas Shadwell (forgotten laureate), Carlyle, Whistler, Edwin Abbey, George ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... of us as a father of his children, and he grew as fond of us as we were of him, so that the final parting, after the journey was done, was really a moving scene. I have found the tribe of cabbies, in all countries, to be, as a rule, somewhat cantankerous and sinister; but Gaetano compensated for all his horse-driving brethren. To be sure, vettura driving is not like cabbing, and Gaetano was in the habit of getting out often and walking up the hills, thus exercising his liver. But he must have been born with a strong predisposition to goodness, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... his eyes." Her own outspoken words seemed to burn through her body. "But how could I know where to wear my rose? I have read in English books that gentle ladies wear them there." And these lines of Tennyson [Footnote: I must say here for the benefit of the drivelling, cantankerous critic, with a squint in his eye, who never looks for anything good in a piece of writing, but is always in the search for a flaw, that I send passages from Tennyson floating through Annette's brain with good justification. She had received a very fair education at a convent ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... you, Sergeant, until I count three. Then, if you haven't started, we'll simply have to bring you down like a cantankerous grizzly. Or, if you start and then stop again, we'll shoot just the same. We can't afford to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... in that region would have closed with the offer forthwith, but there were reasons why the one in question, who was, moreover, an obstinate, cantankerous man, should seize ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... say painting doesn't pay," said the Scotchman, extending his long hands comprehensively, with a quiet chuckle. "And I'm not saying that it does, mind you, when a man has notions like that queer, cantankerous devil Oswyn. He wouldn't make anything pay in this world. But if a man's clever and canny, and has the sense to see on which side his bread's buttered ... why, it's just easier than nothing. And to think that the laddie isn't ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... that a little dog with such a very bad name as Hoodie was really not to be envied. She loved her own god-daughter Maudie dearly, and she knew it to be true that she was a very nice child, but her heart was sore for poor cantankerous Hoodie. You see her patience had not yet been tried by her as had been the patience of all those about the little girl, so after all she could not consider ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... with you!" said the American, beginning to collect his traps. "You're a bad one, you are. I don't like such lingo—I don't, by George! I never took you for an angel, but I vow I didn't think you were the cantankerous little toad you are! I don't set up to be a saint myself, and if a man knocks me down and pummels my innards out for nothin', I calculate to fix his flint, if I can; but you—shoo! you're a little devil on airth, and that's ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... Oliver. 'Too late now. Drink as he has brewed. He should have thought twice before he broke my poor mother's heart with his cantankerous ways. Cheveleigh beneath him, forsooth! I'm not going to have it cut up for a lot of trumpery girls! I've settled the property and whatever other pickings there may be upon my little Clara—grateful, and worthy ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a look, and was not reassured to see in the jurymen's faces doubt replacing mirth. Then Hiram Hopkins's hearty voice, ringing with opposition, struck upon his delighted ear. He remembered Hiram's dislike for the cantankerous Keith. Here perhaps ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... without and—doubtless for that reason—has apparently felt as free to saw and fit them to his argument as he has felt with his plots. Something preposterous in the millionaire reformer Mr. Crewe, something cantankerous and passionate in the Abolitionist Judge Whipple of The Crisis, above all something both tough and quaint in the up-country politician Jethro Bass in Coniston resisted the argumentative knife and saved for those particular persons ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... withered old sinner perched on a bench, quaintly attired in red turned up with ermine, addresses another sinner in a wooden pew, and bids him be taken away and hung by the neck until he is dead; and how the sinner in the pew, instead of indignantly remonstrating with the sinner on the bench, 'Why, you cantankerous old absurdity, what are you about taking my life like that?' usually exhibits signs of great depression, and meekly allows himself to be conducted to his cell, from whence in due course he is taken and throttled ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... cantankerous cuss, boy. Let 'im gas; 'e don't cut any figger anyway. Say, you keep yer eye peeled on some o' the young heifers on the far side o' the bunch. They're rustlin' some. They keep mouching after new grass. When the moon gits up you'll ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... Club." Mr. Pickwick in b is more cantankerous than in a—all the faces scarcely correspond in expression, though the outlines are the same. The work, shading, etc., is much ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... seen or spoken to, a novelist and lecturer with record-breaking best sellers to his account. He once had some business dealings with our firm, and I attended to the details, thereby winning his cantankerous approval. He had very bad manners, of which he was totally unashamed, and very good morals, of which he was somewhat doubtful, as they didn't smack of genius; a notion that he was a superior sort of Sherlock Holmes, having the truffle-hound's ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... escape, like Jonah in the whale's belly. Now I charge you to be careful, woe's me, that ever I be going to leave you. My heart is just broke, but do, master Oscar, be good to your little brother, and don't put on him. He has a high spirit, and it is no doubt cantankerous, but he must be honourably treated, and there's never a finer temper ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... little dogs which he would kick otherwise; he smiles at old stories which would make him break out in yawns, were they uttered by any one but papa; he drinks sweet port wine for which he would curse the steward and the whole committee of a club; he bears even with the cantankerous old maiden aunt; he beats time when darling little Fanny performs her piece on the piano; and smiles when wicked, lively little Bobby upsets the coffee over ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... do they testify! Considering the recent progress of these regions that has led to a security and prosperity formerly undreamed of, one is driven to the conjecture that these words can only have been penned by some cantankerous churl of an emigrant returning to his native land after an easeful life in New York and compelled—"for his sins," as he would put it—to ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... NARES could hardly hope to satisfy the exigent demands of adoration in the part of young Carrington. Who, indeed, could sustain his reputation as a figure of romance when addressed as "Arthur-John"? Mr. FRED KERR, who played Martin Carrington, the cantankerous uncle, cannot help being workmanlike; but he was asked to repeat himself too much. The best performance was that of Miss MARION LORNE, in the part of the hero's one devout lover, Fancy Phipps; her quiet sense of humour, salted with a slight American ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... cow," said a fourth neighbor, and he promptly sold Steve a cantankerous beast that wanted to rival him in authority, and indeed for a time ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... Sucklethumbkin's powder-flask, and had put large pinches of the best Double Dartford into Mr. Dobbs's tobacco-box; and Mr. Dobbs's pipe had exploded, and set fire to Mrs. Botherby's Sunday cap; and Mr. Maguire had put it out with the slop-basin, "barring the wig"; and then they were all so "cantankerous," that Barney had gone to take a walk in the garden; and then—then Mr. Barney had ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... building, very wretched now, but with an air of bygone superiority. This was chiefly shown in the Renaissance doorway, a rather elaborate piece of work, over which was the date 1602. I ascended the steps with a little misgiving, for I thought that perhaps some cantankerous person whose family had seen better times might be living there, and that my questions as to food and drink might meet with surly answers. I knocked, nevertheless, with my stick upon the old door studded with nail-heads. It was opened, and before me stood a woman who looked old, but who ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... feature of his new life was the friendship of the bluff, cantankerous, but kind-hearted contractor, his sunny daughter, the manly foreman, and the talkative Murphy. Of Tressa he had so many glowing things to write in his letters to his wife that Helen threatened to rush ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... Mrs. Gratacap said to Maurice, "It's a pity your grandmother is so cantankerous; but, I'm used to cranks and whims of all sorts of folks, and it's only for her own sake, that I wish she'd make herself more at home here. Who'd think she was the mother of that poor dear lying ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... had feared his strength; in his old age they feared his wit. "Let Owd Sammy tackle him," they said, when a new-comer was disputatious, and hard to manage; "Owd Sammy's th' one to gi' him one fur his nob. Owd Sammy'll fettle him—graidely." And the fact was that Craddock's cantankerous sharpness of brain and tongue were usually efficacious. So he "tackled" Barholm, and so he "tackled" the curate. But, for some reason, he was never actually bitter against Grace. He spoke of him lightly, and rather sneered at his physical ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... widely trusted. Every one spoke of his crusty temper and bullying disposition, invariably qualifying the statement with a commendation of his resources and capabilities. The devil of a driver, a hard man to get along with, obstinate, contrary, cantankerous; but brains! No doubt of that; brains to his boots. One would like to see the man who could get ahead of him on a deal. Twice he had been shot at, once from ambush on Osterman's ranch, and once by ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... cantankerous lot all through!" grumbled the fat scout, looking carefully where he expected to plant his foot next; for, in spite of Rob's assurance, he was not quite so certain that the undergrowth beneath the bridge might not harbor some poisonous ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... propose goin' anywhare. I only want to git outen this country. She's a holy terror an' I stood it jest as long as I could. All thets left of my farm is on this ere boat an' I don't reckon its goin' to cost me much trouble to take care of it an' locate anywhare outside of this country. This ere cantankerous river has done me up, done ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... himself that he mustn't be impatient. This, after all, was only the second day of Helen Brabazon's stay at Wyndfell Hall. Perhaps it was a good thing that her cantankerous old uncle had betaken himself off. Misfortune had a way of turning itself into good fortune where Lionel Varick was concerned; for he was bold and brave, as well as always ready to seize opportunity ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... BOOTH) Now, I suppose my cantankerous daughter wouldn't have you, Piercy; not if I said anything to her about it. But if ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... soon wish it too, for Mistress Benden's body; but I'm not so certain sure touching Mistress Benden's soul. 'Tis my belief if Master Benden were less cantankerous, Mistress wouldn't ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... though what on earth there was to guard against was more than I could have said just then. Some cross-grained streak in my nature made me both cantankerous and suspicious, and while the mood was on me I would have contradicted or queried the word of ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... Uncle Enoch, "'Specially when ye don't want 'em to be. The off one's stiddy enough. It's this cantankerous skewbald that started the tantrum. Whoa now, blame ye!" Calico's nose was in the air again ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... lies O'Grady, that cantankerous creature, Who paid, as all must pay, the debt of nature; But, keeping to his general maxim still, Paid it—like ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... critics"—were so unfriendly toward him. He was not of their set, and some of them regarded him as a sort of literary Ishmael, who had his hand raised against all his contemporaries, a quarrelsome and cantankerous although very able man, and therefore to be ignored or sat down upon whenever possible. He once said, "I don't know a man on the press who would do me a favor. The press is a great engine, of course, but its influence is vastly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... found that married life with the head-man of a fort was even better than she had dreamed. No longer did she have to fetch wood and water and wait hand and foot upon cantankerous menfolk. For the first time in her life she could lie abed till breakfast was on the table. And what a bed!—clean and soft, and comfortable as no bed she had ever known. And such food! Flour, cooked into biscuits, hot-cakes and bread, three times a ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... the barkeeper. "He's the most cantankerous crank in the township. And say, let me give you a pointer. If the subject of 1812 comes up,—the war, you know,—you'd better admit that we got thrashed out of our boots; that is, if you want to get along with Hiram. He ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... ride, says you? Son, I once attends where a lecture sharp holds forth as to Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. As was the proper thing I sets silent through them hardships. But I could, it I'm disposed to become a disturbin' element or goes out to cut loose cantankerous an' dispootatious in another gent's game, have showed him the French experiences that Moscow time is Sunday school excursions compared with these trips the boys makes when on the breath of that blizzard they swings south with their ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... Kaffar made himself very disagreeable. This was somewhat unusual, as he was generally very bland and polite, but to-night he was so cantankerous that I fancied he must have been drinking. To me he was especially insulting, and went so far as to hint that I, unlike other Englishmen, was a coward; that I hadn't courage to resist a man manfully, but would act towards an enemy in a cunning, serpent-like way. This was not the first occasion ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... caught nappin' when our friend Oscar tipped his hat an' made his bow. Now I was wonderin' if he had that ole quick-firin' gun away back when he was riddlin' things along in the Argonne—wouldn't it be a queer thing if true? He knew how to rattle that cantankerous bus to beat the band an' he did nick me in that silly o' ear o' mine that keeps on gettin' in the way every time I have a little spat with a ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... miles and miles away from any other land; therefore it don't belong to nobody, and accordin'ly I takes possession of it. So you see, Cap'n, you're all wrong about it bein' your'n. It's mine; and if I was measly and cantankerous I'd prob'ly order you to take your schooner outer my harbour at once. But I ain't that sorter man: I'm lib'ral and free-handed to a fault; I ain't no greedy grab-all, not by a long chalk, so you may stay in this here harbour o' mine so long as you've a mind to. But, you understan', you ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... his ledger. It was not etiquette to disclose the affairs of one client to another, but if there was a cantankerous customer, one who was never satisfied with prices and quality, that client was Miss Mapp.... He allowed a broad grin to ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... means, I assure you. Besides these winged devils, we have swarms of flies, which also bite and sting, with a venomous rancor of which I should have thought their frivolity incapable. Besides these, every cupboard and drawer in our rooms is full of moths. Besides these, we have an army of cantankerous fleas quartered upon us. Besides these, we have one particular closet where we keep—our bugs, and where for the most part, I am truly thankful to say, they keep themselves. Besides these, we have two or three ants' nests in our bedroom, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... sort of privilege to have been admitted to them. And yet he clearly perceived the shortcomings of each person in this little world of which the totality was so delightful. He knew that Ethel was languidly futile, Rose cantankerous, Milly inane, Stanway himself crafty and meretricious, and Leonora often supine when she should not be. He dwelt specially on the more odious aspects of Stanway's character, and swore that, had Stanway forty womenfolk instead of four, he, Arthur Twemlow, should still ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... really liked her. And then Fawn will be always afraid of her,—and won't be in the least afraid of us. We shall have to fight him, and he won't fight her. He's a cantankerous fellow,—is Fawn,—when he's not ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... why should any man who writes, even if he write things immortal, nurse anger at the world's neglect? Who asked him to publish? Who promised him a hearing? Who has broken faith with him? If my shoemaker turn me out an excellent pair of boots, and I, in some mood of cantankerous unreason, throw them back upon his hands, the man has just cause of complaint. But your poem, your novel, who bargained with you for it? If it is honest journeywork, yet lacks purchasers, at most you may call yourself a hapless tradesman. If it come from ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... a Western Canadian farmer it did not take him long to slip around behind the problems of the farming class; for there was no greater adept at poking a cantankerous problem about with a sharp stick than the Honorable George. It was natural for this short, stout, bearded Englishman to gravitate into the first Legislature of the newly-formed Province of Saskatchewan and just as naturally he moved up to a ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... members on the bench form their judgment; for of themselves they know nothing, having been purposely selected on account of their superior ignorance. Cross-examination makes the matter still worse. A cantankerous waspish counsel, with the voice of an exasperated cockatoo, endeavours to make the opposing engineer contradict himself. He might as well try to overturn Ailsa Crag. He of the impossible gradients is the hero of a hundred committees, quite accustomed to legal artifice, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... Buck, with a warning cantankerous inflection, firmly and almost brutally reproving this conversational delinquency of George's. "Rule it out, young man! We don't want any of that sort of mountebanking in England. We ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... letter, and by depicting the mutiny in colours which his imagination supplied, laying stress on the enthusiasm of the crews, and declaring that the success of their plot was delayed rather than destroyed by the cunning of the usurper, he contrived to inspire hope again in the breast of the cantankerous and exiled monarch, who kept him at his side during the rest of the journey back to Paris, and there introduced him to the favour of King Lewis. The latter monarch, who happened to be bored, asked Captain Salt what he could ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Spanish como esta usted muy bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten it all I thought I had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any person place or thing pity I never tried to read that novel cantankerous Mrs Rubio lent me by Valera with the questions in it all upside down the two ways I always knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the Spanish and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant what a pity he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead tired ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... to haunt the kitchen, where her courtesy won even the cantankerous cook for a friend, and from her the girl learned so much of her art that the cook could teach her no more. In the laundry the good-natured Irish woman who presided over that department of household economy gave her ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... you are, you cantankerous little fabrication of nothings!" Belle said aloud, in a low, throaty, gloating voice. "Take that—and that! And now behave yourself. If you don't, mama spank—but good!" Then, breaking connection, "Thanks a million, Clee; you're tall, solid gold. Do you want to run ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... were the fine things to be said for Aunt Charlotte; the arguments in her behalf—a splendid long golden list of them stretching back to their babyhood and beyond, binding them with ties stronger almost than blood ties to this faithful, loving, cantankerous, crotchety old soul. Aunt Charlotte had been born in servitude, the possession of their mother's mother. She had been their mother's handmaiden before their mother's marriage. Afterward she had been their own nurse, cradling them in babyhood on her black breast, spoiling them, training ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... as I have already said, is highly electrical and unpleasant in these hot spring days with the dust rising in heavy clouds. Squabbling and cantankerous, rather absurd and petty, the Legations are spinning their little threads, each one hedged in by high walls in its own compound and by the debatable question of the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... tablows, he is as pretty as a picture, provided, of course, you don't get too near him. He is healthy, and has a good appetite, and he draws a good salary, and has no one except himself to look after. And yet that Dwarf ain't happy! On the contrary, he is the most discontented, cantankerous, malicious little wretch that was ever admitted into a Moral Family Show. And he ain't much worse than an ordinary Dwarf. Now, the other Freaks, as a rule, are contented so long as they draw well and don't ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... Dominie Sampson. His curiosity and love of enquiry were to get him into scrapes, just as Mr. Winkle's sham sportsmanship was to get him into embarrassments. In fact, the first appearance in Seymour's plate—the scene with the cabman—shows him as quite a different Pickwick; with a sour, cantankerous face; not in "tights," but in a great coat; he is scarcely recognisable. Seymour was then determined to show him after his own ideal. But when the poor artist destroyed himself the great man was ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... beach—the one fooling about with his sting and the other helping him. It never occurred to me that the beggars would take advantage of the peculiar position I was in to pick a quarrel. But I suppose the centipede poison and the kicking I had given him had upset the one—he was always a cantankerous ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... "I'd rather enjoy it. If she is any more cantankerous than some of the women at the Heights, she'll be an interesting study. Yes, I'll be glad to ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... 'get out of that.' He had warned us in the morning that they'd had enough of us, and, with a volley of oaths, advised us to be off. Fred, who was in his shirt-sleeves, listened at first with a look of surprise at such cantankerous unreasonableness; but when the ruffian fell to swear and threaten, he burst into one of his contemptuous guffaws, turned his back and began to feed his horse with a corncob. Thus insulted, the digger ran into ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... gentlemen? Why are you so serious? Did I go too far? I assume complete responsibility for everything I said. But be calm! They are getting afraid of us. The air has a dubious odour. The French are becoming cantankerous again." ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... modest, with a smile, fatigued and exquisitely resigned, and a soft voice. And she had worked with even increased energy and devotion. This kissing of the rod, this irrational instinctive humility, was a strange and sweet experience for her. Such was the Hilda of the office; but Hilda at home, cantankerous, obstinate, and rude, had offered a remarkable contrast to her until the moment when it was decided that her mother should accompany Miss Gailey to London. From that moment Hilda at home had been an angel, and the Hilda of the office ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... seemed suddenly to quiver, almost they went forward like those of a startled burro. A voice—obstinate, cantankerous—a voice that could belong to no one on earth but old Mr. Penrose, was engaged outside in a wrangle with a ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... loving certain ones of our neighbors, the idea is not of the most welcome. What! Must I love, really love, that low rascal, that cantankerous fellow, that repugnant, repulsive being? Or this other who has wronged me so maliciously? Or that proud, overbearing creature who looks down on me ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... told of Billy's bluff. 'The right to maul your immediate descendants that a-way is guaranteed by the constitootion, an' is one of them things we-alls fights for at Bunker Hill. However, I reckons Billy's merely blowin' his horn; bein' sick an' cantankerous with his game knee.' ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... possession of a zebra kill. We are introduced into the inner family circle of rhinos, leopards, eland, oryx, gazelle and others—all unconscious of the nearby presence of man. And there are, of course, thrilling moments when a cantankerous rhino, elephant or lion resents the intrusion and charges ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... Con. For in the presence of woman he was tongue-tied and scarlet. He who would quell with his eye the sonorous youth whom the claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... of a director towards his shareholders, he faced them calmly. Soames faced them too. He knew most of them by sight. There was old Scrubsole, a tar man, who always came, as Hemmings would say, 'to make himself nasty,' a cantankerous-looking old fellow with a red face, a jowl, and an enormous low-crowned hat reposing on his knee. And the Rev. Mr. Boms, who always proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman, in which he invariably ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... familiar to their seat as the collar of his coat. He would take cold without them; to part with them would be the death of him. So! don't go too near—don't let us alarm them; for, in truth, they have had insults, and met with impertinences of late years, and have grown fretful and cantankerous in their old age. Nay, horrid radicals have not hesitated, in this wicked generation, to aim sundry deadly blows at them; and it has been all that the old squire has been able to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... travellers, cantankerous people, who complain that Irish railway officials are not civil. Perhaps English porters and guards may excel them in the plausible lip service which anticipates a tip. But in the Irishman there is a natural delicacy of feeling ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... Then "the party,"—by which Barrington Erle probably meant the great man in whose service he himself had become a politician,—required that the candidate should be a safe man, one who would support "the party,"—not a cantankerous, red-hot semi-Fenian, running about to meetings at the Rotunda, and such-like, with views of his own about tenant-right and the Irish Church. "But I have views of my own," said Phineas, blushing again. "Of course you have, my ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... "Cantankerous ole skinflint," she muttered under her breath. "Dey ain't never nuffin' but trouble when dat man comes inter dis house. Sittin' dere, stuffin' hisself, while dat po' lam' upstairs is starvin' ter def. I on'y hopes one of dem chicken bones sticks in his froat. It'd be do ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... cantankerous,—here! come in, you! She wants to see you," and a man appeared in the doorway—he was shabbily dressed, but it was noticeable that the threadbare clothes were clean. Mrs. Tree looked at him ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... have the right to rouse most cities with their interpretation of the day's meaning. Then, less melodiously, dissenters of different sects issue a cantankerous emendation. The steamers, resounding like gigantic tuning-forks, state the old old fact—how there is a sea coldly, greenly, swaying outside. But nowadays it is the thin voice of duty, piping in a white thread from the top of ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... "You cantankerous old tyrant," she drawled in a whisper, "you do love to haze me around, don't you? Just to spite you, I'll do it!" She went in and left him standing there, smoking and leaning against the post, calm as the stars above. But under that surface calm, the heart of Lite Avery was ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... "A self-willed, cantankerous little imp I call her," was Mrs. Travers's comment, expressed after one of the many trials of strength between them, from which Miss Kavanagh had as ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... shoe laces if this cantankerous contraption isn't going wrong again! I wonder if it's going to have a fit here in this lonely place. It acts just as if it was. Bless my very existence! Hold on now. ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... the lawyer to himself, as he watched her driving away. "She looks well, too, when her eyes flash, and she puts on that haughty air. Odd that she should be so fond of that cantankerous old father. I wonder if the report is true which I heard of an Australian lover turning up for her. Well, there are worse-looking women than Frances Kane. I thought her very much aged when she first came into the office, but when she told me that she didn't much like me, she ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... she said, "always giv her a turn. For her part she preferred Missy, who, though she did kick uncommon, and were awful cantankerous to manage, was always ready to make it up, and say as she had been naughty. For my part," concluded Sarah, "I am free to confess I have often giv Missy a sly shake when she was in one of them tantrums, and I got the chance, and however that ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... which the end of a play depends on something very like the unravelling of a tangled skein; and still more often, perhaps, is it brought about through the loosening of some knot in the mind of one or more of the characters. This was the characteristic end of the old comedy. The heavy father, or cantankerous guardian, who for four acts and a half had stood between the lovers, suddenly changed his mind, and all was well. Even by our ancestors this was reckoned a rather too simple method of disentanglement. Lisideius, in Dryden's dialogue,[1] in ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... farewell of each other. The kind-hearted Maksim Maksimych had become the obstinate, cantankerous staff-captain! And why? Because Pechorin, through absent-mindedness or from some other cause, had extended his hand to him when Maksim Maksimych was going to throw himself on his neck! Sad it is to see when a ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov |
