"Carping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... throat and hair, and re-trimming her gipsy hat with the same shade. It is, of course, an undoubted fact that women dress for their own satisfaction only, and in accordance with their instincts of "the true and the beautiful;" so it would be mere hypercritical carping to suspect coquetry of lurking in the deft folds of that unpretending blue ribbon, or that, in the face of her grande passion for Du Meresq, she could for a moment occupy herself with the foolish ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... spirits, I feel as if I should be suffocated." Her reckless gayety and unconventional manners led to strange rumors. She would wander over the country attired in boy's clothes, and without an escort, and a great variety of innocent escapades led a carping world to believe that she indulged excessively in stimulants, but the truth was that she never drank anything ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... those who are always grumbling, who are full of "ifs" and "buts," and "I told you so's." We like the man who always looks toward the sun, whether it shines or not. It is the cheerful, hopeful man we go to for sympathy and assistance; not the carping, gloomy critic,—who always thinks it is going to rain, and that we are going to have a terribly hot summer, or a fearful thunder-storm, or who is forever complaining of hard times and his hard lot. It is the ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... days, there are so many things that I would rather not tell, that it will take very little time and space for me to use in telling what I am willing that the carping public should know about ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... instead of more generous vintages, dispense with the cream which makes tea palatable, and systematically sacrifice substantial comforts that we may swagger successfully in the face of a critical and carping society. But with the most of us if our position is an anxious one; it is of our own making and if we dared to be eccentrically rational it ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... soon as he began to mend. I was not altogether unhappy, owing to a certain grim pleasure I had in debating with him, which I shall presently relate. There was much to annoy and anger me, too. My cousin Philip was forever carping and criticising my Greek and Latin, and it was impossible not to feel his sneer at my back when I construed. He had pat replies ready to correct me when called upon, and 'twas only out of consideration for Mr. Carvel that I kept my hands from him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a most unfortunate misprint, for it is just this kind of carping statement that leads the Germans to say we are falling out with ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... position Capt. Akers might have been of some service, and won more glory than he did in the campaign. As to Lieut.-Col. Booker's conduct on the field at Lime Ridge (which was so unfavorably commented upon by the public press and carping critics who accepted the multitude of erroneous rumors that were prevalent during that period of excitement), it may lie stated that the whole affair was fully investigated by a Military Court of Inquiry, ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... those 'gossips of the mob' who, incapable of appreciating the nobility of a prompt fulfillment of duty, measure every thing military by the amount of melo-dramatic denouement to which it leads. We trust that after this effectual 'counter' we may hear a little less carping at Governor Andrew, who has shown from the beginning an energy and perseverance, a promptness in emergency, and a patriotism which, when the history of this war comes to be written, will reflect the highest ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... rendered the autumn of that latter year calamitous for him.[18] There are, indeed, already indications in the letters of those months that his nerves, enfeebled by the quartan fever under which he labored, and exasperated by carping or ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... that it was a horse officer; but sure that's being too nice: for though you may know officers of the cavalry by the turn of their feet, I can't imagine how you should discern their hands from those of other men. But it is always thus with pedants, they will ever be carping; if a gentleman or a man of honour puts pen to paper, I don't doubt, but this author will find this assertion too true, and that obloquy is not repulsed by the force of arms. I will therefore set this excellent piece in a light too glaring for weak ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... professional friends Heminge and Condell, prefaced with ardent eulogies, claiming thirty-six plays as his, and that it did not meet with the instant and indignant cry that his claims were false. The players of that day were an envious and carping set, and the controversy would have been fierce from the very first, had there been ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... utterances, equally forceful and appealing directly to the pride and ambition of the country, were not without effect in moulding public opinion. The tour was a campaign of education. By avoiding the constitutional issues the delegates gave little information which could afford carping critics an opportunity to assail the movement prematurely. It is true, some sarcastic comments were made upon the manner in which the Canadians had walked into the convention and taken possession. At the Halifax dinner the governor of Nova Scotia, ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... find nobody more kind and encouraging than Miss Lancaster," said Miss Mitchell. "It isn't the great artists who find fault—they understand the difficulties only too well—it's the carping critics who can't perform themselves and yet think they know all about it! Do your best and no one will expect you to do ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... copy of some propositions, which Bland and others, in the name of the Corporation of Tangier, did present to Norwood, for his opinion in, in order to the King's service, which were drawn up very humbly, and were really good things; but his answer to them was in the most shitten proud, carping, insolent, and ironically-prophane stile, that ever I saw in my life, so as I shall never think the place can do well, while he is there. Here, after some talk, and Creed's telling us that he is upon taking ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... assembly the influence of Madame Roland on men of all modes of thought became most marked. Her parlors were the rendezvous of eminent men, and men destined to become eminent. It is impossible to discover, from the carping records of that time, that she asserted her powers by an unwomanly effort. Men felt in her presence that they were before a great intellectual being—a creative and inspiring mind—and it shone upon them without effort, like the sun. Among these visitors was Maximilien Robespierre, who afterwards ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... hardness, often only superficial, which makes one hold back from and repudiate intimacies. If I had known and loved a great and worthy spirit, and had been the recipient of his confidences, I should hold it a solemn duty to tell the world what I knew. I should care nothing for the carping of the cold and unsympathetic, but I should base my decision on the approval of all loving and generous souls. This seems to me the highest service that art can render, and if it be said that no question of art comes in, in the publication ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the artist in successful creation, and the bitterness of the sensitive soul irritated by the ignorant, and all but overwhelmed by the struggle for existence. He had felt the supreme joy of swaying an audience by his eloquence, and he had endured with fortitude the carping criticism of the envious. Through it all, through prosperity and through adversity, his hopeful, buoyant nature had triumphed. Prosperity had not spoiled him, and adversity had but served to refine. He felt that he had been given talents which he must utilize to the utmost, that he must be ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... finishes the labours of the tailor. Now, some carping critics may be wicked enough to insinuate that this garb too was finished by a goose! The worst fate I can wish to such malignant scoffers is a complete dressing from this worthy dame; and if she does ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... reproach. The cyclone swooped down upon us from Kansas and swiped our crops, making our boasts that here was an Elysium beyond the storm-belt sound as hollow as Adam's dream of Eden after he was lifted over the garden wall. Still we bore up and presented a bold, if not an unbroken front to a carping world. But the vials of wrath were not yet exhausted. Pandora's box had not yet emptied itself of all its plagues. Our sorrow's crown of sorrow was yet to come. It is here; our humiliation is accomplished, our agony is complete. A lone highwayman has held up and robbed a populous ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the enterprise was absolutely new and only just stepping on the very threshold of commercial exploitation. To enter in and possess the land required the confidence of capital and the general public. Hence it was necessary to maintain a constant vigilance to defeat the insidious attacks of carping critics and others who would attempt to injure the Edison system by ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... answer lies, Beyond where brood the grieving skies And Night drops tears. Where Faith rod-chastened smiles to rise And doff its fears, And carping Sorrow pines and dies— Beyond ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... to depict a consistent Bismarck, we find that his life has been as much misinterpreted through the carping need of envious political critics as through the bad ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... that, by my faith! ... were it not for contempt, one would be disposed to nail the hands of such trumpery scribblers to a post, and scourge their bare backs with thorny rods to cure them of their insolence! Nay, even my fool Zabastes hath found place in these narrow columns, to write his carping diatribes against me,— me, the King's Laureate! ... As I live, his cumbersome diction hath caused me infinite mirth, and I have laughed at his crabbed and feeble wit till my sides have ached most potently! Now get thee gone, fellow!—thou ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... or may not, have influenced my Parisian translator; but the love of discovery of latent error, and of exposure of venial transgression, has undoubtedly, from beginning to end, excited his zeal and perseverance. That carping spirit, which shuts its eyes upon what is liberal and kind, and withholds its assent to what is honourable and just, it is the distinguished lot—and, perhaps, as the translator may imagine, the distinguished ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and turn to two of the latter chapters and compare them with the corresponding pages in my excerpts from the journals in the Biography. In the latter you will find him always in a critical and carping humor; seeing everything with abundant keenness, but recognizing nothing worth while in it. The bouquets, he noticed, for example, were often picked up out of the street and used again and again; "and," he adds, "I suppose they aptly ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... anxious to do Flinders justice, says:—"I hope no carping cur will cast any reflection on him respecting the Investigator ... should it be so it will be an act of great injustice," and then he alludes to the thoroughly rotten condition of the ship. He was quick, too, ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... utterly unintelligent force may have fabricated all material structures, and imparted to all their movements certain orderly successions, it is still manifestly impossible for unintelligence to have brought forth intelligence—for the speculative, critical, carping spirit of man to have been generated by that which has no speculation in its eyes, nor any eyes, to have speculation in; impossible, in short, for the creature to be more richly endowed than its creator. Since numerous embodied ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... silence her selfe. Whereof I (in the name of Pansilo Filostrato and Dioneo) by waye of intreatie do beseech yee Ladies, Pampinea, Fiammetta, Philomena, and other gentlewomen, to beware howe ye doe contriue your holy day talke, by waste wordes issuing forth your delicate mouthes, in carping, gauding, and iesting at young gentlemen, and speciallye olde men, and Maister Alberto of Bologna, that for loue like the grene stalkes or graye heades of Lekes, doe desire to sauer your mouthes, and by honest recreation and pleasure to gratifie your comlie personages, lest ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... was forced to listen to in her narrow world rose up before her in their carping meannesses! Her father's brutal diatribes against a people, unfortunate enough to be compelled, from force of circumstance, to live on a portion of land that belonged to him, yet in whose lives he took no interest whatsoever. His only anxiety ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... only did not act in a manner derogatory to his high position, but found even repose, security, mystery, and general respect therein. On the contrary, in the debasement of a common or humble attachment, he would encounter, even among his meanest subjects, carping and sarcastic remarks; he would forfeit his character of infallibility and inviolability. Having descended to the region of petty human miseries, he would be subjected to paltry contentions. In one word, to convert ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he, sternly, "what do you mean by this constant carping? Do you wish to cease to be an actress? Or what in all ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... English out of a book; he would still at times pronounce the e's at the end of "there" and "here"; he was a naturalised Englishman, and he drove me into a reluctant and uncongenial patriotism by his everlasting carping at things English. Pollack would set himself to "draw him out." Heaven alone can tell how near ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... shewed like a Feast, And wonne by rarenesse such Solemnitie. The skipping King hee ambled vp and downe, With shallow Iesters, and rash Bauin Wits, Soone kindled, and soone burnt, carded his state, Mingled his Royaltie with Carping Fooles, Had his great Name prophaned with their Scornes, And gaue his Countenance, against his Name, To laugh at gybing Boyes, and stand the push Of euery Beardlesse vaine Comparatiue; Grew a Companion to the common Streetes, Enfeoff'd himselfe to Popularitie: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... are to be presented in arguments, whether in writing or in debate, for the two parties to work together. In this working together they should aim to agree on as many points as possible. If they meet in a carping and unyielding temper, the result will be in the end that the patience of the audience will be tried and its attention dispersed by lengthy arguments on preliminary details. In making an argument one should ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... synagogue and Temple knew him well; he was thoroughly learned in the Scriptures; he delighted in the society of the college-masters, and carried his reverence for Hillel almost to the point of worship. Yet he was in no sense a Separatist; his hospitality took in strangers from every land; the carping Pharisees even accused him of having more than once entertained Samaritans at his table. Had he been a Gentile, and lived, the world might have heard of him as the rival of Herodes Atticus: as it ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... was loaded with favors by Napoleon and survived until 1819. It might have been very easy to exasperate such men. But what the commander-in-chief had to do was done with such smoothness and skill that even they could find no ground for carping; and though at first cold and reticent, before long they yielded to the influences which filled with excitement the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Imagination of the reader, we should have no more complaints of the dulness of History. Who ever found Irving or Prescott dull? and yet they are accurate and faithful as the most stately and oracular. The carping critic may sneer at them because they are not philosophical and profound; but to have been read with delight by thousands who would never have reached a second chapter had they been other than they are, may well satisfy their ambition, and make them careless of the opinion of the critic. ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... secure her relief from discomfort. She is willing to pay any price for that—and still she is allowed to suffer. From her point of view it is utterly unreasonable, inexcusable. What are hospitals and nurses for, anyway? And she is carping, critical, and disagreeable. Her attitude is as sick as her body. ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... irresponsible amusement which C. Bailey, Jr., continued to pursue at intervals with the fair scion of the house—road-house—of Greensleeve, did not run as smoothly as it might have, and was not unmixed with carping reflections and sordid care on his part, and with an increasing number of interruptions, admonitions, and warnings on the part of ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... brother of all humanity, may be clad not inaptly in the garments of all. It appears to me that there is reason in this answer, and that viewed in its light the criticism which constantly demands historic fidelity is both carping and narrow. I do not mean, however, to underrate historic accuracy in itself, or to depreciate that longing for completeness in every particular, which drives our modern painters to the East to study patiently for ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... the carping critic, if the Negro were less patient, forbearing and more combative, if he risked less for country, and gloried more in deeds of heroism for his personal defense, he would lie truer to his self-preservation. Other races placed in condition quite similar to the Negroes have tried ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... [different] from that of the Latin one was used to. But your Notes, I know, seem excellent to me; I mean, in the Style of them (for of the Scholarship I am not a proper Judge); totally without pedantry of any sort, whether of solving unnecessary difficulties, carping at other Critics, etc., but plainly determined to explain what needs explanation in the shortest, clearest, way, and in a Style which is most of all suited to the purpose, 'familiar but by no means vulgar,' such as we have ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... the porch of the Drugg's store. For once the man was at the front, and he welcomed her with his polite, storekeeper's smile, and the natural courtesy which was usual with him. Janice remembered how the carping Mrs. Scattergood had declared that Hopewell Drugg would be "polite ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... said Prideaux was "incorrect," "muddy-headed," "he would do little or nothing besides heaping up notes"; "as for MSS. he would not trouble himself about any, but rest wholly upon what had been done to his hands by former editors." This habit of carping, this trick of collecting notes, this inability to put a work through, this dawdling erudition, this horror of manuscripts, every Oxford man knows them, and feels those temptations which seem to be in the air. Oxford is a discouraging place. College drudgery absorbs the hours of students ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... leave the chief hall That was made for meales men to eat in.'— And when that Wit was 'ware what Dame Study told, He became so confuse he cunneth not look, And as dumb as death, and drew him arear, And for no carping I could after, nor kneeling to the earth I might get no grain of his greate wits, But all laughing he louted, and looked upon Study, In sign that I shoulde beseechen her of grace, And when I was 'ware of his will, to ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... saying this; but Matthew himself (xxi. 4) almost says it:—"All this was done, that it might be fulfilled," &c. Do my critics mean to tell me that Jesus was not aware of the prophecy? or if Jesus did know of the prophecy, will they tell me that he was not designing to fulfil it? I feel such carping to be ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... time when I was feeling Wagner's seductiveness so strongly there were always some carping people among my elders ready to quench my admiration and say with a superior smile: "That is nothing. One can't judge Wagner at a concert. You must hear him in the opera-house at Bayreuth." Since then I have been several times to Bayreuth; I have seen Wagner's ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... lot of miserable, carping sneaks about, whose business it is to find fault with every thing, and it just occurs to me that some of this lot may take it into their heads—notwithstanding the fads, mind you—may take it into their heads, I say, to make the objection that ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... his book. The actor who played with Shakespeare in his own "Hamlet" probably did but imperfect justice to that wonderful play, and the next-door neighbor of a popular author will be very likely to read his books with a carping, censorious spirit, unknown to him who has seen his vision ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... preposterous whim Finds poetry in Numa's Salian hymn, Who would be thought to have explored alone A land to him and me alike unknown, 'Tis not that buried genius he regards: No; 'tis mere spleen and spite to living bards. Had Greece but been as carping and as cold To new productions, what would now be old? What standard works would there have been, to come Beneath the public eye, the ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as "Jane Eyre:" in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry—that parent of crime—an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a kingdom, a hundred thousand other women, a world itself. Well might [4881]Sterpsichores be blind for carping at so fair a creature, and a just punishment it was. The same testimony gives Homer of the old men of Troy, that were spectators of that single combat between Paris and Menelaus at the Seian gate, when Helen stood in presence; they said all, the war was worthily prolonged ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... hasty and often superficial judgments of European writers, winced under their satire and took thought about certain particulars in the indictments brought against them. The mass of the people, however, bent on the great experiment, gave little heed to carping critics who saw the flaws and not the achievements of our country—critics who were in fact less interested in America than in preventing the rise and growth ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... of Canaan on his tongue and the air of official appointment about his person: "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord! All ashore who are going ashore! All ashore who are going ashore!" Immediately "there is no small stir." Some leave the boat by way of the gang-plank carping at the words of the officer and arguing as they go; some in great haste vault the balustrades and railings and leap for the pier; still others climb out the windows of staterooms and run screaming toward the nearest ladder which ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... "it were not good she knew his love, lest she made sport of it." "Why, to say truth," said Hero, "I never yet saw a man, how wise soever, or noble, young, or rarely featured, but she would dispraise him." "Sure sure, such carping is not commendable," said Ursula. "No," replied Hero, "but who dare tell her so? If I should speak, she would mock me into air." "O! you wrong your cousin," said Ursula: "she cannot be so much without true judgment, as to refuse so rare ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... me! soldiers, come away! This carpet-knight[219] sits carping at our scars, And jests at those most glorious, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... considerable quantities of Mr Orgreave. But the fellow was only a decent, dull, pushing, successful ass, and quite unable to assimilate Mr Orgreave; Edwin could never comprehend how Clara, so extremely difficult to please, so carping and captious, could mate herself to a fellow like Benbow. She had done so, however; they were recently married. Edwin was glad that that was over; for it had disturbed him in his attentions ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of unelastic and difficult rules, like those which our own language comprehends; or to acquire correct models of grammatical construction for his guidance; and, being fairly secure against his accuracy in these regards being impeached by carping critics, even among his own brethren, can better and more readily uphold a claim to good oratory than one of ourselves, whose government in speaking, by strict rules of grammar is essential, and whom ignorance ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... to tune such song 'Mid the nought discerning throng Who are clamouring now 'gainst thee Long and loud, and strengthless we, Mighty chieftain, thou away, To withstand the gathering fray Flocking fowl with carping cry Seem they, lurking from thine eye, Till the royal eagle's poise Overawe the paltry noise Till before thy presence hushed Sudden sink they, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... the poem that is as significant as it is prosaic, a spirit of carping at poetic custom which reminds the reader of Philodemus' lectures. Philodemus, whether speaking of philosophy or music or poetry, always begins in the negative. He is not happy until he has soundly trounced his ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... circumstances would have been absolutely improper. It is certainly to be wished that decency should be observed on all public occasions, and consequently also on the stage. But even in this it is possible to go too far. That carping censoriousness which scents out impurity in every bold sally, is, at best, but an ambiguous criterion of purity of morals; and beneath this hypocritical guise there often lurks the consciousness of an impure imagination. The determination to tolerate nothing which has the least reference to the sensual ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... children down to our own time, and has affected the opinions held about them by other people. It has had something to do with a certain tacit assumption of superiority on the part of New Englanders, upon which the men and women of other communities have been heard to comment in resentful and carping tones. There has probably never existed, in any age or at any spot on the earth's surface, a group of people that did not take for granted its own preeminent excellence. Upon some such assumption, as upon an incontrovertible axiom, all historical narratives, ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... From carping friends I turn aside; At foes defiance frown; Yet time may tame my stubborn pride, And break my spirit down. Still, if to error I incline, Truth whispers comfort strong, That never reckless act of mine E'er ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the meantime, he had published in Baltimore a second small volume of poems. Fellow-students have described him as having a "worn, weary, discontented look"; usually kindly and courteous, but shy, reserved, and exceedingly sensitive; an extraordinary reader, but noted for carping criticism. Although a good student, he seemed galled beyond endurance by the monotonous routine of military duties, which he deliberately neglected and thus procured his dismissal from the Academy. He left, alone and penniless, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... New Machiavelli" is naught. For myself I anticipated for it a vast deal more carping than it has in fact occasioned. And I am very content to observe a marked increase of generosity in the reception of Mr. Wells's work. To me the welcome accorded to his best books has always seemed to lack spontaneity, to be characterized by a mean reluctance. And yet if there is a novelist ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... Aunt Mary, "and above all, do not let this delicacy show itself in the carping at other people, which only exalts our own opinion of ourselves, and very soon turns ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A carping critic might presume to ask the names and addresses of these "expert engineers." He might also have the temerity to inquire the precise distance in which the train was pulled up, the shortest distance in which other trains have ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... of the double-wielded shield: instead of picking away at a soft stone in constitutional foundations, our feeble wish magnanimously prefers to prop it and plaster it, flinging away that injurious pick-axe. The title of this once-considered lucubration is far too suggestive to carping minds of more than the much that it means, to be without objection: nevertheless, I did begin, and therefore, always under shelter of a domino, and protesting against any who would move my mask, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of this book is a severe one on the clergy of the church of Rome. He terms it POMH-PYMH, by which we suppose he intended to brand Roma, as the Sink of Superstition. He observes, if Juvenal, whom he calls Aquine's carping spright, were now alive, among other ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... a kind of gossip in which a girl takes part, made up of snap-shot judgments of the classroom, idle carping about some little unimportant point, expression of wounded vanity and unfair talk, which may mean a tremendous loss of prestige for a really admirable course; it may mean that girls, who would naturally go into it because ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... for the sake of {his} authority, just as some statuaries do in our day, who obtain a much greater price for their productions, if they inscribe the name of Praxiteles on their marbles, and Myron[1] on their polished silver. {Therefore} let {these} Fables obtain a hearing. Carping envy more readily favours the works of antiquity than those of the present day. But now I turn to a Fable, with a ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... awful smart," one girl would say to another. They all admitted, even the most carping, that Maria was pretty. "Maria Edgham is pretty enough, and she knows it," said they. She was in the high school, even at her age, and she stood high in her classes. There was always a sort of moral ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... at last. Sore intelligence. Death of an old friend. Observations on the climate. Arab caution. Dearth of Missionary enterprise. The slave trade and its horrors. Progressive barbarism. Carping benevolence. Geology of Southern Africa. The fountain sources. African elephants. A venerable piece of artillery. Livingstone on Materialism. Bin Nassib. The Baganda leave at ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... and unhappy. After all, was there any romance, any camaraderie in the Bohemia he once had loved. By Heaven, no! One had but to stare at the studio with Brian's vision to see the thing aright. Disorder and carping tongues and loneliness! God help him, how he longed to escape somewhere, anywhere where there was peace—and faith and friendliness ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... youth with the bounding pulse, led by the purple mirage of Hope, whose sirens whisper that the world's sweets are sweet and its crowns worth winning. Let me for a space be free from this dastard age creeping through the veins, dulling the perspective of life and leadening the brain, whose carping companions draw attention to the bitters in the cups of Youth's Delights, and mutter that the golden crowns we struggle for shall tarnish as soon as they are placed on our tired brows!" Suddenly my bitter ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... afford to have done with carping, and can turn to the much more grateful task of praise. I do not think it too much to say that Mr. Hardy has studied his own especial part of England, has made himself master of its landscape, its town and hamlet life, its tradition and ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... rid himself of his weapons. The hunting knife with the big handle dug into his ribs. His revolver bruised his leg, and the final straw was the nagging of Tartarin-Sancho, who never ceased whining and carping:—"Imbecile! Va! I warned you didn't I?.... But you had to go to Africa!.... Well now you're on your way, ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... for father a few days," said Mrs. Green, as if to some carping judge; "an' it ain't goin' to cost much, an' I know father'd ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... pole he had been thrown that day, from the French barber, whose intellect accepted nothing without carping, and whose little fingers worked all day, to save himself from dying out, to his own mother, whose intellect accepted anything presented with sufficient glow, but who, until she died, would never stir ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... brought to a child's attention at the same period in its life, are likely to be regarded in after years as of equal evidential value. I am not much of a hand to argue, myself, but I should like to have one of these carping critics meet my friend, Mrs. Sarah M. Boggs, who has taught the infant-class since 1867, having missed only two Sundays in that time, once, in 1879, when it stormed so that nobody in town was out, and once, last winter a year ago, when she slipped off the back porch and hurt her knee. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... you carping, skeptical creature? It's all perfect. An uncongenial, tiresome husband—and she need have no self-reproach about him, either—finally out of the way; a reverential adorer at hand; youth still theirs; money; a delightful ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... applause, gentlemen, but I'm not through yet. We have passed the question of things seen, and we now come to the question of things done, which is perhaps more important. It is obvious even to the doubtful or carping mind that if a new thing is done it is done by somebody first. Others will do it afterward, but there must and always ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... position which in 1862 I had assigned to Dr. Mayer. [Footnote: See 'Philosophical Magazine' for this and the succeeding years.] In those days Professor Tait denied to Mayer all originality, and he has since, I regret to say, never missed an opportunity, however small, of carping at Mayer's claims. The action of the Academy of Sciences and of the Royal Society summarily disposes of this detraction, to which its object, during his lifetime, never vouchsafed either remonstrance ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... then," amended Hinpoha. Wrapped up as she was in this marvel of romance that had happened in the placid, everyday lives of the Winnebagos, she was not bothering about any carping correctness of words. She sat at the foot of Oh-Pshaw's bed, where Oh-Pshaw lay with her knee propped up on a pillow, and went over the details of Sahwah's case for the twentieth time with Agony and Migwan and Gladys, all of them ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... mankind are liable to err, and that there is more difficulty in digesting such a great mass of materials into such a small composition, than in writing many volumes. Indeed there is but little probability, that a thing of this nature can altogether escape or evade the critical eye of some carping Momus[20], particularly such as are either altogether ignorant of reformation principles, or, of what the Lord hath done for covenanted Scotland; and those who can bear with nothing but what comes from those men who are of an uniform stature or persuasion ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... went about with each of the other boys, to see that he attended his classes, was polite to his teachers, and did his work. But Horace had his own father to look after him, a thousand times better than any carping paedagogus. His father had explained to him that the other fathers were busy men, that they were the ones who carried on the great government, and ruled this splendid Rome; they could not spend hours going to school with their little sons. ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... Crane, "we have no mutual friends. I heard of her through a comparative stranger, and I went to her at once. Don't be carping, Thorpe, just wait till you hear my story. Well, she greeted me pleasantly, and with a most courteous and lady-like demeanor. I had an appointment, of course, and she directed me to sit at a table opposite herself. I did so, and for ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... relaxation upon Matilda was surprising. Her husband marvelled at it, and frankly told her she was like another woman. For, partly from the lessening of the physical strain and partly from the influence of congenial companionship, the carping discontent that had so possessed her of late had begun to give way to a softer and infinitely more gracious frame of mind. The bond of their womanhood drew the two together, and the intimacy between them nourished in that ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... we do this, and enable ourselves thus to review, without carping or sneering, the shapes of solemn imagination which have arisen among the inhabitants of Europe, we shall find, on the one hand, the mountains of Greece and Italy forming all the loveliest dreams, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... not be taken as a carping critic if I point out the difficulties in its progress on the basis of Australasian experience. It may, as did the Australasian acts, have a period of apparent success, and the workers benefit by an initial service in planing out the worst injustices. ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... what is done in many (might I not say, in most?) companies, what is it but one telling malicious stories of, or fastening odious characters upon, another? What do men commonly please themselves in so much as in carping and harshly censuring, in defaming and abusing their neighbors? Is it not the sport and divertisement of many to cast dirt in the faces of all they meet with? to bespatter any man with foul imputations? ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... in my heart I can do you no good. No man ever touched another with the sweet constraining forces that lie in Christ's Gospel unless the heart of the speaker went out to grapple the hearts of the hearers. And no audience ever listen with any profit to a man when they come in the spirit of carping criticism, or of cold admiration, or of stolid indifference. There must be for this simple relationship which alone binds a Nonconformist preacher to his congregation, as a sine qua non of all higher things and of all spiritual good, a real, though oftenest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? John Eglinton's carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for ever. She died, for literature at least, before ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... was preparing, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved;" the negro being in the ark, was not one of those eight souls, and consequently he has no soul to be saved—the Bible and God's inspiration being judge. Carping is vain, against God. His order will stand, whether pleasing or displeasing to any on earth. But God only promised to save eight—Noah and his wife, and his three sons and their wives. These had souls, as the apostle (Peter) testifies, ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... grievances can be settled without an appeal to the sword. Hence we have, and what is much better, the world has, Geneva and Alabama and the fish bounty treaty of Canada and the United States. Not all the press did on either side, nor all the carping and blustering of individuals, could prevent the happy consummation of both these treaties. To God be praise, for they are prophetic harbingers of ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... England,—George Bancroft has written a history of the United States which will no more become archaic than Macaulay or Grote. While one may now and then hear from the lips of the so-called "younger school of American historians" a criticism of George Bancroft, their carping is ungracious and gratuitous. Theirs has not been the art to equal him, nor will be. A literary life devoted to the mastery of one era of a nation's history is a worthy sight, good for the eyes, and arguing ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... just", she would say doggedly. A sad life was hers, for she repelled all sympathy, and yet later I had reason to believe that she half broke her heart because none loved her well. She was ever gloomy, unsympathising, carping, but she worked herself to death for those whose love she chillily repulsed. She worked till, denying herself every comfort, she literally dropped. One morning, when she got out of bed, she fell, and crawling into bed again, quietly said she could do no ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... dear papa," in a reminiscential form, was made to walk the earth again, I would be avenged for all the quips and jibes which Mawley had formerly selected me to receive! He would meet with an antagonist now, worthy of his carping, critical metal! I wished him joy of ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... its two towers. They made haste to restore them when they read in the long-hidden paintings the story of Sir Asker's return and gratitude, just as tradition had handed it down from the twelfth century. It is not the first time the loyal faith of the people has proved a better guide than carping critics, and likely it will not be ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... her chosen bride for him: Edith Averst, with the dowry of a present one thousand pounds per annum, and prospect of six or so, excluding Sir John's estate, Carping, in Leicestershire; a fair estate, likely to fall to Edith; consumption seized her brothers as they ripened. A fair girl too; only Dudley did not love her; he wanted to love. He was learning the trick from this other one, who had become obscured and diminished, tainted, to the thought ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when by chance in a carping, critical mood he mentioned this fact, he was greeted by a roar of derision from Monkey Stallings and Alec, who told him to brush up a little on history. He must remember that in those ancient days gunpowder had not been ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... optimistic enterprise. But it is good for awhile to be free from the carping note that must needs be audible when we discuss our present imperfections, to release ourselves from practical difficulties and the tangle of ways and means. It is good to stop by the track for a space, put aside the knapsack, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... dame opined The counsel good and full of reason, Her money counted, and designed To visit Moscow in the season. Tattiana learns the intelligence— Of her provincial innocence The unaffected traits she now Unto a carping world must show— Her toilette's antiquated style, Her antiquated mode of speech, For Moscow fops and Circes each To mark with a contemptuous smile. Horror! had she not better stay Deep in the ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... to the birds, but slices of bread and marmalade to the more indigent spectators. We shall also try to get two or three open squash racket courts in Whitehall, so that on hot summer days the most carping critic who watches a rally between Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN and the SECRETARY OF STATE for WAR will have to admit that we are doing our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... countless flocks; for you are neighing Proud coursers; Afric purples glow For your arraying With double dyes; a small domain, The soul that breathed in Grecian harping, My portion these; and high disdain Of ribald carping. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... did not interfere with Jan's method of procedure, seeing, as any sensible man would, that the second-mate's plan answered its purpose of getting the most out of the hands without making them grumble unduly at their unwonted task; but, soon his love of carping at others asserted itself, and this feeling, coupled with the desire to assert such petty authority as he still had, overcame his sense of prudence, as well as all recollection of the sharp lesson he had received from Jan not so ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the same kind acceptance, for I believe in the Nobility of the Almanac; and it is certain that every man should believe in the Nobility of his work whatever it is—then he is sure of one ardent Admirer. It is sad to think that some carping critic had been riling the sweet soul of Nathan in the year 1732. It is all over now. Let us hope he is not damned for his Epicureanism, but is reaping his crop of praise in a better climate than Marblehead. He gives ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... was not so successful; nor was it so well done. In fact, Pope translated only half of it himself; the other half was written by two scholars called Broome and Fenton. His next great poem was the Dunciad,— a satire upon those petty writers, carping critics, and hired defamers who had tried to write down the reputation of Pope's Homeric work. "The composition of the 'Dunciad' revealed to Pope where his true strength lay, in blending personalities with ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... quite lately that Mr. Mayne did not approve of her intimacy with Dick. His manner had somewhat changed to her, and several times he had spoken to her in a carping, fault-finding way,—little cut-and-dried sentences of elderly wisdom that she had not understood ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... securely as on a perfect axle. There is no room, of course, for doubt or discussion, about conduct, where every one is to follow the law of his being with exact compliance. Whitman hates doubt, deprecates discussion, and discourages to his utmost the craving, carping sensibilities of the conscience. We are to imitate, to use one of his absurd and happy phrases, "the satisfaction and aplomb of animals." If he preaches a sort of ranting Christianity in morals, a fit consequent to the ranting optimism of his cosmology, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the bounds of the most perfect courtesy; but her manner, which was soft to no one except to Lord Lynedale, was, when she spoke to me, especially dictatorial and abrupt. She seemed to make a point of carping at chance words of mine, and of setting me, down suddenly, by breaking in with some severe, pithy observation, on conversations to which she had been listening unobserved. She seemed, too, to view with dislike anything like cordiality between me ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... theory of art in Germany, we must not overlook the advantages contributed by the study of the ideal of the ancients by such men as Winckelmann, who, by a kind of inspiration, raised art criticism from a carping about petty details to seek the true spirit of great works of art, and their true ideas, by a study of the spirit ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... style which is, I think, regretable, has shown abundant art by filling up the frequent deficiencies of the text after the fashion of Baron McGuckin de Slane in Ibn Khallikan. As regards the tout ensemble of his work, a noble piece of English, my opinion will ever be that expressed in my Foreword. A carping critic has remarked that the translator, "as may be seen in every page, is no Arabic scholar." If I be a judge, the reverse is the case: the brilliant and beautiful version thus traduced is almost entirely free from the blemishes and carelessness which disfigure Lane's, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... passed through the sitting room on her way out, her mother would appear in the doorway, dishtowel in hand. Her pride in this slim young thing and her love of her she concealed with a thin layer of carping criticism. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... source," which stood on the programme, Boskowitz had played the "Jagdlied" from Schumann's "Waldscenen," which did not prevent a correspondent (namely, the correspondent of the Deutsche Musikzeitung, as the Neue Zeitschrift of 24th February, 1860, gave out) from loudly carping at the supposed Liszt composition.] Possibly also your correspondent made use of the expression "The Vienna Press" in general, and did not refer specially to the paper Die Presse, [This was actually the case] or was referring to other remarks ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... discernment, had liked what he had seen there; and he had a deep and abiding sense of the fitness of things. Had the gods been less kind to Arethusa in the matter of looks, undoubtedly her adoration of Mr. Bennet must have remained of a distance. But even a more carping critic than her escort could have found no fault with her this evening; from the crown of her ruddy head to the soles of her satin slippered feet, she ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... personified: a charming maiden, she, of twenty summers. The artistic outlines of her plump arms and shoulders, beautifully modelled bust, throat and neck, so admirably proportioned, would have satisfied the most carping critic; poet or painter, he would have pronounced them a dream of perfect symmetry. Her queenly shaped head, so gracefully poised, like a clear cut cameo, was a poem of intellectual development on lines of rarest beauty. Her thick, glossy hair of dark chestnut brown, fine as spun silk ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... them to their destination (which was always the right place to be seen at); their meals were consumed in sedate Georgian apartments, and in every detail would have satisfied a peer. They moved through life on oiled and noiseless wheels, wrapped in comfort and attended by respect. Let no carping critic say that the good things in this life are not distributed according to the most laudable principle. The guinea-fowl lays where she sees a nest-egg, and the larger it is the more does she deposit. And the prosperous nest-owner is he who stays always beside his treasure, gently ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... call a CHURCH. This Platonism could not do. Christianity did it. Revelation did it. God Incarnate did it. Now once again came humanity forth, fresh from the bosom of the divine creativeness, conquering and to conquer. There was no Aristotle and Plato—no Abelard and Bernard here—reason carping at imagination, and imagination despising reason. But once, if but once in four thousand years, man appeared in all the might of his living completeness. Love walked hand in hand with knowledge, and both were identified in life. The spirit of divine peace brooded in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... was fresher and pleasanter and younger himself, than Desire had ever seen him before; he seemed to have forgotten that hard way of looking at the world; he had found something so undeniably good in it. I am afraid Desire had rather liked him for his carping, which was what he least of all deserved to be liked for. It showed how high and pure his demands were; but his praise and admissions were better; it is always better to discern good than ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... believed on Him. What a welcome to that room did they receive from John, their adopted brother! May we not indulge the thought that among "the women" were her own daughters; and that we hear her joyfully asking the once carping question of the Jews concerning "the carpenter's son," but with changed meaning, saying, "His sisters, are they not all with us?" If so "His Mother called Mary," "and His brethren," "and His sisters," and John the adopted son and brother, were at last ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... unsuitable match, is supported in a lively manner," refrains from making himself ridiculous by mealy-mouthed moralities which on such a subject every person of sense and honesty must despise. Mr Horne keeps foolishly carping at Pope, or "Mr Pope," as he sometimes calls him, throughout his interminable—no, not interminable—his hundred-paged Introduction. He abominates Pope's Homer, and groans to think how it has corrupted the English ear by its long ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... in the United States over a people full of hope and aspiration and good cheer. Such a condition means contentment and happiness. The carping grumbler who may here and there go forth will find few to listen to him. The majority will wonder what is the matter with him, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... than the top-men of the fore, main, and mizzen masts? The reason of their liberal-heartedness was, that they were daily called upon to expatiate themselves all over the rigging. The reason of their lofty-mindedness was, that they were high lifted above the petty tumults, carping cares, and paltrinesses of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... do not your experiences of to-day teach you wherein your Churches, being those built upon the Creed of the three hundred Bishops, are unlike it? Moreover, see you not if now you have several Churches, some amongst you, the carping and ambitious, will go out and in turn set up new Confessions of Faith, and at length so fill the earth with rival Churches that religion will become a burden to the poor and a byword with fools who delight in saying there ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace |
