"Moodiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his rival's moodiness, smiles; but this smile disappears like a sunbeam. He sees Doctor Small approaching, and ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... tame, before my moodiness grieve you, While yet my heart is flame, and I all lover, ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... moodiness, pride, and recklessness should be considered in our estimate of Byron, and should modify any harshness of judgment in regard to his character, which, in some other respects, was interesting and noble. He was not at all envious, but frank, warm-hearted, and true to those he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... referred to that lady herself, who, seeing his faults and wayward moods—seeing and owning that there are men better than he—loves him always with the most constant affection. His children or their mother have never heard a harsh word from him; and when his fits of moodiness and solitude are over, welcome him back with a never-failing regard and confidence. His friend is his friend still—entirely heart-whole. That malady is never fatal to a sound organ. And George goes through his ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eyes followed hers without satisfaction. A certain moodiness had come upon him. He made ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... Waynes found him, each in his and her own degree, an agreeable companion. Sir Richard approved of his quiet and reserved manner, and was not inclined to quarrel with his occasional fits of moodiness—for there were times when the ghosts which haunted him refused to be exorcised, and Anstice felt himself unfit, by reason of the handicap which Fate had imposed upon him, to mingle with the happy, the careless, the innocent ones of ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... of eighteen, he left the St. Hilaire college in order to prepare his baccalaureate, and his father, becoming alarmed at his increasing moodiness and mysticism, endeavored to infuse into him the tastes and habits of a man of the world by introducing him into the society of his equals in the town where he lived; but the twig was already bent, and the young man yielded with bad grace to the change of regime; the amusements they ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... the moodiness that had for a moment overcome him, Henry asked with vivacity what ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... forfeit,' the king rejoined, looking down at the floor and immediately falling into a moodiness as sudden as his excitement. His lips moved. He muttered something inaudible, and began to play absently with his cup and ball, his mind occupied apparently with a gloomy retrospect. 'M. de Guise, M. de Guise,' he murmured at last, with a sneer and an accent ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... domestic duties and cares as upon Mrs. Carlyle; yet few consider this a great hardship, and the sympathies of the world are not invoked in their behalf. It was not this so much in Mrs. Carlyle's case as it was the moodiness and fault-finding and general irascibility of the husband which aggravated everything, and ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... N. sullenness &c adj.; morosity^, spleen; churlishness &c (discourtesy) 895; irascibility &c 901. moodiness &c adj.; perversity; obstinacy &c 606; torvity^, spinosity^; crabbedness &c adj.. ill temper, bad temper, ill humor, bad humor; sulks, dudgeon, mumps^, dumps, doldrums, fit of the sulks, bouderie [Fr.], black looks, scowl; grouch; huff ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... through the still glades. He found her spirited, warm-hearted, responding with an eager gladness to every fresh manifestation of the wild; and in spite of his gay laughter she read something of the dark moodiness and intensity that were his dominant traits. But he was kind, too. His attitude toward the Little People met with on the trail—the little, scurrying folk—was particularly appealing: like that of a strong man toward children. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... had gone into fits of abstraction as deep as his absorption in the books he read so hungrily. He had been at the Wolverine a month, and they were pretty well acquainted by now and inclined to friendliness when Ward threw off his moodiness and his air of holding himself ready for some affront which he seemed to expect. But for all that the distrust never quite left his eyes, and there were times like this when he was absolutely oblivious ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... discover that she was not without her troubles. For one thing, her husband's fits of moodiness and fretful anxiety troubled her, and led her, possessed as she was with a more than ordinary share of womanly shrewdness, to suspect that he was hiding something from her. But what chiefly vexed her proud nature was the necessity of concealment, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... was not firm in health, and though most active and useful in the Council, had thus far done little elsewhere. Hawley, far in the interior, was often absent from the centre in critical times, and somewhat unreliable through a strange moodiness. Cushing was weak. Hancock was hampered by foibles that some times quite canceled his merits. Quincy was a brilliant youth, and, like a youth, sometimes fickle. We have seen him ready to temporize, when to falter was destruction, as at the time ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... and silent to-day, why that was nothing new: for he was always grave and silent. If the banker's manner was stern and moody to-day, that stern moodiness was habitual to him: and there was no need to blame the murky heavens for any change in his temper. He sat by the broad fireplace watching the burning coals, and waiting until he should be summoned to take his place by his daughter's side in the carriage that was to convey ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... as the low November sun shone on her blond hair, and she tripped along teasing me with her usual light banter, to which I listened half fondly, half moodily; it was all the sign Bertha's mysterious inner self ever made to me. To-day perhaps, the moodiness predominated, for I had not yet shaken off the access of jealous hate which my brother had raised in me by his parting patronage. Suddenly I interrupted and startled her by saying, almost fiercely, "Bertha, how can you ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... seen his spirits so light as they were the remainder of the evening. They rose even to gaiety; and again I wondered what had become of the reserve and moodiness whose dark shadow ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... line a dark, grim, sardonic appreciation of the advantages which common minds have over those that, like the poet's own, have to endure the splendid miseries of genius,—a dark moodiness, like that of a tame Byron remorsefully recalling a wild debauch upon green ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Andrew Lee. He had never given to his faithful wife even the small reward of praise for all the loving interest she had manifested daily, until doubt of his love had entered her soul, and made the light thick darkness. No wonder that her face grew clouded, nor that what he considered moodiness and ill-nature ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... contempt; but she feared and shrank from him as something moved by scruples with which she had no sympathy. She understood the world of Nature, and could respond to its bloodless caresses and passions. She could not understand the moodiness that dwells upon a grievance, or that would sell its birthright of joy for ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... Jove, no! My ears tingle yet when I think of her." And for an instant a smile of amused recollection chased away the moodiness of his expression. "Is she with ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... having been worsted, of having been treated with ignominy, in spite of the fact that it was his foe, and not he, who had retired from the field. For several days he wore a subdued air and kept about meekly with his docile cows. Then his old, bitter moodiness reasserted itself, and he resumed his solitary broodings on the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... german was over. He felt that Miss Graham was behaving badly, ungratefully, selfishly; on the way home in the carriage he was silent from utter boredom and fatigue, but Mrs. Bowen was sweetly sympathetic with the girl's rapture. Imogene did not seem to feel his moodiness; she laughed, she joked, she told a number of things that happened, she hummed the air of the last waltz. "Isn't it divine?" she asked. "Oh! I feel as if I could dance for a week." She was still dancing; she gave Colville's foot an accidental tap in keeping time on the floor of the carriage ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... moodiness at breakfast, pouted a little because he remained preoccupied under her teasing, and later was deeply offended because he would not tell her where he had been, or ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... voice, and momentary fits of absence revealed to Perdita the violence he did himself; but we, intent on our plans, observed only his ready laugh, his joke intruded on all occasions, the flow of his spirits which seemed incapable of ebb. Besides, Perdita was with him in his retirement; she saw the moodiness that succeeded to this forced hilarity; she marked his disturbed sleep, his painful irritability—once she had seen his tears—hers had scarce ceased to flow, since she had beheld the big drops which disappointed pride had caused to gather in his eye, but which pride ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of the story that Joel could learn. The two boys were shut out by the wall of grown-up life. Luke crouched in bitter moodiness, throwing clods of dirt at early grasshoppers and reconquering his lost dignity. At last he said: "If you ever let on to anybody ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the way to mental and moral death. It has its source in a violation of that law which makes the health of the mind depend on its activity being directed to an object. When directed on itself, it becomes fitful and moody; and moodiness generates morbidness, and morbidness misanthropy, and misanthropy self-contempt, and self-contempt begins the work of self-dissolution. Why, every sensible man will despise himself, if he concentrates his attention on that important ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... not to abide there, but ever veering to and fro, he spent not only the whole of that day and the ensuing night, but many others; insomuch that, being able neither to eat nor to sleep, he grew so weak that he was fain to take to his bed. Gisippus, who had marked his moodiness for some days, and now saw that he was fairly sick, was much distressed; and with sedulous care, never quitting his side, he tended, and strove as best he might to comfort, him, not seldom and most earnestly demanding ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... however, found her more difficult than ever after communicating his news to her. He tried once to imagine her being dissatisfied with him for some reason. But this attempt he abandoned. Thereafter he attributed her coldness, aloofness, silence, and moodiness to some nervous malady peculiar to the modern woman. Bernal's presence kept him from noting how really pronounced and unwavering her ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... a certain moodiness and irritability very unlike her usual facile sweetness of disposition, and Sara was somewhat nonplussed to account for it. Finally, she approached the matter by way of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... their leave-taking on the steps of the tram at Harold's Cross, the stream of moody emotions it had made to course through him and the poem he had written about it. All day he had imagined a new meeting with her for he knew that she was to come to the play. The old restless moodiness had again filled his breast as it had done on the night of the party, but had not found an outlet in verse. The growth and knowledge of two years of boyhood stood between then and now, forbidding ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the activities of public life his moodiness gave place to a healthy cheerfulness, and his enthusiasm soon led him into taking part in nearly every form of sport which gave life more zest. His interest being roused, he was wholehearted in his application, whether ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... assistance. The backwoods people had to front peril and hardship without stint, and they loved for the moment to leap out of the bounds of their narrow lives and taste the coarse pleasures that are always dear to a strong, simple, and primitive race. Yet underneath their moodiness and their fitful light-heartedness lay a spirit that when roused was terrible in its ruthless and stern ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... equally matched, because each has to make the creature say things and do things. But if they set out to portray a charming woman, the dramatist can recline in an easy chair and smoke while the novelist is ruining temper, digestion and eyesight, and spreading terror in his household by his moodiness and unapproachability. The electric light burns in the novelist's study at three a.m.,—the novelist is still endeavouring to convey by means of words the extraordinary fascination that his heroine could exercise over mankind by the mere act of walking into a room; and he never ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... had worried the poor child out of her silent moodiness, and now fell to soothing her exactly as she would have pulled the ears of a lap-dog, till he was ready to bite, and then patted him ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... war will feel the change in his soul if he cannot tell it. Day by day I think I see a change in my comrades. As they grow physically stronger they seem to grow spiritually lesser. But maybe that is only my idea. I see evidences of fear, anger, sullenness, moodiness, shame. I see a growing indifference to fatigue, toil, pain. As these boys harden physically they harden mentally. Always, 'way off there is the war, and that seems closely related to the near duty here—what it takes to make a man. These fellows will measure men differently ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... actor on this stage, and his disagreeably mixed character puzzled and disturbed the American. Caradoc's language and manners showed him to be a man of breeding, but he was full of contradictory habits. His uncosmopolitan moodiness, his vulgar quarreling over ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... amusement of her father and his kind friend, as well as to share it. The colour returned a little to her cheek; sometimes she burst for a moment into something like her old gaiety; and though these ebullitions were often followed by a gloom and moodiness, against which she found it in vain to contend, still, on the whole, the change for the better was decided, and Mr. Temple yet hoped that in time his sight might again be blessed and his life illustrated by ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her—doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... seemed so cheery and friendly to the priest, that he shook off somewhat the moodiness of his desire, and looked up and said: I shall tell thee, lady, that I suppose thou hast more errand with my lords than to crave lodging of them despite the custom of the castle. Nay, I have an inkling of what thine errand may be, whereof more anon; but now shall I tell ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... marked and numbered to compare with my other endeavors. At last I was satisfied that I could hit a playing-card at thirty paces nine times out of ten; the light was getting too bad for me to see my penciled bull's-eye, and in that state of quiet moodiness that sometimes comes with hunger to passionate men, I returned by the way of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... such as these—in a bridal chamber such as this—I passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our marriage—passed them with but little disquietude. That my wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper—that she shunned me, and loved me but little—I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man. My memory flew back (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to Ligeia, the beloved, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... his education was self-determined to its peculiar ends. A dreamy, silent, solitary child, given to fits of moodiness, he was accounted dull and even stupid. He would not, or could not, learn his letters until, in his seventh year, his eye was caught by the illuminated capitals in an old music folio. From these his mother ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Philip would be hurt; it was quite a new thing for Stephen to speak in that way; but he had certainly not been well of late. Philip colored too, but less from a feeling of personal offence than from a vague suspicion that Stephen's moodiness had some relation to Maggie, who had started up from her chair as he spoke, and had walked toward the hedge of laurels to look at the descending ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... from home without much considering where the quiet lanes were leading him. And in spite of a peculiar melancholy that had welled up into his mind during these last few days, he had certainly smiled with a faint sense of the irony of things on lifting his eyes in an unusually depressed moodiness to find himself looking down on the ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare |
