"Pettish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the matter; but now he remembered that Mildred had been keen to have the part only a week ago, and a little pettish because he had advised her to leave it alone, on account of Mrs. Shaw. Now she was hanging on him with desperate eyes and that worried brow which he had not seen once since he had ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... that old maid sister of his, and how she was a queer old girl; but I didn't have any idea what a cold blooded proposition she was. Honest, she seemed put out and pettish because I'd called ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... CLEOPATRA (pettish and childish in her impotence). No: not when a Roman slays an Egyptian. All the world will now see how ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... simply; for to her mind the pleasantest and kindest person in the world put in comparison with Roger was as nothing; he stood by himself. Cynthia's next words,—and they did not come very soon,—were on quite a different subject, and spoken in rather a pettish tone. Nor did she allude again in jesting sadness to her late efforts ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sat in the hotel chamber in Ciudad Real—that forlornest of royal cities—her face wore the pettish look of one who, having passed through great events, having tasted of great passions and moved amid the machinery of life and death, finds the ordinary routine of existence intolerably irksome. Many faces wear such a look in this country; every ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... of them gregarious influences, and all of them contagious—may decide by a shout what years of afterthought may find it hard, or even impossible, to undo. There have been some things in the deportment of the President of late that have suggested to thoughtful men rather the pettish foible of wilfulness than the strength of well-trained and conscientious will. It is by the objects for whose sake the force of volition is called into play that we decide whether it is childish or manly, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... tendency of the prejudices of mankind, and inadvertently touched upon the absurdity of supposing there could be any superiority, of man over man, except that which genius and virtue gave. Sir Arthur did not approve the doctrine, and was pettish. I perhaps was warmed, by a latent sense of my own situation, and exclaimed—'Oh! How many noble hearts are groaning, at this instant, under the oppression of these prejudices! Hearts that groan, not because they suffer, but because they are denied ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... don't show more passionate anxiety about leadin' her to the altar. It's then, not seein' why the old gent should go entertainin' notions ag'in me, an' deemin' mebby that when he blazes away that time he's merely pettish and don't really mean said bullet none, that I fronts ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... tobacco and sing psalms. Tobacco was a thing I did not love, and psalms I was not in a state to sing; I could not sing. Then he bid me come again and he would tell me many things; but when I came he was angry and pettish; for my former words had displeased him. He told my troubles, sorrows and griefs to his servants so that it got among the milk-lasses. It grieved me that I should have opened my mind to such a one. I saw they were all miserable ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... delicious madness,—and faint thoughts Of childish years are borne into my brain By unforgotten ardors waking now. Beyond, a gentle slope leads into shade Of mighty trees, to bend whose eminent crown Is the prime labor of the pettish winds, That now in lighter mood are twirling leaves Over my feet, or hurrying butterflies, And the gay humming things that summer loves, Through the warm air, or altering the bound Where yon elm-shadows in majestic line Divide dominion with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... without even troubling himself to see if she followed—this was too much for her composure. Her face clouded over, and though she made a valiant effort to preserve her composure, it was in vain, and she was glad to find an outlet for her irritation in pettish complainings. ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... Lincoln was a wise mother, and would not try to divert her child's mind from the salutary lesson which the very shadow itself ever brings; so they moved on with the unbroken silence, save when Willie gave utterance to some pettish feeling, and then little Kittie would look at him with a deeper pity than poor ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... a rather pettish intonation in Fleur-de-Lys's—laconic words. The young man understood that it was indispensable that he should whisper something in her ear, a commonplace, a gallant compliment, no matter what. Accordingly he bent down, but he could ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... ill-tempered; irritable, susceptible; excitable &c 825; thin-skinned &c (sensitive) 822; fretful, fidgety; on the fret. hasty, overhasty, quick, warm, hot, testy, touchy, techy^, tetchy; like touchwood, like tinder; huffy, pettish, petulant; waspish, snappish, peppery, fiery, passionate, choleric, shrewish, sudden and quick in quarrel [As You Like It]. querulous, captious, moodish^; quarrelsome, contentious, disputatious; pugnacious &c (bellicose) 720; cantankerous, exceptious^; restiff &c (perverse) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... you what you shall do next. You shall just put aside all this dreary collection of formulae and scalpel-work, and you shall write me an essay on the whole subject, saying the best that you feel about it all, not the worst that a stiff intelligence can extract from it. Don't be pettish about it! I assure you I respect your talent very much. I didn't think it was in you to ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be helpful, possessing an extraordinary capacity for fancying herself slighted, or not regarded as the superior being she knows herself to be, morbidly anxious lest the servants should, by some mistake, treat her with offensive cordiality, pettish if the patient gives more trouble than she had expected, intensely injured and disagreeable if he is made so courageous by his wretchedness as to wake her during the night—an act of desperation of which I was ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... were lamenting his loss. "Nothing, nobody can fill his place," he said.—"It is sad to lose such a friend."—"Indeed it is," said my companion, "I don't know what I shall do. No one else ever understood my constitution. I really don't know whom I am to go to now"—and he went his way in a pettish mood, as though his physician had rather shabbily deserted him. Alas, is there not much of this when one ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... taste, wisdom and safety we shall not now speak, but content ourselves with merely saying that the effect of Grace's exclamation on Eve was unpleasant, and that, unlike the baronet, she thought her cousin was never less handsome than while her pretty face was covered with the pettish frown it had assumed ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... took to humour him in every thing, not only while he continued in a condition, in which it might have been dangerous to have put his spirits into the least agitation, but after he was grown well enough to walk abroad, had made him become extremely pettish and self-willed; which shews, that an over-indulgence to youth, is no less prejudicial, than too much austerity.—Happy is it for those who are brought up in a due proportion between these two extremes; for as nature will be apt to fall into a dejection, ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... the common fault of old communities to overvalue themselves, and to undervalue new actors in the great drama of nations, as men long successful disregard the efforts of new aspirants for favor;" said Seadrift, while he looked with amazement at the pettish eye of the frowning beauty. "In this instance, however, Europe has not so greatly erred. They who see much resemblance between the bay of Naples and this of Manhattan, have fertile brains; since it rests altogether on the circumstance that ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... after joined the party. He muttered over some short speech about regret for having been so long detained elsewhere, when he knew he should have the pleasure of seeing Madame Cheron here; and she, receiving the apology with the air of a pettish girl, addressed herself entirely to Cavigni, who looked archly at Montoni, as if he would have said, 'I will not triumph over you too much; I will have the goodness to bear my honours meekly; but look ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... with a smile, and bowed in return to the salutation of the page, whose stiff reception of his advances he imputed to the proud pettish disposition of a Scotch boy, trained up in extravagant ideas of family consequence and personal importance, which his acquaintance with the world had not yet ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... young one I never saw in my life," Mrs. Medlock thought. (Marred is a Yorkshire word and means spoiled and pettish.) She had never seen a child who sat so still without doing anything; and at last she got tired of watching her and began to talk in a brisk, ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The pettish inquiring tone was exactly what delighted him. And he continued to tease her in the same style till Laura and Amabel came running in with their report of ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but in some way the feeling permeated the table. The widow pushed her plate aside, and sipped her glass of wine in silence. Charlotte took a pettish pleasure in refusing what she felt she was unwelcome to. Both left the table before Julius and Sophia had finished their meal; and both, as soon as they reached their rooms, turned to each other with faces hot with indignation, and hearts angry with ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a puzzled look for a while, then said half to herself and in a pettish and vexed ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... will not be in Paris," says the young man, still in the same discontented, pettish voice. "She will be there, no doubt—well to the front—in the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... pettish speech in Evelyn, and her cheek glowed while she spoke; but an arch, provoking ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you have been, and I am very pettish, sometimes. Papa has spoiled me. You are always affectionate, and those worrying ways of yours, which I get angry at, all come from love for me, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... King any money; will call all things in question; and, above all, the expences of the Navy; and do enquire into the King's expences everywhere, and into the truth of the report of people being forced to sell their bills at 15 per cent. losse in the Navy; and, lastly, that they are in a very angry pettish mood at present, and not ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... however, the hand of Joe came out with the treasure she had been seeking—a torn half column, or less, of the Herald. The moment Miss Crawford saw the slip, her anxiety seemed to be redoubled, and she reached over to Joe, as if to take the paper, with the words, half-pleading, half-pettish: ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Spabbink's room. Under Groby's vigorous measures the musician's flabby, redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg. Groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped his domineering visitant on the hand. In another moment Spabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by a pillow-case tightly bound round his head, while his plump pyjama'd limbs were hauled out of bed and ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... the dark kitchen steps she heard Amy's voice in pettish exclamation: "Oh, get out, YOU!" followed by a yelp from Fossette. She had a swift movement of anger, which she controlled. The relations between her and Fossette were not marked by transports, and her rule over dogs in general was severe; even when alone she very seldom kissed the animal passionately, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... silence, and when Richard warned her that she was not keeping her dress out of the dirt, it sounded like a sarcasm on her projects, and, with a slightly pettish manner, she raised the unfortunate skirt, its crape trimmings greatly bespattered with ruddy mud. Then recollecting how mamma would have shaken her head at that very thing, she regretted the temper she had betrayed, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... pettish, And stamps his foot; And then with a chatter, He cracks his nut; And thus he lives All the long summer through, Without either a care ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... nonsense," said Katherine, turning to her flags, with a pettish air, that was singularly contradicted by her gratified countenance; "but the situation of things requires that I should talk to ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper |
