"Pother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... petty pother arose since Niecks' comprehensive biography appeared. So sure was he of his facts that he disposed of the pseudo-date in one footnote. Perhaps the composer was to blame; artists, male as well as female, have been known to make themselves younger in years by conveniently forgetting their birthdate, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... and a very great pother he made, insisting that the whole company should instantly hasten back to town, as if they remained there the pale death would speedily overtake them, and it would therefore boot them little to have escaped from the red death. And indeed the plague was raging fearfully ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... rights of interference. In private life Raphael suffered much from pillars of the Montagu Samuels type, who accused him of flippancy, and no communal crisis invented by little Sampson ever equalled the pother and commotion that arose when Raphael incautiously allowed him to burlesque the notorious Mordecai Josephs by comically exaggerating its exaggerations. The community took it seriously, as an attack upon the race. Mr. and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the insurgent and free poets didn't trouble Mary Virginia very much. Although she sensed that something was wrong with somebody somewhere—hence these lyrical lamentations—she could not, to save her, tell what all the pother was about, for as yet she saw the world couleur de rose. Some one or two of the French and Germans pleased her; she fell into long reveries over the Gael, who has the sound of the sea in his voice and whose eyes ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... "ye are NOT the young spark who is to marry Mistress Amy at the Hall, yet makes a pother and mess of it all by a duel with Sir Roger de Cadgerly, the wicked baronet, for his over-free discourse with our fair Maudlin this very eve? Ye are NOT the traveler whose post-chaise is now at the Falcon? Ye are not he that was bespoken by the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... very little either in inn charges or in the pother of State by the device. And if I remember correctly, I made no pretence at wine-selling on these occasions. Honestly now, what the devil does the Comte de Montaiglon do here—and with ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Fontenelle, to drop into his arms when asked, and leave those arms again with equal alacrity also when asked! It would have been quite pleasant and satisfactory to him, the Marquis;—and for Sylvie—well!—for Sylvie, she would soon have got over it! Now there was all this fuss and pother about virtue! Virtue, quotha! In a woman, and in Paris! At this time of day! Could anything be ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... friend, or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother, You can hang or ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... sharps, and rum ones, who make up this pother; Who gape and stare, just like stuck pigs at each other, As mirrors, wherein, at full length do appear, Your follies reflected so apish and queer Tol de ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... hosier; deem me not absurd That I should thank thee for so apt a word. 'Tis thus that Modesty our language trims: Where men say "legs" she softly whispers "limbs." And, while they fume and rage in angry pother, Stills the big D—— and substitutes a "bother." Speaks not of "trousers"—that were sin and shame; "Continuations" is the gentler name. Turns "shirts" to "shifts," and, blushing like the rose, Converts the lowly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipp'd of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand; Thou perjur'd, and thou simular man of virtue That ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of vehicles had rumbled into the courtyard, setting down the servants and effects of his Highness of Wirtemberg, and of the lady who ruled his destiny. Frisoni was in a mighty pother; he ran round the room excitedly, moving a chair, smoothing out a fold in the curtains, drawing a table to another position. He hopped hither and thither like some gay little monkey. Suddenly a tremendous shout ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... her hands airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to a dance ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... a youth appears, Who made a piteous pother, And told a tale with many tears, About his ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... Sanguis martyrum semen Ecclesiae; though it would seem this Church is indeed of the purely Invisible, Kingdom-come kind: Militant here on earth! Triumphant, of course, then, elsewhere! Ah, good Heaven, but I would I were out far away from the pother! ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... Braund, and Barnes, is a Banter on Criticks, and Genealogists, who make such a Pother about the Orthography of Names and Things, that many Times, three Parts in four of a Folio Treatise, is taken up in ascertaining the Propriety of a Syllable, by which Means the Reader is left undetermined; having nothing but the various Readings on a single Word, and that probably, ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... against his enemy. It is nearly always in the power of a party politician to distort and misrepresent the act {17} of an opponent, however just or blameless that act may be. Brougham made a great pother about the rights of freemen, usurpation, dictatorship. As a lawyer he raised the legal point, that Durham could not banish offenders from Canada to a colony over which he had no jurisdiction. He enlisted other ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... to fetch Mr. Butler, the prime cause of all this pother—for all of it can be traced to Mr. Butler's invasion of the Tavora nunnery—and with him went to bear the incredible tidings of their joint absolution to the three who waited ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... time the Master asked of Buffalmacco that which he had before asked of Bruno. Whereat Buffalmacco feigned to be not a little agitated, and turning angrily to Bruno, made a great pother about his ears, saying:—"By the Most High God of Pasignano I vow I can scarce forbear to give thee that over the head that should make thy nose fall about thy heels, traitor that thou art, for 'tis thou alone that canst have discovered these secrets to the Master." Whereupon ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Better lie to him than tell the truth to La Pompadour about that girl! Egad! Madame Fish would serve you as the Iroquois served my fat clerk at Chouagen—make roast meat of you—if she knew it! Such a pother about a girl! Damn the women, always, I say, Bigot! A man is never out of hot water when he has to do ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... disclaiming responsibility, of disliking such things, of being ready to oppose them if some effective method could only be thought out. He even hinted to those about him at Headquarters that this seeming garrulity was serving a good end, claiming it to be harmless pother to "cover" more immediate trails on which he pretended ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... a week after the Wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the North Coming on with a terrible pother, From the peak of the crag blew the Giant away. And what did these School-boys?—The very next day They went and ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... the puzzle. The office of the company is on the Strand above the Savoy. Mrs. Farmingham went to the manager and showed him a lot of papers she had in an official-looking envelope. After a good bit of official pother the porters carried out a big portmanteau, a sort of heavy leather traveling case, and put it into the carriage. Mrs. Farmingham came to Hargrave where he stood by ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... long, it is not very wide, For two are the most that together can ride; And e'en then, 'tis a chance but they get in a pother, And jostle and cross and ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... suppers for a fortnight on his hands. Among them were dinners and suppers at Holbach's, where he made the acquaintance of Diderot, and where perhaps he made the discovery that "notwithstanding the French make such a pother about the word sentiment, they have no precise idea attached to it."[13] The Sentimental Journey appeared in 1768, and was instantly pronounced by the critics in both countries to be inimitable. It is no wonder that a performance ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... was always conducted with rapiers and daggers in those days, and must have been a picturesque, if inconvenient, event. It was all about a lady too, which sounds quite likely: it was said that she was not worth all the pother: this is the sort of thing some people would say. As a consequence of this fracas several Bohemians were executed for robbery with violence, which sheds a different light on the incident, but I do not think it matters much at ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. 'You're probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may 'ave better accounts of his lordship's 'elth, sir. We understood that his lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad. Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss, poor, dear, noble ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "But why all this pother? Why not let me send a knave or two and knock the fellow some dark night in the head? It will save us both ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... thou coward fool. Did I not tell thee that there are no Gods? lo! you now! for what should they have roused this trumpery pother, if not to strike me? Tush, man, I ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... it round?—and thick?—and had it letters and devices graved upon it?—yes? Oh, NOW I know what this Great Seal is that there's been such worry and pother about. An' ye had described it to me, ye could have had it three weeks ago. Right well I know where it lies; but it was not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ought only to be regarded, and names to have no weight in a dispute of this kind. I wanted to say something on female chastity and delicacy, about which you and your heroines make such a rout and a pother, and I shall now apply it to examine how far your Pamela is a proper example of either. In the first place, she was not of that rank or situation in life which could entitle her to those notions of honour and virtue, which are extremely proper and becoming in Clarissa ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... so devilish dear To one that was, or would have been a peer. Let me extol a cat, on oysters fed, I'll have a party at the Bedford-head; Or even to crack live crawfish recommend; I'd never doubt at Court to make a friend. 'Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother About one vice, and fall into the other: Between excess and famine lies a mean; Plain, but not sordid; though not splendid, clean. Avidien, or his wife (no matter which, For him you'll call a dog, and her a bitch) Sell their presented partridges, and fruits, And humbly live ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... which eugenists raise such a pother, are surely not the worst curses that mankind has to bear. Some of the greatest men in history have had them; whole nations have had them and survived. The truth about them is that, save in relatively rare cases, they do very little damage. The horror in which they are ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... father sent I was not told; but two days later, a little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the road in a great pother of dust. He was clad in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer, that was, in my eyes, very reassuring. He was, indeed, a very honest man and pious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had the Earl taken the wife of a man named Bryniolf, and from that piece of work had arisen a great pother, and something nigh the assembling together ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... see him: seld-shown flamens Do press among the popular throng, and puff To win a vulgar station: our veil'd dames Commit the war of white and damask, in Their nicely-gawded cheeks to the wanton spoil Of Phoebus' burning kisses: such a pother, As if that whatsoever god, who leads him, Were slyly crept into his human powers, And gave him ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... or so, and membership is ranked as the highest honor of the college. But in God's name, what is all this pother? Are there not already enough jealousies without this one added? Does not college society already fall into enough locked coteries without this one? No matter how keen is the pride of membership, it does not atone ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... 'chagrin' and 'shagreen'; 'can' and 'ken'; 'Francis' and 'Frances'{111}; 'chivalry' and 'cavalry'; 'oaf' and 'elf'; 'lose' and 'loose'; 'taint' and 'tint'. Sometimes the difference is mainly or entirely in the initial consonants, as between 'phial' and 'vial'; 'pother' and 'bother'; 'bursar' and 'purser'; 'thrice' and 'trice'{110}; 'shatter' and 'scatter'; 'chattel' and 'cattle'; 'chant' and 'cant'; 'zealous' and 'jealous'; 'channel' and 'kennel'; 'wise' and 'guise'; 'quay' and 'key'; 'thrill', 'trill' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... find gall Hid in the hanging chalice of the rose: Which think you better? If my mood offend, We'll turn to business,—to the empty cares That make such pother in our feverish life. When at Ravenna, did you ever hear Of any romance in Francesca's life? A love-tilt, gallantry, or anything That might have touched ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... guardian friend or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother,— You can ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... rather, I begin first to make myself believe that I am in love—but I carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally—l'amour (say they) n'est rien sans sentiment. Now, notwithstanding they make such a pother about the word, they have no precise idea annexed to it. And so much for that same subject called ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chaos, omnium gatherum [Lat.], medley; mere mixture &c 41; fortuitous concourse of atoms, disjecta membra [Lat.], rudis indigestaque moles [Lat.] [Ovid]. complexity &c 59.1. turmoil; ferment &c (agitation) 315; to-do, trouble, pudder^, pother, row, rumble, disturbance, hubbub, convulsion, tumult, uproar, revolution, riot, rumpus, stour^, scramble, brawl, fracas, rhubarb, fight, free-for-all, row, ruction, rumpus, embroilment, melee, spill and pelt, rough and tumble; whirlwind &c 349; bear garden, Babel, Saturnalia, donnybrook, Donnybrook ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... toiling to provide our meat and bread! Where the eager crowd is moiling, struggling on with weary tread! Battling with stockjobbing ladies, meeting all their wiles and tricks, or embarking in the Hades of the city's politics! But forgotten is the pother, all the work day cares are gone, when she comes home to dear father with his nice clean apron on! There's your chair, he says; "sit in it; supper will be cooked eftsoons: I will dish it in a minute—scrambled eggs and shredded prunes." It is good to watch him moving ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... perversity and love me simply and unreservedly? There are difficulties before me, I know; but I am not afraid if only my heart is at peace. I am free, and if there is any power in my brain, any skill in my right hand, I will make such a pother that the world shall hear me. I will not die till I am heard. And so I ask you to help-me. With your love I shall be made bold, and no opposition and no repeated reverses shall trouble me. And in the end your ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... is! I told you that, at first sight, she is an odd piece; but as soon as you know her, in very truth, there's not a better sort in the whole world. Say good-morrow to her without making any pother ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... something to do with the Land Bill—practically everything that happens in England has something to do with the Land Bill—and Lloyd George was in a free state of perspiration over it; and the papers were full of it and altogether there was a great pother over it. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... little, like his person, it is all fuss and bustle. This is his idea of a tragic scene: A little fellow comes bustling in, goes bustling about, and runs bustling out." Here Mr. Cibber left the room, to give greater effect to his description, but presently returned in a mighty pother, saying: "'Give me another horse!' Well, where's the horse? don't you see I'm waiting for him? 'Bind up my wounds!' Look sharp now with these wounds. 'Have mercy, Heaven!' but be quick about it, for the pit can't wait for Heaven. ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... name, is all this pother about? For what cause do they embitter their own and other people's lives? That a man should publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them float away while she cons the children's lesson for the morrow with Merrycourt? They be no great loss, when the place is full of roses. Or why could you not call to the wench to take better heed of them, instead of making all this pother?' ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pother. Stephen wakened violently, and in a moment all three were staring ineffectually at the thousand crystal ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... George Gordon: wrote to a friend the ship he was coming home in—Morning Star. It was the same; price on G.G.'s head to this day: shouldn't mind getting it. Needn't pother over it, sir; 'twas Gordon: but he'd never put his foot ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... such a pother, out in the world," Isabelle remarked to Margaret, as she turned over the leaves of her husband's letter. "The President is calling names, and a lot of good people are calling names back. And neither side seems to like being called names. John doesn't like ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Pickaninnies hopping about, and Joblilies swimming in the lake. We asked what it all meant, and were told that "she was going to marry the barber;" and then they all tittered, and we could not for the life of us tell what this pother meant. When we told a Garuly that we wanted to see the Great Panjandrum himself, and to find out whether there was a bag of gold at the end of the rainbow, he took our one-eyed beetle, and gave the four-leaved clover to a Pickaninny. ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... much noise as they choose, for their own pleasure," said Philip, laughing, as the report of the culverins, which startled the colonists from their sleep, were heard; "but it is only a useless pother, and a vain rubbing of drowsy eyes. I should like to see how valiant Captain Endicott will look, when he finds that ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... their feet of three camels by voice persuasion alone is no mean performance, but no voice, not even the vocal chords of the Archangel Gabriel, would have moved the cause of all this pother, for at the word of command, in a tone which should have put fear of death into her black heart, she slightly shifted ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... accusation is hardly courteous, but, stripped of its verbiage, that is the accusation as it is made. Now, as there are usually at least some smouldering embers of fire where there is smoke, there is just one small item of truth behind all this pother. No Catholic, scientific man or otherwise, who really honours his Faith would desire wilfully to advance theories apparently hostile to its teaching. Further, even if he were convinced of the truth of facts which ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... "Sure, the pother o' life. It's an' up an' down, so fast it makes a body dizzy in their wits. That boy, Fayetty, one day as good as a fine fish o' Friday; the next—eatin' me heart out with the worry. Never a doubt I doubt 'twas himself ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... spent itself, she retreated to her brothers, to whom she poured out a full and animated account of the night's happenings. They all agreed that Mademoiselle must have rats in the upper story to make such a pother over the adventure, though Maxwell, who held himself to be approaching years of discretion, gave it as his opinion that the whole thing was a piece of bad luck and an experiment not to ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... tumbled out of the nest, it so happened that old Klaus Hermann was clattering into town with his manure-cart, in order to fetch a load of dung. And this trifling circumstance decided the boy's position in life. There was no more pother than this about the question: What ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo |
