"Shrew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... John Lacy whom Charles II. admired so much that he had his picture painted in three of his characters, died in 1681, leaving four comedies and an alteration of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. He was a handsome man: first dancing-master, then quarter-master, then an admired comedian. Henley would hardly have used a blank in referring to a well-known writer who died thirty years before. There was another John Lacy advertising in the Post Boy, Aug. 3, 1714, The Steeleids, or the Trial ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Dover or the Irish Channel, to graze anew over deposits in which the bones and horns of their remote ancestors had been entombed long ages before, the feat would have been surely far beyond the power of such feeble natives of the soil as the mole, the hedgehog, the shrew, the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... cottages, or, like Loveday, to play the more easily with their thoughts? The wood alone knew, and it held its memories as closely as it held the thousand tiny lives confided to its care; the bright-eyed shrew-mice that poked quivering noses through the litter of last year's leaves, the birds that nested behind the clustering twigs, the slow-worms that slipped along its ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... thinking how I will never get a clean shirt to my back; how my coat will always be out at the elbows; and how I never will get my breeches to stay up. I am thinking how I will be married to a shrew of a wife, who will beat me every evening and morning, and sometimes in the middle of the day. I am thinking what a d——d w—— she will be, and how my children will be most of them hanged, and whipped through towns, and burnt in ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... rights have crazed thee? Would'st thou be A Winter Amazon, more fierce than he? Can Summer birds thy shrew-heroics sing? Wilt tend no more the daisies on the lea, Nor wake thy cowslips ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... John scolded. "I believes ye! Dang if I don't! Go to! Shift them wet clothes, sir, an' come t' supper. I hopes a shrew hooks ye. ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... transcriber or as an original dealer in pleasantry he sometimes was—"one of the least and worst among jesters as he was one of the best and greatest among poets," he could not have had a hand in the admirable comic scenes of "The Taming of the Shrew." For it is now, I should hope, unnecessary to insist that the able and conscientious editor to whom his fame and his readers owe so great a debt was over-hasty in assuming and asserting that he was a poet "to whom, we have reason to believe, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... disputatious crew Each evening meet; the sot, the cheat, the shrew; Riots are nightly heard:—the curse, the cries Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies, While shrieking children hold each threat'ning hand, And sometimes life, and sometimes food demand; Boys, in their first-stol'n rags, to swear begin; ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... rise, And touch'd, or seem'd to touch, the skies: Not the most distant mark of fear, No sign of axe or scaffold near, Not one cursed thought to cross his will Of such a place as Tower Hill. 680 Curse on this Muse, a flippant jade, A shrew, like every other maid Who turns the corner of nineteen, Devour'd with peevishness and spleen; Her tongue (for as, when bound for life, The husband suffers for the wife, So if in any works of rhyme Perchance there blunders out a crime, Poor ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... for it, young unmarried gentlemen, a wife is a very much harder pack to the back than the biggest heifer in Smithfield and, if I can prevent one of you from marrying, the 'Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.' will not be written in vain. Not that my Lady was a scold or a shrew, as some wives are; I could have managed to have cured her of that; but she was of a cowardly, crying, melancholy, maudlin temper, which is to me still more odious: do what one would to please her, she would never be happy or in good-humour. I left her alone after a while; and because, as was ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Doctors in the camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; The while, one leaden got of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis and gentian, fern and long whip-scirpus, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the worse for that Zeitgeist! The jade had to come to him, at last, completely subdued, as in the "Taming of the Shrew." ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The Merry Wives of Windsor. Measure for Measure. The Comedy of Errours. Much adoo about Nothing Loves Labour lost. Midsommer Nights Dreame. The Merchant of Venice. As you Like it. The Taming of the Shrew. All is well, that Ends well. Twelfe-Night, or what you will. The ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... a foole, bee rulde by mine host, shew thy self a brave man, of the true seede of Troy, a gallant Agamemnon; tha'st a shrew to thy wife, if shee crosse thy brave humors, kicke thy heele ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... of this specimen, Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collections, No. 2765, with 8 specimens of C. micrura from various parts of northern Veracruz and with 9 C. parva from southern Tamaulipas reveals that the shrew from Boca del Rio is referable to Cryptotis micrura. The series of 8 specimens in the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History from Altamira, Tamaulipas, provides the southernmost known record ...
— Taxonomy and Distribution of Some American Shrews • James S Findley
... structure which determined the habits of life, and the general place of each being in the economy of nature, would be of very high importance in classification. Nothing can be more false. No one regards the external similarity of a mouse to a shrew, of a dugong to a whale, of a whale to a fish, as of any importance. These resemblances, though so intimately connected with the whole life of the being, are ranked as merely "adaptive or analogical characters;" but to the consideration of these resemblances we shall have to recur. It ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... a weazel-faced man, who had been plagued for twenty years by a shrew of a wife, who popped off one day from an overdose of whiskey. He came to beseech me not to bring back his plague to the world; and, pitying the poor man's case, I gave him my promise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... mercy, and anon the Prince commanded to take away the ton and to quench the fire. And then the Prince asked him if he would forsake his heresy, and take him to the faith of holy church; which if he would have done, he should have his life, and goods enough to live by; and the cursed shrew would not, but continued forth in his heresy: wherefore ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... moment even. Who found him feeling for a word? Did we not find them ready at his hand as Ariel was ready to serve Prospero? Lear, Prospero, Brutus, Cassius, Falstaff, Iago, Macbeth, Hamlet, are as crowning creations as Cleopatra, Miranda, Lady Macbeth, Katharine the Shrew, Imogen, or Cordelia. We know not which to choose, as one who looks through a mountain vista to the sea, declaring each view fairer than the last, yet knowing if he might choose any one for a perpetual possession he could not make decision. We are incapable ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou; Braved in my own house by a skein of thread! Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant!" (Taming of the Shrew, ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... the morning a shadow stretches to a bridge across the brook, and in that shadow my trout used to lie. The bank under the drooping boughs forms a tiny cliff a foot high, covered with moss, and here I once observed shrew mice diving and racing about. But only once, though I frequently passed the spot; it is curious that I did ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... when a man has that there's never any knowing where it will break out, or what dance it will lead him, especially when it comes to this love-making business. You are just as likely as not to lose your head over some little fool or shrew for the sake of her outward favour and make yourself miserable for life. When you pick you a wife please remember that I shall reserve the right to pass a candid opinion ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... good, and she did not see his lips pucker as for a long whistle. But he did not whistle. He replied very humbly; and so sweetly that Murguia quailed for the little shrew. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... most regal array, seemed to have left her dignity downstairs with her opera cloak, for with skirts gathered closely about her, tiara all askew, and face full of fear and anger, she stood upon a chair and scolded like any shrew. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... troops in the narrow streets beyond, from which few ever returned. Old birds are not caught with such wiles. I did succeed in gaining the ear of one of the gossips, and asking him what he could tell me of the good dame and her inn. It seemeth that she is somewhat of a shrew upon occasion, and that her tongue had more to do with her husband's death than the dropsy which the leech put it down to. Again, a new inn hath been started in the village, which is well-managed, and is like to draw the custom from her. It is, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time to spare, his victims would be an annoying problem in identification when found, for there would be nothing left but well-gnawed bones. And "time to spare," in this case meant twenty or thirty minutes. The Nipe had, if nothing else, a very efficient digestive tract. He ate like a shrew. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife—shrill, vehement, and fluent. 'Rogue,' 'old miser,' 'old sneak,' and a great many worse names, she called him. Good Mrs. Irons was old, fat, and ugly, and she knew it; and that knowledge made her natural jealousy the fiercer. He had learned, by long experience, the best tactique ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... or timidus) replaces the common hare (Lepus europaeus) in the higher regions; though absent from the intervening plains it again appears in the north of Europe and in Scotland. Among the Insectivora, the alpine shrew (Sorex alpinus) is restricted to the Alps. Of the Cheiroptera (bats) only Vesperugo ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... suspicion, and govern the stormy sea of soliloquies. From these frightful tempests which ravage a woman's heart springs an ignoble, unworthy resolution, one which every woman, the duchess as well as the shopkeeper's wife, the baroness as well as the stockbroker's lady, the angel as well as the shrew, the indifferent as well as the passionate, at once puts into execution. They imitate the government, every one of them; they resort to espionage. What the State has invented in the public interest, they consider legal, legitimate and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... you use this dalliance to excuse Your breach of promise to the Porpentine. I should have chid you for not bringing it, 50 But, like a shrew, you first ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... that it is appropriate," he rejoined. "I think on the whole I would rather love a Juliet than tame a shrew." ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... her for the money—and if you lost aught she'd vind it, so sure as the church—and a mighty hand to cure burns; and they two villains coom back, after harvest, seventy mile to do it—and when my vather's cows was shrew-struck, she made un be draed under a brimble as growed together at the both ends, she a praying like mad all the time; and they never got nothing but fourteen shilling and a crooked sixpence; for why, the devil carried off all the rest of her money; and I seen um ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... as a little lad when the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth (1575). In 1595 or 1596 came "All's Well that Ends Well," taken from an Italian source, and "The Taming of the Shrew," with an introduction dealing boldly with the Stratford country and some of its worthies, contemporaries of the poet. In the two-part play of "Henry IV." that followed we have further references to Shakespeare's birthplace, and he ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... obtain a wider reverence if the nome they belonged to rose to greater power. Animals of every size and kind were worshipped in Egypt. Besides the large animals we have mentioned, the ape, the dog, the little shrew-mouse, each had its local sacredness; also snakes, frogs, and various kinds of fishes. The beetle (scarab) can by no means be left without mention; and a number of trees and shrubs were also sacred,[1] but, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Humming-bird went away a Field-mouse was seen for a moment dodging about in the grass, and shortly afterward a Shrew-mole, not so big as the Mouse, was seen in ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... satire, is keen and vehement. The ballad of "Watty and Meg," though exception may be taken to the moral, is an admirable picture of human nature, and one of the most graphic narratives of the "taming of a shrew" in the language. Allan Cunningham writes: "It has been excelled by none in lively, graphic fidelity of touch: whatever was present to his eye and manifest to his ear, he could paint with a life and a humour which Burns ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the Middle Ages. Combined with this in the plot is the tale of Abou Hassan from the "Arabian Nights," the main situations in which are turned to farcical purposes in the Induction to the Shakespearean "Taming of the Shrew." But with Calderon the theme is lifted altogether out of the atmosphere of comedy, and is worked up with poetic sentiment and a touch of mysticism into a symbolic drama of profound ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... was miraculously meek and dumb; all the scold was quelled within her; the word "blood" was the Petruchio that tamed that shrew; she could see a plenty of those ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 'benefit of clergy,'" exploded the younger man; "that mediaeval bonanza isn't to be mentioned in the same week with the ministerial half-rates, donations, and hold-ups we moderns put up with. This pulpit pounder's shrew pays me no more than she pays the doctor, the grocer, the butcher, and the rest. What a ukase I could issue if I were ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... manifest itself. Thou art well aware, O Prince of True Believers, that by Moslem custom none may look upon the face of his betrothed before the marriage contract? nor after wedlock can he complain should his bride prove a shrew or a fright: he must needs dwell with her in such content as he may and be thankful for his fate, be it fair or unfair. When I saw first the face of my bride and learnt that it was passing comely, I joyed with exceeding joy and gave thanks to Almighty Allah that He had bestowed on ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... termination to an otherwise delightful ball. He is sitting with his charming "Mary", about to ask her to be his bride, when the unfortunate overturning of a glass of red wine into her white satin gown, at the same time overthrows all his dreams of bliss, "for the shrew displaces the angel he adored", and he resigns himself to the life of "a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money all ways ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... over the rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads mourn and the river-nymphs deplore her. As her father followed the calling of Vulcan, he said that surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright's wife was an ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a long face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and are dead almost before they are born. Esmond could ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... that Ends Well,' which may be tentatively assigned to 1595. Meres, writing three years later, attributed to Shakespeare a piece called 'Love's Labour's Won.' This title, which is not otherwise known, may well be applied to 'All's Well.' 'The Taming of The Shrew,' which has also been identified with 'Love's Labour's Won,' has far slighter claim to the designation. The plot of 'All's Well,' like that of 'Romeo and Juliet,' was drawn from Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' (No. xxxviii.) The original source is Boccaccio's 'Decamerone' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... so!" exclaimed old lady Chia. "I always said that that girl wasn't anything like that artful shrew! Well, in that case, she is to be pitied, for she has had to bear the brunt of her anger, and all through no fault of hers!" Calling Hu Po to her, "Go," she added, "and tell P'ing Erh all I enjoin you; 'that I know that she has been insulted and that to-morrow ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "You're a foul shrew, Mother Gargery," growled the journeyman. "If that makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... plots. In one of them, Petruchio woos and tames the shrew Katharina; in the other, Katharina's sister Bianca is wooed by lovers in disguise. The two plots have little connection with each other. That which relates to Petruchio and Katharina is certainly by Shakespeare. The other seems to be by a dull man who did not know his ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... men's minds and humours. One might wear any passion out of a family by culture, as skilful gardeners blot a colour out of a tulip that hurts its beauty. One might produce an affable temper out of a shrew, by grafting the mild upon the choleric; or raise a jack-pudding from a prude, by inoculating mirth and melancholy. It is for want of care in the disposing of our children, with regard to our bodies and minds, that we go into a house and see such ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... Ruminantia 6th month, that of a ruminant; 53 Amphibia (seals) } 9 Tertiary 54 Digitigrada (dog, cat, &c.) Digitigrada / 7th month, that of a digitigrade animal; 55 Plantigrada (bear, &c.) Plantigrada / 56 Insectivora (shrew, &c.) Insectivora / 57 Cheiroptera (bats) Cheiroptera / 58 Quadrumana (apes) Quadrumana / 8th month, that of the quadrumana; 29 Bimana (man) Bimana 10 Superficial deposits 9th month, attains full ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... of kings and emperors. What famous beauty embellished the court of Elizabeth or either Mary? Even Anne's Mrs. Masham was not a shining personality, and her Sarah of Marlborough was only a brilliant shrew. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... is what I have sought for so long," he exclaimed, at last. "Hither! thou treasure, thou dear, defiant little shrew! Thou art more to me than all the wealth of Pithom. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... her Sabbath face, putting off the mask of the shrew, which hid not from him the angel countenance. To-night he could in very truth call his wife (as the Rabbi in the Talmud did) "not wife, but home." To-night she would be in very truth Simcha—rejoicing. A cheerful warmth glowed at his heart, love for all ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... reception? (Merry Wives of Windsor.) 9. In what kind of a place did they live? (Hamlet.) 10. What was her disposition like? (The Tempest.) 11. What was his chief occupation after marriage? (Taming of the Shrew.) 12. What caused their first quarrel? (Much Ado about Nothing.) 13. What did their courtship prove to be? (Love's Labor Lost.) 14. What did their married life resemble? (A Comedy of Errors.) 15. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... house-master and family head, unlike most Malaitans, was fat. And of his fatness it would seem had been begotten his good nature with its allied laziness. But as the fly in his ointment of jovial irresponsibility was his wife, Lenerengo—the prize shrew of Somo, who was as lean about the middle and all the rest of her as her husband was rotund; who was as remarkably sharp-spoken as he was soft-spoken; who was as ceaselessly energetic as he was unceasingly idle; and who had been born with ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... an instant, as if the thought startled him with its truth and value. But when she added, with yet deeper seriousness of brow, "That's no way to tame a shrew, my love," he laughed aloud, and peace came again with ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... Shrew."—I cannot help thinking that Christopher Sly merely means that he is fourteenpence on the score for sheer ale,—nothing but ale; neither bread nor meat, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... which she endured, there is a curious flavor of superficiality about her genius. A Birmingham anthropologist, Dr. Jordan, has divided the human race into two types, whom he calls "shrews" and "nonshrews" respectively.[206] The shrew-type is defined as possessing an "active unimpassioned temperament." In other words, shrews are the "motors," rather than the "sensories,"[207] and their expressions are as a rule more energetic than ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... begged to have his daughter remain, but the shrew was determined to be rid of her, and gave him no peace. At last, when he could gainsay her no longer, he placed his daughter in a sledge and drove her to the open fields. Here he left her, with nothing to shield her from the bitter cold. ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... greatest friend and was notable for three things, his enormous size, his surpassing skill on the violoncello and his devoted attachment to the veriest shrew of a little sharp-boned wife that ever crossed from Germany into England. For all these things Peter loved him, but Herr Lutz was never very actively conscious of Peter because from the moment that he entered Herr Gottfried's attic to the moment he left it his ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... nothing against her! But this beats all the rest! Why, I have it from my maid, who is sister to one of the servants at the boarding-school in Queen Square, whither they have sent the Lady Belle, that she is a regular little shrew. She flew at one of the young ladies like a wild cat, because she did not yield place to her at once, and scratched her cheeks till the blood ran down, and tore out whole handfuls of her hair. She was like one possessed, and they had to call the lackey ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... English Mysteries Noah's wife is an untamed shrew, who refuses to enter the ark. In the York collection, Noah being ordered by "Deus" to build his ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... swift glance at his wife. "There! you see!" it said plainly. "I am not without defenders." He took down his shaving-mug, with an air of some bravado. But Mirandy was no shrew; she was simply ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... its radical sense shrew-ed, malicious, like a shrew. Comp. M. N. D. ii. 1, "That shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow." Chaucer has the verb shrew to curse; the current verb ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... women who thrust themselves conspicuously upon the notice of the public, and that he meant to hint that those who thus unsex themselves often make a showy appearance without displaying much solid merit. If this subtle, sharp, and strong-minded female did not turn out to be something of a shrew, before her husband was done with her, I am much mistaken. Possibly, however, Shakspeare's sarcasm might bear a more general interpretation, and implies that women in an argument seldom meet the true issue presented to them, but are prone to go off at a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... but his wife was taken. A farmer, a member of our own church, who used to invite preachers down from the Evangelization Society, London, is gone, but his wife, a strict churchwoman like myself—but a rare shrew—is left. ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... me a slave, and making yourself a laughing-stock. Its not fair. You get me the name of being a shrew with your meek ways, always talking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. And just because I look a big strong woman, and because I'm good-hearted and a bit hasty, and because you're always driving me to do things I'm sorry for afterwards, people say "Poor man: what a life his wife leads ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... kings!" cried one, "here is an old dotard shrew to have so goodly a crutch! Use the leg that God hath given you, man, and do not bear so heavily upon ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sdegno, sdrucciolo, sfavellare, [Greek: sphinx], sgombrare, sgranare, shake, slumber, smell, snipe, space, splendour, spring, squeeze, shrew, step, strength, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... the season of light operas, and one ballet, the latter Delibes's "Sylvia." The operas were Goetz's "Taming of the Shrew" (five times), Gluck's "Orpheus" (thirteen times), Wagner's "Lohengrin" (ten times), Mozart's "Magic Flute" (six times), Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor" (nine times), Delibes's "Lakm" (eleven times), ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... had, like turtle true, But not like turtle gentle, soft, and kind; For many a time her tongue bewrayed the shrew, And in meet words unpacked her peevish mind. Ne formed was she to raise the soft desire That stirs the tingling blood in youthful vein, Ne formed was she to light the tender fire, By many a bard is sung in many a strain: Hooked was her nose, and countless wrinkles ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of the feminine sex (and indeed by no means to this class only) of a strapping and handsome footman is a commonplace of satire with eighteenth-century writers, both French and English. It is exercised possibly on both sisters, though the elder is a shrew; certainly on the younger, and also on their elderly bonne, Catherine. But it necessarily leads to trouble. The younger, Mlle. Habert (the curious hiding of Christian names reappears here), wants to retain Jacob in the joint service, and Catherine at least makes no objection, for obvious ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... happy enough not to understand. The forehead of the shrew unknotted a bit, and a look of ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... up through her tears, "I am the daughter of a poor man in the castle town. My mother died when I was seven years old, and my father has now wedded a shrew, who loathes and ill-uses me; and in the midst of my grief he is gone far away on his business, so I was left alone with my stepmother; and this very night she spited and beat me till I could bear ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Would to heaven That it had pierced thy heart, and thou hadst died! So had the Trojans respite from their toils 465 Enjoy'd, who, now, shudder at sight of thee Like she-goats when the lion is at hand. To whom, undaunted, Diomede replied. Archer shrew-tongued! spie-maiden! man of curls![14] Shouldst thou in arms attempt me face to face, 470 Thy bow and arrows should avail thee nought. Vain boaster! thou hast scratch'd my foot—no more— And I regard it as I might the stroke Of a weak woman or a simple child. The weapons of a dastard ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... I said, and I gave our boy five francs to fetch the oats, but the old shrew took the money from him and handed ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... magnificence of its public edifices, we found more than the usual amount of Galician filth and misery. The posada was one of the most wretched description, and to mend the matter, the hostess was a most intolerable scold and shrew. Antonio having found fault with the quality of some provision which she produced, she cursed him most immoderately in the country language, which was the only one she spoke, and threatened, if he attempted to breed any disturbance in her house, to turn ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... what she was saying. She turned very red, and, contracting her skinny shoulders, hurried away, affecting not to recognise him. Gavard, however, followed her for a few yards, shrugging his shoulders and muttering to himself that he was no longer surprised at the old shrew's malice, now he knew that "she poisoned herself with the filth ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... in Arabic;"[FN483] and it is probable that Galland heard it recited in a coffee-house during his residence in Constantinople. The plot of the Induction to Shakspeare's comedy of "The Taming of the Shrew" is similar to the adventure of Abu al-Hasan the Wag, and is generally believed to have been adapted from a story entitled "The Waking Man's Fortune" in Edward's collection of comic tales, 1570, which were retold somewhat differently in "Goulart's Admirable and Memorable Histories," ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... lifetime, but that displayed an originality and a resource for which it would be vain to look in the multifarious compositions of the Kapellmeisters of the period. 'Der Widerspaenstigen Zaehmung' follows the incidents of 'The Taming of the Shrew' very closely. The action begins at night. Lucentio is serenading Bianca, but his ditty is interrupted by a riot among Baptista's servants, who refuse to submit any longer to Katharine's ill-treatment. Peace is restored, and Lucentio resumes his song. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... head alert, the father mounts on guard, singing a perfect ecstasy of love to his silent little mate, that sits upon the nest if no danger threatens; but both rush with passionate malice upon the first intruder, for it must be admitted that Jenny wren is a sad shrew. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... so large a number to have passed in this way across a strait which, except at one point, is from thirty to fifty miles wide; and five hoofed animals, including the Tapir, two species of rhinoceros, and an elephant. Besides these there are thirteen Rodents and four Insectivora, including a shrew-mouse and six squirrels, whose unaided passage over twenty miles of sea is even more inconceivable than that of the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... you are master of Europe. I say to you that, but for this woman whom for twenty years you have neglected, you would to-day be mouldering in some pauper's grave. Eh, without question, you most magnanimously loved that shrew of Salisbury! because you fancied the color of her eyes, Sire Edward, and admired the angle between her nose and her forehead. Minstrels unborn will sing of this great love of yours. Meantime I say to you"—now the man's rage was ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... young green virgin, Cropp'd like a rose before 'tis fully blown, Or half its worth disclosed. Strange medley here! Here garrulous old age winds up his tale; And jovial youth, of lightsome vacant heart, 530 Whose every day was made of melody, Hears not the voice of mirth.—The shrill-tongued shrew, Meek as the turtle-dove, forgets her chiding. Here are the wise, the generous, and the brave; The just, the good, the worthless, the profane; The downright clown, and perfectly well-bred; The fool, the churl, the scoundrel, and the mean; The supple statesman, and the patriot stern; The wrecks of ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... himself, in our National Gallery. Andrea's life was not very happy. No painter had more honour in his own day, and none had a greater number of pupils, but these stopped with him only a short time, owing to the demeanour towards them of Andrea's wife, who developed into a flirt and shrew, dowered with a thousand jealousies. Andrea, the son of a tailor, was born in 1486 and apprenticed to a goldsmith. Showing, however, more drawing than designing ability, he was transferred to a painter named Barile and then ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... King makes it, invitus amabo! as the man said who married the shrew." Bigot laughed mockingly. "We must make the best of it, Des Meloises! and let me tell you privately, I mean to make a good thing of it for ourselves ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to every eye that does not know he is there. Probably my own is the only eye that has ever penetrated his secret, and mine never would have done so had I not chanced on one occasion to see him leave his retreat and make a raid upon a shrike that was impaling a shrew-mouse upon a thorn in a neighboring tree and which I was watching. Failing to get the mouse, the owl returned swiftly to his cavity, and ever since, while going that way, I have been on the lookout ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... —A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... called Thordis—and a shrew she was—who lived at Spakonufell (Spaequean's-fell), in Skagastrand. She, having foresight of Cormac's goings, came that very day to Muli, and answered this matter on his behalf, saying, "Never give him yon false woman. She is a fool, and not fit for any pretty man. Woe will ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... re-enact a modern edition of 'The Taming of the Shrew.' Y'u'll find me, sweet, as apt at the part as old Petruchio." He paced complacently up the room and back, ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... gain a fair share of money, and also (which she liked even better) of power, among the simple folk for many miles round. If a child was scalded, a tooth ached, a piece of silver was stolen, a heifer shrew-struck, a pig bewitched, a young damsel crost in love, Lucy was called in, and Lucy found a remedy, especially for the latter complaint. Now and then she found herself on ticklish ground, for the kind-heartedness ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... old shrew. What you might expect. If I had thought of it in time, I'd've been willing to make a book on her laying ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... relaxation of Peter's tyrannous hold upon her thoughts, her life, her very heart's blood. Would her loyalty bear the test of seeing Peter made a fool of by a woman she could dismiss with a shrug—a softly speaking shrew, perhaps, who played a waiting game with her finger on the pulse of Peter's prospects? For there was talk of a partnership with the Wetmores. Or a fool, perhaps, for all her sonneting, for there are men who relish a weak headpiece as the chiefest ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... happy thing to do When twenty years united to a shrew. Released, he hopefully for entrance cries Before the gates of Brahma's Paradise. "Hast been through Purgatory?" Brahma said. "I have been married," and he hung his head. "Come in, come in, and welcome, too, my son! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of the agricultural labours of spring, a Shrew-mouse, Field-mouse, Mole, Frog, Adder, or Lizard, will provide us with the most vigorous and famous of these expurgators of the soil. This is the Burying-beetle, the Necrophorus, so different from the cadaveric mob in dress and habits. In honour of his ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... review of the work of his predecessors. There is a great deal of information in his books about his own life. He was born at Pergamos in A.D. 130 in the reign of Hadrian. His father was a scholar and his mother somewhat of a shrew. Galen, in his boyhood, learned much from his father's example and instruction, and at the age of 15 was taught by philosophers of the Stoic, Platonist, Peripatetic, and Epicurean schools. He became initiated, writes Dr. Moore, into "the idealism ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... may, however, when she had grown to be a woman, there were, I dare say, no less than fifty young men who knew her well, any one of whom would have jumped at the chance to get her for a wife, and made but little account of the risk of her turning out a shrew. To be sure, when I first knew her, she had rather a high and mighty way with her, at which some people took offence, calling her proud and disdainful; but those whom she wished to please never failed to like her; and I used to observe she seldom put on any of her lofty airs when she spoke to unpresuming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... poor young man, after groaning to think that he was dependent on this shrew and under the thumb of a peasant of the Vosges, was bewitched by her coaxing ways and by a maternal affection that attached itself solely to the physical and material side of life. He was like a woman ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... curb her mad and headstrong humor. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak; 'tis charity to show." ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... species of more modern date, I ought equally to doubt the co-existence of all the other living species, such as the red deer, roe, wild cat, wild boar, wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dormouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately through the same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The year after this conversation I cited Schmerling's opinions, and the facts ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... about the little shrew being thoroughly game, and yet her act was less striking as evidence of her bravery, than as testifying her confidence in the chivalry of the rough men before her. And, indeed, it was comical to see the dumbfoundered and chop-fallen expression on their flushed and excited faces, as they ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... thee shrew; Would'st thou, girl, prove the charge untrue, Marry the fool who long hath wooed, And all will swear thou ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... remarkably the case with the whales, as might be seen in the skeleton of the gigantic whale lately exhibited in London. Those animals which are much under ground have the globe of the eye also very small, as the mole and shrew: in the former of these instances its existence was long altogether denied, and it is not, in fact, larger than a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... old shrew had given me pursued me everywhere. More than once, while climbing the almost perpendicular ladder to my loft, feeling my clothing caught on some point, I trembled from head to foot, imagining that ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... life is a life, old shrew, and it is more than ships or liquor. Say you forgive me, for if your life is worth nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my fortune. Come, I have paid for it dearly, be not ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... croakers. Old Plain Talk had a shrew for a wife, and that's made him shrewish; and Old Prudence, when a boy, broke down in an apple-stall, and that discouraged him for life. No better sport for a knowing spark like me than to hear Old Plain Talk wheeze out his sour old ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... not half such scolds as they sound," answered Uncle Blair gaily. "If they would but 'tak a thought and mend' their shrew-like ways they would be dear, ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a new piece of furniture several times; are attached to houses, and are extremely fond of scents, especially certain kinds emanating from plants. They seldom eat the rats which they kill, although they devour mice. If they should swallow a shrew, which is very rare, they almost immediately reject it. They will sit hour after hour watching at the mouth of a hole, and after seizing their prey, bring it to their favourites in the house to show their prowess, and strut ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... rat found only in the Cinnamon Gardens at Colombo, Mus Ceylonus, Kelaart; and a mouse which Dr. Kelaart discovered at Trincomalie, M. fulvidiventris, Blyth, both peculiar to Ceylon. Dr. TEMPLETON has noticed a little shrew (Corsira purpurascens, Mag. Nat. Hist. 1855, p. 238) at Neuera-ellia, not as yet ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the Heiress of Belmont The Thane's Daughter Helena; the Physician's Orphan Desdemona; the Magnifico's Child Meg and Alice; the Merry Maids of Windsor Isabella; the Votaress Katharina and Bianca; the Shrew and the Demure Ophelia; the Rose of Elsinore Rosalind and Celia; the Friends Juliet; the White Dove of Verona Beatrice and Hero; the Cousins Olivia; the Lady of Illyria Hermione; the Russian Princess Viola; the Twin Imogen; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... 4. Herman Goetz's opera "The Taming of the Shrew" given in New York City (in English) by the American Opera Company, Theodore Thomas conductor, at the Academy of Music. At this performance Pauline Allemand made ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... registered for his copies a number of books of the poetical kind which had been the property of his late father, including "Mr. Drayton's Poems," "Euphues's Golden Legacy," Meres's "Witt's Commonwealth," and also "Hamblett, a Play," "The Taming of the Shrew," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Love's Labour's Lost." This transaction, however, hardly implied that these books were in demand, but only that Smethwick wanted to secure his interest in them on succeeding to his ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... feud. The witch declared that if Lochbuy's wife should on the morning of that day give him and his men food unasked, he would be victorious, but if not, the result would be the reverse. This was a disheartening response for the unhappy votary, his wife being a noted shrew. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Clouds, like the plains, come and water the earth. Sun, embrace the earth that she may be fruitful. Moon, lion of the north, bear of the west, badger of the south, wolf of the east, eagle of the heavens, shrew of the earth, elder war hero, younger war hero, warriors of the six mountains of the world, intercede with the Cloud People for us that they may water the earth. Medicine bowl, cloud bowl, and water vase give us your hearts, ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... the preceding; "a big, dark, stubborn shrew." She was a sister of Chantegreil, and was therefore the aunt of Miette, who lived with her after her father's conviction. La ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... instantly and it was only a moment before Tony's brown eyes opened and she pulled herself up from the couch where they had laid her. But she would not speak or tell them what had happened and it was only when they had gotten her off in a cab with a motherly, big hearted woman who played shrew's and villainess' parts always on the stage but was the one person of the whole cast to whom every one turned in time of trouble that the rest searched the paper for the clew to the thing which had made Tony look like death itself. It was not far to seek. Tony looked ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... from her coarse talk and coarser manners. Her tale is to show what a woman likes best, which, according to her, is to bear rule over her husband and household. The prioress is conventional and weak, aping courtly manners. The wife of the host of the Tabard inn is a vixen and shrew, who calls her husband a milksop, and is so formidable with both her tongue and her hands that he is glad to make his escape from her whenever he can. The pretty wife of the carpenter, gentle and slender, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... be treated monstrously: Neither does any man, no more than he; Only to hinder wives, it serveth nought; - A good wife, that is clean of work and thought, No man would dream of hindering such a way. And just as bootless is it, night or day, Hindering a shrew; for it will never be. I hold it for a very foppery, Labour in vain, this toil to hinder wives, Old writers always say so, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Kate? What! sweeting, all amort?"—Taming of the Shrew, act iv. sc. 3, line 36. "Amort" is said to be a corruption of a la mort. Byron must have had in mind his silent ecstasy of grief when the Countess Guiccioli endeavoured to break the announcement of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the truth was known, I know where the blame would lie—your daughter will not be the shrew and scold to him that my blister was to me—upon my credit ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... with whom they are unacquainted, are in the habit of using Tommy as a name to which any small boy should naturally answer. In some parts of Polynesia the natives speak of a white Mary or a black Mary, i.e. woman, just as the Walloons round Mons speak of Marie bon bec, a shrew, Marie grognon, a Mrs. Gummidge, Marie quatre langues, a chatterbox, and several other Maries still less politely described. We have the modern silly Johnny for the older silly Billy, while Jack Pudding is in German Hans Wurst, John Sausage. Only the very commonest names ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... from him. There was nothing which Mrs. Carbuncle would not endure from Sir Griffin,—just at present; and, on behalf of Mrs. Carbuncle, even Lizzie was long-suffering. It cannot, however, be said that this Petruchio had as yet tamed his own peculiar shrew. Lucinda was as savage as ever, and would snap and snarl, and almost bite. Sir Griffin would snarl too, and say very bearish things. But when it came to the point of actual quarrelling, he would become sullen, and in his sullenness ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... circumstanced, makes us rejoice, at the end, that he has his young wife all to himself. The improvement in the character of Lady Teazle is still more marked and successful. Instead of an ill-bred young shrew, whose readiness to do wrong leaves the mind in but little uncertainty as to her fate, we have a lively and innocent, though imprudent country girl, transplanted into the midst of all that can bewilder and endanger her, but with still enough of the purity of rural life ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... I hear, O my lord?" she cried, in tone and manner more the European shrew than the submissive Eastern slave. "Is Sakr-el-Bahr to go upon this expedition against the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... gain?—Knowledge? Matter for further speculation? I can think sitting still as well as standing up. And what is knowledge? What are our learned men save the descendants of witches and hermits who crouched in caves and in woods brewing herbs, interrogating shrew-mice and writing down the language of the stars? And the less we honour them as our superstitions dwindle and our respect for beauty and health of mind increases.... Yes, one could imagine a very pleasant world. A quiet, ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... such a night Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew Slander her love, and he forgave ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... ever asking or knowing why, and so, unknowing, was ill prepared to grapple with the problem set before him. It is easier to stem a torrent with a shingle than convince a lover that his idol is a shrew. ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... The life and soul of the evening's entertainment was Miss ADA REHAN, a talented lady, who (so I was told) has made her mark in Rosalind, in As You Like It, and Katharina, in the Taming of the Shrew. I can quite believe that Miss REHAN is a great success in parts of the calibre of the Shakspearian heroines I have mentioned; nay, more, I fancy she would do something with Lady Macbeth, and be quite in her element as Emilia, in Othello. But, as she had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... old shrew," said Bennet. "He will waste more time grumbling and prating of Harry the Fift than would serve a man to shoe a horse. And all because he has ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glance and turned away. Students of women, experienced adventurers in matrimony, these plumbers, bird merchants "delicatessens" and the rest looked, perceived and comprehended that here was the very devil of a woman—a virago, a shrew, a termagant, a natural-born trouble-maker; and they shivered and thanked God that she was Tunnygate's and not theirs; their unformulated sentiment best ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... of a new enemy more deadly even than the great carnivorous dinosaurs. Among such theories the most ingenious is that of the late Professor Cope, who suggested that some of the small, inoffensive, and inconspicuous forms of Jurassic mammals, of the size of the shrew and the hedgehog, contracted the habit of seeking out the nests of these dinosaurs, gnawing through the shells of their eggs, and thus destroying the young. The appearance, or evolution, of any egg-destroying animals, whether reptiles or mammals, which could ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... tall, mannish-looking, but not unattractive woman of thirty-seven years, the mother of four children. She was characterized by her friends as refined, magnetic, and witty; by her enemies of the Republican party as a hard, unlovely shrew. The hostile press made the most of popular prejudice against a woman stump speaker and attempted by ridicule and invective to drive her from the stage. But Mrs. Lease continued to talk. She it was who told the Kansas farmers that ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... Communipaw. What was the surprise and disquiet of the inhabitants, to see Yan Yost Vanderscamp seated at the helm, and his man Pluto tugging at the oars! Vanderscamp, however, was apparently an altered man. He brought home with him a wife, who seemed to be a shrew, and to have the upper-hand of him. He no longer was the swaggering, bully ruffian, but affected the regular merchant, and talked of retiring from business, and settling down quietly, to pass the rest of his days in ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... acres and a cabin will not harm me. Valencia, if he marries the daughter of Carlos (as the senora says will come to pass), will be glad to have a cabin to live in apart from the mother of his wife, who is a shrew and will be disquieting in any man's household. Therefore, Senor Hunter, you may order the peons to assist the big hombre and his beautiful senora, that they may soon have a hut to shelter them from the rains. It is not good to see so gentle a woman endure hardship within my boundary. Many tules, ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... varied history and has answered to many aliases. When Shakespeare called a man "humorous" he meant that he was changeable and capricious, not that he was given to a facetious turn of thought or to a "sportive" exercise of the imagination. When he talks in "The Taming of the Shrew" of "her mad and head-strong humor" he doesn't mean to imply that Kate is a practical joker. It is interesting to note in passing that the old meaning of the word still lingers in the verb "to humor." A woman still ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... of all kinds of evidence. For example, we speak of a person turning up his nose at a good offer. The phrase is absurd, for the power of turning up his nose is one which no human being ever possessed. A shrew can do it, but not a man. Yet the meaning of the saying needs no interpretation. Akin to it is the classical phrase, adunco suspendere naso. What Horace means scarcely requires explanation, but no commentator has successfully explained it. These expressions well illustrate the mystery ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... that the companionship would continue as harmoniously as it had begun. In the store he found Tom Spade and his wife—an angular, strong-featured woman, in purple calico, who carried off the reputation of a shrew with noisy honours. When he asked for Will, the storekeeper turned from the cash-drawer which he was emptying and nodded toward the half-open door of the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... are. I'd like to see you do it. But the part of Katherine would be the thing for you—fascinating shrew that you could be." ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... this retired corner. All at once they were refreshed by a delightful coolness as they entered the avenue of tall green oaks. On either side the springs, the mothers of these giant shade trees, flowed on in their eternal course. And when they reached the house of the shrew they came, as chance would have it, upon the two lovers, Sophie and her miller, kissing each other beside the well; for the girl's aunt had just gone down to the lavatory behind the willows of the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... this time, you clever shrew! I wormed nothing from you,' said he. 'I knew you kept particular letters in that receptacle of things of price: Aminta can't conceal. The man has worried you. Why not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... one day by his wife, He took to the street, and fled for his life: Tom's three dearest friends came by in the squabble, And saved him at once from the shrew and the rabble; Then ventured to give him some sober advice— But Tom is a person of honour so nice, Too wise to take counsel, too proud to take warning, That he sent to all three a challenge next morning. Three duels he fought, thrice ventur'd his life; Went home, and was ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... opposite dots across the snow were made by the whitefooted mouse, and the little continuous line between them was made by his dragging tail. The legend is like this, :-:-:-:-:-. Farther on are similar tracks, but alternate instead of opposite, like this,',',','. They were made by the short-tailed shrew. Still farther along a queer little ridge is seen in the snow across the wood road. It is the tunnel of the meadow mouse. Part of its fragile roof has fallen in and you may stoop and look into ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... life? That is what marriage gives—the right to destroy years and years of life. And the right, once given, it attracts —attracts! We have both suffered from it. So many rich years out of my life have been squandered by it. And out of his life, so much force, energy—spent in battling with the shrew, the termagant he has now fled from; strength never to be replenished, never to be ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... the world well lost for them, and lose it accordingly. Who are the men that do things? The husbands of the shrew and of the drunkard, the men with the thorn in the flesh. [Walking distractedly away towards the pantry]. I must think these things out. [Turning suddenly]. But I go on with the dynamite none the less. I will discover a ray mightier than any X-ray: a mind ray that ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw |
