"Squeamish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Balthazar be squeamish? Gold, the interest of the abbaye, and the foolish eclat of this silly scene, have enabled my father to dispose of his child to yonder mercenary, who has bargained like a Jew in the affair, and who, among other conditions, has required that the true ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... human intelligence, they could and must be solved. In spite of their belief in mysterious powers which control the destinies of men and nations, they did not think it decent to abandon public affairs to Providence; nor did they avert their gaze from them as too mundane for the squeamish intellectual to handle and turn them over to the tender mercies of the ignorant and less scrupulous demagogue or doctrinaire. Their public affairs were no more interesting than ours: they were indeed considerably less interesting—unless we are prepared to argue that the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... squeamish as all that, are you? Just because it was in a dead man's hand—and in ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... under the law were not to be shy or squeamish in case there were any that had the plague or leprosy, scab or blotches; but must look on them, go to them, and offer for them (Lev 13), all which is to signify, that Jesus Christ should not refuse to take notice of the several infirmities of the poorest people, but to teach ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... heard us an' left. He's not far," said Dale, as he stooped to lift the head of the deer. "Warm! Neck broken. See the lion's teeth an' claw marks.... It's a doe. Look here. Don't be squeamish, girls. This is only an hourly incident of everyday life in the forest. See where the lion has rolled the skin down as neat as I could do it, an' he'd just begun to bite in there when ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... deceive me, flatter me, say you are innocent; tell me my senses rave, my eyes were false, deceitful, and my ears were deaf: say any thing that may convince my madness, and bring me back to tame adoring love.' 'What means Octavio,' replied Sylvia, 'sure he is not so nice and squeamish a lover, but a fair young maid might have been welcome to him coming so prepared for love; though it was not she whom he expected, it might have served as well in the dark at least?' 'Well said,' replied Octavio, forcing a smile '——advance, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... suggested that the contrast elsewhere quoted "Merimee etait gentilhomme; Sainte-Beuve ne l'etait pas," was likely to make its unfavourable side specially felt in this connection. He seems to have disgusted even the Princess Mathilde, one of the staunchest of friends and certainly not the most squeamish or prudish of women. Nor, in another matter, can I approve his favourite mixture of rum and curacao as a liqueur. I gave it a patient trial once, thinking it might be critically inspiring. But the rum muddles the curacao, and the curacao does not really improve the rum. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... mat just outside the door, and I nearly fell over him. "God damn you!" said I, and kicked him. He howled with pain, but, although he was the best of house-dogs and would have brought down any thief who came near him, he did not growl at me, and quietly followed me. I am not squeamish, but I was frightened directly the oath had escaped my lips. I felt as if I had created something horrible which I could not annihilate, and that it would wait for me and do me some mischief. The dog kept closely to my heels for about a mile and I could not make him go on in front. Usually ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... what matter if he is? Your business is with the bees, not him. An' you've got no quarrel with him because that Blanchard have. After what Will done against you, you needn't be so squeamish as to ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... judgments, have been pronounced by partial observers and critics. If, in this discussion of the relations of affection between men and women, delicate topics are handled, and some things said from which a squeamish reader may shrink, the vital importance of the matter and the motive of the treatment furnish the only needful apology. Prudery is the parsimony of a shrivelled heart, and is scarcely worthy of respect. The subject of the relations of sentiment and passion between ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... dismay. But Mrs. Thaddeus was thoroughly of her husband's mind. What he had been, as she knew from his letters, and what she found him now, passed through her mind in a flash. She was modest enough, but not squeamish; and the honest face of "Cobbler" Horn was one which no woman, under the circumstances, need have hesitated to kiss. So, in a moment, to the amusement of the crowd, to the huge delight of the grateful Thaddeus, and to the confusion of "the Golden Shoemaker" himself, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... anyhow. Maybe I've suddenly grown squeamish, but I mean to save that wounded German from freezing ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... continent of physiognomy was diversified by a gigantic hairy wart, which sprouted defiantly from the temple nearest the game eye, as though Lucifer had accidentally poked one of his horns through. Mr. Dicker, who was a sensitive, squeamish man (as drunkards sometimes are, through bad digestion and shaky nerves), could hardly endure the sight of this wart, and always wanted to ask Pullwool why ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... foolish fondness seek to establish for her the same merit in my heart, as if she avowed it? Pr'ythee, dear Belford, once more, leave us to our fate; and do not thou interpose with thy nonsense, to weaken a spirit already too squeamish, and strengthen a conscience that has declared ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... settle. Such gruel sustains life here, I thought; so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the motes by a skilfully directed undercurrent, I drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I could. I am not squeamish in such ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... "These squeamish Freethinkers don't object to ridicule in politics, literature or social life. They rather approve Punch and the other comic journals, even when these satirise living persons who feel the sting. Why, then, do they object to ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... habit of it. One sweater doesn't make a summer! I hope Mrs. Berry won't be so squeamish! If I thought she would, I'd throw hers in the ash barrel before I'd give ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... was not in the least squeamish about telling us that Tippoo Tib had surely buried huge quantities of ivory, and had caused to be slain afterward every one who ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... prude I had no idea that you would take it so seriously but Aunt Emma was so disappointed and spoke of the rejected suitor in such glowing terms, and said that you had sacrificed a splendid opportunity because of some squeamish notions on the subject of temperance, and so of course, my dear cousin, it was just like me to let my curiosity overstep the bounds of prudence, and inquire why ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... mouth, and the rapidly rising wind cut the tops off the short seas and sent them flying over the bridge in constant showers of spray. Moreover, the perpetual pitching and rolling soon gave our friend a squeamish and altogether nasty sensation in the region of his waistcoat, and in ten minutes, by which time the water had found its way through his oilskins and was trickling merrily down the back of his neck, ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... ideas as to the expediency of severe measures in the handling of convicts. Were the thing to be done again to-day, it would probably not occur out in the open air and sunshine, with persons looking on, but under circumstances of decent seclusion. The outside public is becoming a little squeamish about prison killing. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... likely to do with the old monastic plate and the jewels and so on when they'd got them. They probably knew that the ancient chalices, reliquaries, and that sort of thing would fetch big prices, sold privately to collectors—especially to American collectors, who, as everybody knows, are not at all squeamish or particular about the antecedents of property so long as they secure it. I should say that Baxter, acting for his partner in crime, stored these things, and has waited for a favourable opportunity to resume possession of them. I incline to the opinion that he stored them at Hartlepool, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... this possible if I had not ere now had reason to set Mr. Romanes down as one who was not likely to be squeamish about trifles. Nevertheless, on this present occasion I certainly did think that he had only made a slip such as we all make sometimes, and such as he would gladly take the earliest opportunity to correct. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... Good Madam, as little of your Matrimony as of your Caudle; my Stomach is plaguy squeamish, and a hair of the old Dog's worth both of 'em. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... charity. He drives clean, wholesome smoke out of the hotel, and stinks the place up with as nasty a chemical mixture as disgusting science ever invented. He reminds me of a Toronto professor of anatomy who wouldn't allow the poor squeamish medicals to smoke in the dissecting room, because, he said, one bad smell was better than two. If I had my way with Bulky I'd smoke him blue in the face, if for nothing but to drown his abominable assafoetida, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... published until 1830, when all the people concerned had long been reduced to dust. There are five or six pages, Diderot said to Mdlle. Voland, which would make your sister's hair stand on end. A man may be much less squeamish than Mdlle. Voland's sister, and still pronounce the imaginative invention of D'Alembert's Dream, and the sequel, to be as odious as anything since the freaks of filthy Diogenes in his tub. Two remarks may be made on this strange production. First, Diderot never intended the dialogues for the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... is an unwritten code in force in this respect, every paragraph of which is made and provided to cover the individual needs of such impecunious officers. The matter is well understood throughout the land, and is looked upon as an established institution, something in which squeamish scruples are not allowed to interfere with concrete requirements. No German maiden consciously feels the shame of being thus made purely an object of barter and sale. She is to the manner bred. But of course ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... mediaeval literature will, however, be inclined to accuse its authors of prudishness. Nevertheless, modern prudishness, as it prevails especially in England and the United States—our squeamish and shamefaced reluctance to recognize and deal frankly with the facts and problems of sex—is clearly an outgrowth of the mediaeval attitude which looked on sexual impulse as of evil origin and a sign of man's degradation. Modern ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port wine—not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure; he fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners and slept the sleep of the irresponsible; for had he not kept up his charter by going to church on the Sunday afternoon? Fine old Leisure! ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... therefore useless to think of growing delicate or squeamish plants. Most amateur gardeners maintain a lifelong struggle against the devices of Nature; but when the forces of man and the forces of Nature come into conflict Nature wins every time. Nature has decreed that certain plants shall be hardy, and therefore suitable to suburban ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... profit of others brought nothing but poverty himself; perhaps at the most, some small savings that were constantly endangered. To get wealth he must not only exploit his fellow men, he found, but he must not be squeamish in his methods. This lesson was powerfully and energetically taught on every hand ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... historic. She had been a member of Daly's famous New York company, and afterward a "star" under his direction. She was a woman who could not be taught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was not squeamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty—I think she was lame—I seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand was disproportionately young and ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... squeamish you may put 'teapot, tray,' in case the other piece of feminine furniture ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... and his wife; of whom the one was partially deaf and the other totally. Also the regulars had marched out but three days before, and the apartments—the dormitories especially—were not in a condition to propitiate the squeamish. Also No. 17 Company of the Royal Artillery had included a notable proportion of absent-minded gunners who, in the words of a latter-day bard, had left a lot of little things behind them. Lieutenant Clogg, on being introduced to his quarters, ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "clothed and in her right mind"—such as it was—while the Laird roosted on her couch in that attic bedroom and was— to us a Tennysonianism—mouthed and mumbled. Even New York's "four hundred" might have felt a little squeamish at seeing this pair of platonic turtle doves hid away in an obscure corner of naughty Paris in puris naturalibus even if "there is ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... if we will take things as we find them, and neither be more curious nor squeamish than wise. I will state the process of a suit to you; and you will then perceive how plain and straight-forward it is. We will suppose A the plaintiff: B the defendant. A brings his action by bill. Action ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of what was sensible and sound in fighting-risks I do not know. General Trenchard, their supreme chief, believed in an aggressive policy at all costs, and was a Napoleon in this war of the skies, intolerant of timidity, not squeamish of heavy losses if the balance were tipped against the enemy. Some young flying-men complained to me bitterly that they were expected to fly or die over the German lines, whatever the weather or whatever the risks. Many of them, after repeated escapes from ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Nottingham, who, in the Painted Chamber, had taken the lead against the Commons, declared that, though his own conscience would not suffer him to give way, he was glad that the consciences of other men were less squeamish. Several Lords who had not yet voted in the Convention had been induced to attend; Lord Lexington, who had just hurried over from the Continent; the Earl of Lincoln, who was half mad; the Earl of Carlisle, who limped in on crutches; and the Bishop of Durham, who had been ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... brushes, there hangs a rusty sign proclaiming that he is famous for his cleaning all round the world. He is so modest in his looks that I have wondered whether he really can read the sign. Or perhaps like a true merchant, he is not squeamish at the praise. As I have not previously been aware that any of his profession ever came to general fame except the Mad Hatter of Wonderland, I have squinted sharply at him to see if by chance it might be he, but there are no marks even ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... except to naturally increase the worth of my services. I'm not squeamish about stiffs, but I like to know what I am doing. What are you holding on to this ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... have any relations with him," answered my friend; "but we must not be squeamish respecting our instruments in dealing with Dr. Fu-Manchu. Slattin has a rotten reputation—even for a private inquiry agent. He is little better ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... added to his own scanty dominions the whole of the lands between the Loire and the Pyrenees. Louis, believing that she was unfaithful to him, had divorced her on the pretext that she was too near of kin. Henry was not squeamish about the character of so great an heiress, and in 1152 married the Duchess of Aquitaine for the sake of her lands. Thus strengthened, he again returned to England. He was now a young man of nineteen; his vigour was as great as that of Stephen, and his ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... melodious bass. He was the monarch of the Prado in winter: in summer of the Chaumiere and Mont Parnasse. Not a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment showed a more amiable laisser-aller in the dance—that peculiar dance at which gendarmes think proper to blush, and which squeamish society has banished from her salons. In a word, Harmodius was the prince of mauvais sujets, a youth with all the accomplishments of Goettingen and Jena, and all the eminent ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Negro servants are not up to what they used to be. They are getting squeamish, and you have to be so careful how you speak to them or they will leave you. We are kept always on the ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... want you to do anything," rejoins the vaqueano. "If you're so squeamish about giving offence to him you call your father's friend, you needn't take any part in the matter, or at all compromise yourself. Only stand aside, and allow the law I've just spoken of to ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... said Bell, lifting his hand. "I feel squeamish now. I say! Haven't you changed the lamps, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... of this! While she was, and constantly professed to be, an unmarried mother; she was fit society for the squeamish and the formal. The moment she acknowledged herself a wife, and that by a marriage perhaps unexceptionable, the case was altered. Mary and myself, ignorant as we were of these elevated refinements, supposed that our marriage would place her upon a surer ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... suppose," said Spence, vastly amused. "The new dictionaries are toned down a good deal; they weren't so squeamish in the old days." ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... Why not? Why should he live to tinkle on his mandolin and clash his airy cymbals with no appreciative ear to listen? Once I had a different and strange kind of meat; but the starved stomach is not squeamish. I found a serpent coiled up in my way in a small glade, and arming myself with a long stick, I roused him from his siesta and slew him without mercy. Rima was not there to pluck the rage from my heart and save ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... history is that line of Tacitus in his 'Germany,' which reads, 'In all grave matters they consult their women.' Years hence, when robust Saxon sense has flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot fastidious scholarship and squeamish fashion, some second Tacitus from the valley of the Mississippi will answer to him of the Seven Hills: 'In all grave questions, we consult ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... looked round the room with a squeamish air once more and threw off his coat, displaying to all eyes the grand decoration at his neck. The captain caught the fur coat in the air, and the doctor took ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... myself. The fact that in the outcome of all these stirring events I have ended as a mere bookkeeper is perhaps a good reason why one paragraph will be enough. In my youth I had dreams a-plenty; but the event and the peculiar twist of my own temperament prevented their fulfilment. Perhaps in a more squeamish age—and yet that is not fair, either, to the men whose destinies I am trying to record. Suffice it then that of these men I have been the friend and companion, of these occasions I have been a part, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Philip Beaufroy Barry in his essay on Anna Zwanziger—tells us that some of the methods of torture employed by criminal women are so horrible that they cannot be described without outraging the laws of decency. Less squeamish than Lombroso or Mr Barry, I gather aloud that the tortures have to do with the organs of generation. But male savages in African and American Indian tribes have a punishment for adulterous women which will match anything in that line women have ever achieved, and men in England ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... three full Moons beguil'd, But that his forward Spouse has prov'd with Child, And now begins the drugery of Life, Lo! the vast Comforts of a Breeding Wife, Now she's grown Squeamish, such ado is kept, She e'en as peevish as an Ape new whipt, She pukes and whines, do's nothing but complain, And vows she'll never know the like again; But 'tis as Children promise to be good, Only remember'd while ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... only good one in his life, Pepys continued zealous and, for the period, pure in his employment. He would not be "bribed to be unjust," he says, though he was "not so squeamish as to refuse a present after," suppose the king to have received no wrong. His new arrangement for the victualling of Tangier, he tells us with honest complacency, will save the king a thousand and gain Pepys three hundred pounds a year,—a statement which exactly ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... was not squeamish, nor did he entertain slavish thoughts of how people would feel over a disregarded custom. He liked simplicity, and moreover he felt the need of exercise now that his work kept him inactive most of the time. He was at an age when men take ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... drinking three or four cups of this concentrate a day. If you use echinacea, then chaparral probably isn't necessary and visa versa. Red clover is another blood cleanser, perhaps a little less effective but it has a pleasant, sweet taste and may be better accepted by the squeamish. ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... fellow, with affections as tender and simple as ever dwelt in the bosom of any man; and if, in the heyday of his spirits and the prodigal outpouring of his jovial good humor, he could give a hand to many "a lad and lass" whom the squeamish world would turn its back on (indeed, there was a virtue in his benevolence, but we dare not express our sympathies now for poor Doll Tearsheet and honest Mistress Quickly)—if he led a sad riotous ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Bill, you and Gus take him up on deck and throw him over. That sure will finish him. One of you take his feet and t'other his head, and Ann will give you a hist up the stairs. I'm too joggled to help any, but I will give him my blessing as he goes over, that is, if you don't feel too squeamish ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... looking for something she couldn't find, and she says, as simple as though she was asking about the price of a bed-tick, 'It won't cost more than fifty dollars to bury me, I s'pose?' Well, that made me squeamish, for the poor dear's plight came home to me so clear, and she young enough yet to get plenty out of life, if she had the chance. So I asked her again about her people—whether I couldn't send for someone belonging to her. 'There's none that belongs to me,' ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... morning, for we had not gone far when we found the partly eaten carcass of a fine fat deer. The creature had not been dead very long, for the blood about it was scarcely dry, and the meat was quite fresh. We were hungry and not too squeamish, so we got to work upon that deer and cut some fine steaks off a part of him that had not been touched by the thing that had killed him, and, carrying the meat back to our shelter, we made up the fire and cooked ourselves a fine breakfast, finishing off with fruit as a substitute ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... an argument of a corrupted taste, or an argument of sound and valuable improvement? Much may be said on both sides. Of the mind justly polished, without verging to the squeamish and effeminate, nature exhibits the most delightful sources of enjoyment. He that turns aside from the simplicity of her compositions with disgust, for the sake of the over curious and laboured entertainments of which art is the inventor, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... any thing so mortifying? to be refused by old Mother Damnable!—with such parts and address,—and the little squeamish devils, to dislike me for a name, a sound.—O my cursed name! that it was something I could be revenged on! if it were alive, that I might tread upon it, or crush it, or pummel it, or kick it, or spit it out—for it sticks in my throat and will ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that Scott himself had a dislike of shooting, from a sentiment as to the cruelty of the sport. "I was never quite at ease when I had knocked down my blackcock, and going to pick him up he cast back his dying eye with a look of reproach. I don't affect to be more squeamish than my neighbours, but I am not ashamed to say that no practice ever reconciled me fully to the cruelty of the affair. At all events, now that I can do as I like without fear of ridicule, I take more pleasure in seeing the birds fly past me ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... are fallen on evil times! There was a day when England had a wide room For honest men as well as foolish kings: But now the uneasy stomach of the time Turns squeamish at them both. Therefore let us Seek out that savage clime, where men as yet Are free: there sleeps the vessel on the tide, Her languid canvas drooping for the wind; Give us but that, and what need we to fear 90 This Order of the Council? The free waves Will not say No to please a wayward ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... all the youngsters lie out in the topsail-yards, and hand the canvas in fine style, ay, and black down the rigging at times too. By Jove, he's the fellow to make your kid-glove-wearing gentlemen dip their hands in the tar-bucket, and keep them there, if he sees they are in any way squeamish about it." ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... agreed that we were to start off next morning by the 7.10 train, and half an hour before that time saw me standing before the Columbus statue in the Piazza Acquaverdi. Weems was such a mighty squeamish little creature about the proprieties that I thought an old dunnage-sack would scandalize him, and so had purchased a drab portmanteau for my kit at the cost of half my remaining capital. I intended to have no more breezes with him if it could ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... for the money," said she, giving him a little push towards the door; for her old gentility was contumaciously squeamish at sight of the copper coin, and, besides, it seemed such pitiful meanness to take the child's pocket-money in exchange for a bit of stale gingerbread. "No matter for the cent. You ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be; And yet I think, in equity, Each should confess his sins with me; For laws of right and justice cry, The guiltiest alone should die.' 'Sire,' said the fox, 'your majesty Is humbler than a king should be, And over-squeamish in the case. What! eating stupid sheep a crime? No, never, sire, at any time. It rather was an act of grace, A mark of honour to their race. And as to shepherds, one may swear, The fate your majesty describes, Is recompense less full than fair ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... free and easy and nobody took offense at anything said or done. In fact if one were squeamish about such things Sanguinetti's was no place for him or her. One found one's self talking and laughing with the people about as if they were old friends. It made no difference how you were dressed, nor how dignified you tried to be, it was all one with the crowd around ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... the senate,—what but fortune-hunters are they filled with? A fortune-hunter! Yes. You ARE one; and you would be nothing else, my dear Ned, if you were the greatest courtier, lawyer, legislator, prelate, or merchant, in existence. If you are squeamish and moral, Ned, console yourself with the reflection that at the very worst your fortune-hunting can make but one person miserable or unhappy. How many people do you suppose these other kinds of huntsmen crush in following their sport—hundreds at a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Knowles. "I'm no more squeamish than most, but you know I don't like any cussing ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... in a tone of exasperation. 'You have ever stood in the way of your own fortune. Had you not been so over squeamish you might have changed the children, and made your own son the heir of the Moncton. Had I been at home, this surely would have been done. This was all the good I got by leaving you to the guidance of a handsome, good-natured ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... scandal about poor Meynell is probably providential. It must and will weaken the Modernist party enormously. To thank God for such a thing sounds horrible, but after all, have we any right to be more squeamish than Holy Writ? 'Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered.' The warnings and menaces of what are called the Imprecatory Psalms show us plainly that ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... matter that our public companies, and especially our railway companies, are doing their best to degrade our language. I am not going to be squeamish and object strongly to the use of the word Metropolitan, though I think it indefensible. Still, it is too bad of them to persist in using the word bye-laws for by-laws—so establishing solidly a shocking ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... she took matters in hand, but she only outlived him a few months. If she had lived I believe that she would have retrieved our fortune. I know that she had more executive ability than my father. He was very squeamish about selling his servants, but she would have put every one of them in her pocket before permitting them to eat her out of house and home. But whom are you ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... or a dozen of them. One of their own number who had made a fuss about such a trifle would have been laughed at. But somehow they did not feel inclined to laugh at Desire's terror and repugnance. They felt that she was different from them, and the least squeamish hoyden of the lot experienced a thrill of sympathy, and had a sense of something tragic. And yet no one interfered. Hubbard was but using his rights according to the ancient rules of the game. A girl might defend herself with fists and nails from ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... expressive of indifference on that point. "People who form the drug habit are seldom over-squeamish in other respects," he said. "He has certainly hastened matters, but he is not responsible for the evil itself. That has been germinating during ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the fellow be not tainted with some bad disease." The witnesses further made oath, that the said Timothy lay out a-nights, and went abroad often at unseasonable hours; and it was credibly reported he did business in another family: that he pretended to have a squeamish stomach, and could not eat at table with the rest of the servants, though this was but a pretence to provide some nice bit for himself; that he refused to dine upon salt fish, only to have an opportunity ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... and of all the corpses I ever put away she had the grandest look. It sorter staggered me till I thought at last it was maybe the rest that come to her after the pain of sinnin' had gone out of her body. But you'll not be so squeamish about the way folks look when they air dead after a while. We had one pastor's wife that helped lay out fourteen bodies. But that was the year of the epidemic," she concluded, leaning over to stretch the ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... far sounder man than either. Have I any little literary animosities? Of course not. Men of letters never have. Otherwise, how I could serve out a competitor here, make a face over his works, and show that this would-be port is very meagre ordinaire indeed! Nonsense, man! Why so squeamish? Do they spare YOU! Now you have the whip in your hand, won't you lay on? You used to be a pretty whip enough as a young man, and liked it too. Is there no enemy who would be the better for a little thonging? No. I have militated in ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... perfectly certain that most of them would rather drop than enter such places—for they are not afraid of fatigue—if there were risk of anything really wrong within. The labouring-class woman, as already explained, takes no hurt from a frank style of talk. She is not squeamish, but she has a very strong sense of her own honour; and if you remember how keen is the village appetite for scandal, you will perceive that there can be no fear of scandal attaching to her because of a visit to a public-house, or ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... fire. The Hussars were at less than a hundred yards' range. As the shrapnel burst, the front squadrons seemed to stumble and fall. The ranks were so near that the change from living human beings into mangled pieces of flesh and rags could clearly be seen. More than one veteran gunner felt squeamish at the sight. But the rear squadrons, though their horses' hoofs were squelching in the blood of their comrades of a moment before, never blenched or faltered but swept on at a thundering gallop. Again the guns spoke, and again. That was all. Amid the vines, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Anspach had "seen to it," prodigally. And "Oh, well!" I thought; "if everybody else is so extravagantly pleased, what in heaven's name is the use of my being squeamish? Besides, she is only doing what I am doing, and getting all the pleasure out of life that is possible. She and I are very sensible people. At least, I suppose we are. I wonder, though? Meanwhile, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... over-squeamish, Hereford. Edward would give us the second best jewel in his chaplet for the rich prize we have sent him," ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... constituted in 1707. Five years later you alter the constitution of their Church in a point regarded by them as essential. In consequence of your breach of faith secession after secession takes place, till at length the Church of the State ceases to be the Church of the People. Then you begin to be squeamish. Then those articles of the Treaty of Union which, when they really were obligatory, you outrageously violated, now when they are no longer obligatory, now when it is no longer in your power to observe them according to the spirit, are represented ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... quite certain. These exhibitions, supposing they really take place, have never been known to occur until after midnight—with the lamentable exception of yesterday afternoon, when it was even darker than midnight. If your decent folks are so squeamish, what are they doing in the streets at that unearthly hour? I am asleep them, as they ought to be. This may account for the fact that I have never seen the lady in a state of alcoholic exhilaration. But if I had the good luck to stumble upon her, I would ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... in Orrery's The Black Prince, produced 19 October, 1667; 1677, Thalestris in Pordage's The Siege of Babylon, and Astrea in The Constant Nymph; 1678, Lady Knowell in Sir Patient Fancy and Lady Squeamish in Otway's Friendship in Fashion; 1682, Queen Elizabeth in Banks' The Unhappy Favourite, and Sunamire in Southerne's The Loyal Brother. Mrs. Quin appears to have retired from the stage towards the close of the year 1682. There exists of this actress an extremely ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... were out on the Koodoo Flats with their cattle. Man, it's no good being squeamish. Do you think you can talk over these surly back-veld fools? If we had not done it, the best of their horses would now be over the Berg to give warning. Besides, I tell you, Sikitola's men wanted blooding. I did for the old swine, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... Apparently he was at a loss to fathom the looks they cast at him when he had finished with this statement and had asked this question. He began a protest, but broke off quickly and went away shaking his head as though puzzled that ordinarily sane folks should be so squeamish and so unreasonable. But he kept on using ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... passage which caused some good-natured discussion nine years ago, between the contributor and the editor. Perhaps I was squeamish not to have been, willing to print this matter at that time. Some persons, no doubt, will adopt that opinion, but as both President and author have long ago met on the other side of criticism and magazines, we will leave the subject to their ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... devil has come over you,' cried Toussac, turning suspicious eyes upon my protector. 'I never knew you squeamish before, and certainly you were not backward in the affair of the man from Bow Street. This fellow has our secret, and he must either die, or we shall see him at our trial. What is the sense of arranging a plot, and then at the last moment ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the quick answer. "But, as a matter of fact these East Indians are often carriers of bubonic plague, you know, and it's very contagious. Of course neither Shere Ali nor Singa Phut may have had the germs about them, but I am a bit squeamish when it comes to contagious diseases of that nature, and I wouldn't like to scratch myself ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... table, or abduct young ladies and shut them up in lonely country-houses, or so habitually set about the ruin of their neighbors' wives, as they once did. Generally, people now call a spade an agricultural implement; they have not grown decent without having also grown a little squeamish, but they have grown comparatively decent; there is no doubt about that. They require of a novelist whom they respect unquestionable proof of his seriousness, if he proposes to deal with certain phases of life; they require a sort of scientific decorum. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "They turn to other gods." It points, namely, to the sinful origin of idolatry. Earnest and strict religion is substantial and wholesome food; but idolatry is soft food, which is sought only by the dainty and squeamish. That which is true of idolatry, is true also of the service of sin, and of the world in general, which, in Job xx. 12, appears under the image of meat which is, in the mouth, as sweet as honey from the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... childhood had made him sensitive and irritable, but his natural generosity had kept him from becoming suspicious and mistrustful. This same false position was the cause of an utter inconsistency, which permeated his whole being. He was fastidiously accurate and horribly squeamish, tried to be cynical and coarse in his speech, but was an idealist by nature. He was passionate and pure-minded, bold and timid at the same time, and, like a repentant sinner, ashamed of his sins; he was ashamed alike of ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... he come near making a fortune out of storekeeping. For one thing, he had been too squeamish. From the outset he had declined to soil his hands with surreptitious grog-selling; nor would he be a party to that evasion of the law which consisted in overcharging on other goods, and throwing in drinks free. Again, he ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... and ready to write it. So that I once more affirm, that if it were not done in respect to his Lady, who, no doubt, peruses him extreamly, it must naturally be the effect of Hypcrisie, for, to be squeamish in one place and not in another is Ridiculous, especially when one word is Innocent in its kind, and makes the sense, and the other when us'd makes it ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... the leaner of the two bears of Palestine which tore forty-two children who made faces at Elisha. He thought first of a free-lunch saloon, but he had an objection to using the fork just laid down by another man. He became less squeamish later. He was resolved to feast, and that the banquet should be great. He entered a popular down-town place and squandered twenty-five cents on a single meal. The restaurant was scrupulously clean, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... involved. You are the grain of sand between big wheels. I iterate that the footpad who attacked you last night was merely a prologue. I happen to know your cousin has entrusted the affair to Heinrich Obendorf, his foster-brother, who, as you will remember, is not particularly squeamish." ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... raptures or transports of delight. If she indulged any enthusiasm, in view of the approaching change, it was in the prospect of endless shirt-making, and in calculations about how cheaply (not how happily) she could enable her husband to live. She had no squeamish delicacy about allowing the world to know the scope and meaning of her arrangements, and all her friends participated in her visions of comfort and economy. False modesty was no part of her nature—and her ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... his chums did not remain below through this run. No, indeed! The hardiest stomach would feel squeamish at such times in quarters like those of the crew of the S. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... at large with the spirit lest we weary the vulgar and the frivolous; we must not deal at large with the body, lest we infuriate the Puritanical and the squeamish. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Ghostly, I mean Death, who gobbles up the gosling as well as the goose; and, as I have heard our curate observe, tramples down the lofty turrets of the prince as well as the lowly cottage of the swain. That same lady, who is more powerful than coy, knows not what it is to be dainty and squeamish; but eats of everything, and crams her wallet with people of all nations, degrees, and conditions; she is none of your laborers that take their afternoon's nap, but mows at all hours, cutting down the dry stubble as well as the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... say "Thanks," but "Tres humble servitoor." And when you yawn, you mustn't hold your hand before your mouth, because that isn't done any more among the gentry. And lastly, when you are in company, you mustn't be too squeamish, but leave your propriety a little to one side.—Listen, I forgot something: you must also get a lap-dog and love it like your own daughter, for that's fashionable. Our neighbor Arianke has a pretty dog that she might lend you till we can get one for ourselves. ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... squeamish, kid," a fellow prisoner advised him, as he saw the look on the young soldier's face. "Take what's given you, even if it isn't fit for Christians. You'll get weak soon enough. Keep strong as long ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading, had not only rendered our hero unfit for serious and sober study, it had even disgusted him in some degree with that in ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... decks morning, noon, and evening; the most squeamish recovered confidence in twenty-four hours; and every constitutional lubber concluded he was a ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... for the unfeeling, the falsely refined, The squeamish in taste, and the narrow of mind, And the small critic wielding his delicate pen, That I sing of old Adam, the pride of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... housed. There were points to Agatha, earnestness and high principle; but something morally narrow and over-Anglican slightly offended the practical, this-worldly temper of Lady Casterley. It was a weakness, and she disliked weakness. Barbara would never be squeamish over moral questions or matters such as were not really, essential to aristocracy. She might, indeed, err too much the other way from sheer high spirits. As the impudent child had said: "If people had no pasts, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sufficiently embittered against Lady Eustace, and thought that therefore the peculiarly unpleasant task assigned to Lady Fawn need not be performed. Lady Fawn had not the advantage of living so much in the world as her daughter, and was oppressed by, perhaps, a squeamish delicacy. "I really could not tell him about her sitting and—and kissing the man. Could I, my dear?" "I ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... horrified at all this," she said, with a trace of amusement around her red mouth. "Particularly since you and I have been—" She paused, and looked towards Andrusco with a slight lift of her shoulder. "Well, you know. But you needn't feel too squeamish, Tom. After all, I was born and raised on Earth. I am, you might say, an ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... to the West with the intention of working hard and using his hands as well as his brains; he had not been squeamish; he had, in fact, laboured like a ploughman; and to be obliged to give in had been galling and bitter. There are human beings into whose consciousness of themselves the possibility of being beaten does not enter. This man was ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... air, and reeking with pestilential vapours, baffles words in which to describe it. To be sure, persons in daily life were used to conditions which would now be condemned as hopelessly insanitary, and were not so susceptible and squeamish as we have since become. The ordinary state of some of the poorer students' halls in Oxford appears to us as simply disgusting; yet the thing was accepted then ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... her whole attitude towards the man. The signs were slight, too slight for him to have recognized them as yet; but Sally's curious, pitiless eyes had discerned them. She had discerned and disapproved, and she had resolved that no squeamish delicacy should keep her from preventing Beatrix's playing the ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... other from Sallust, to show that he had good precedent; and he cites Herodotus, Seneca, Suetonius, Plutarch, Erasmus, Thomas More, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, Lactantlas, Eusebius, and the Bible itself, as examples occasionally of the very reverse of a squeamish euphemism. Of even greater interest is a passage in which he foresees the charges of cruelty, ruthlessness, and breach of literary etiquette, likely to be brought against him on account of his treatment of Morus, and expounds ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... all," said the father, comfortably settling himself to another cigar, "that's all a matter of sentiment. It doesn't do to be too squeamish, you know, if you have ambitions. Besides, with your income you would have been able to help out and do a lot of good. You ought ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... laughed, and told me to follow him. I did so, and he slipped down a little hatchway forward, just stopping a minute, with his head and shoulders above the deck, to tell me that I must not be too squeamish or particular, and that I should soon get accustomed to the place to which he was going to take me. He then disappeared, and I went after him. I found myself in a dark hole, lighted by a very dim lantern, with shelves which are called standing bed-places, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... civilization as opposed to Muscovite barbarism; and I am not sure that some of my English friends do not feel reluctant to side with the subjects of the Czar against the countrymen of Harnack and Eucken. One would like to know, however, since when did the Germans take up this attitude? They were not so squeamish during the "war of emancipation," which gave birth to modern Germany. At that time the people of Eastern Prussia were anxiously waiting for the appearance of Cossacks as heralds of the Russian hosts who were to emancipate them from the yoke of Napoleon. ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... like a firebrand, and his eyes sparkled with wrath, as he loudly exclaimed, "What difference does it make to you, you ungrateful cur, whether the account is true or false, so long as you get your money? Bring none of your squeamish objections here. Either take the account as I have made it out, and swear to it, without flinching, or"—and here he swore an oath too revolting to transcribe "not a cent of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... commence the burning and looting, which, as far as we could understand, was the raison d'etre of the column. However that might be, there was a tremendous fuss on their return, and all sorts of accusations made re looting. There is no disguising the fact that we were altogether too squeamish, and that the orders on these and subsequent occasions were capable of more than one interpretation. Here were we in an enemy's country, badly off for a cart, let us say, for the officers' mess; the very ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... West-country word for squeamish, but the East Anglian name Creasey, Cressy, is usually for the local Kersey (Suffolk). The only solution of Pratt is that it is Anglo-Sax. praett, cunning, adopted early as a personal name, while Storr, of Scandinavian origin, means big, strong. It is cognate ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... raised, one is anxious that they should be raised higher. One is surprised at their pert vulgarity and hideous airs, not because they are so low in our general estimation, but because they are so high. Women of the same class in London are humble enough, and therefore rarely offend us who are squeamish. They show by their gestures that they hardly think themselves good enough to sit by us; they apologize for their presence; they conceive it to be their duty to be lowly in their gesture. The question is which is best, the crouching ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Lady Portsea, who has all the world at her balls, and as refined as Mrs. Bull, who breaks the king's English, and has half-a-dozen dukes at her table," Pen answered, rather sulkily. "Why should you and I be more squeamish than the rest of the world? Why are we to visit the sins of her fathers on this harmless, kind creature? She never did any thing but kindness to you or any mortal soul. As far as she knows she does her best. She does not set up to be more than she is. She gives you the best dinners she ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is, that Lady Gorgon's passion had completely got the better of her reason. Her Ladyship was naturally cold, and artificially extremely squeamish; and when this great red-faced enemy of hers looked tenderly at her through his red little eyes, and squeezed her hand and attempted to renew old acquaintance, she felt such an intolerable disgust at his triumph, at his familiarity, and at the remembrance of her own ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me," Miriam began, and stopped at Helen's pleading. "But John and I are facing facts, so you must not be squeamish. When you come to think of it," she went on, "lady tramps generally have gentlemen ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Higg is hot stuff. Suppose we leave it this way: I'll go on to Hebron. You think it over. You can overtake me at Hebron any time before tonight, and if you do, all right; but if second thoughts make you squeamish about crucifixion—they tell me that Ali Higg makes a specialty of that—I'll say you're wise to stay where you are. In any case I start from ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... grandmother, an' been an old family servant in your house like I was at Mrs. Granville's, an' I certainly would of nursed you if I'd had the chanct. It was just a case o' happenso, my not havin' it. The right kind o' folks here in New York is mighty squeamish about strangers. They want recommendations—they want 'em because they want to be sure the ones they engage is O.K. That's all recommendations is for, ain't it? Now I knew the minit I clapped eye to you, that, as I say, you was as grand ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... got a man who wasn't squeamish about the job! And I'd always been preparing to do it myself. It was my job—just ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... to her word, and not squeamish. Riatt found it rather amusing to wander at her side, dressing her in imagination in every garment that the windows so frankly displayed, and answering with real interest her constant inquiry: "Do you think that would become me? Would you ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... herself is as squar' a little woman as ever lived) inter gittin' Danbury outer th' city, an' now thet the fight is won fer 'em, an' now thet th' boys we brought is about ter raise hell (as they certainly is), Otaballo ain't goneter be squeamish 'bout removin' quiet like and safe everyone who bothers him. In three days we might not be able to git out long 'nuff to git tergether an outfit er ask any questions. There's a whole lot 'bout thet map o' yourn thet we wanter understan' afore we starts, ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... racked with mental torture, while Dick waited in the garden for his traitorous friend. The innocent cause of the tragedy was sweetly and calmly replying to the questions of the marriage-ritual, while Jack was looking, as Allen said to himself, "darned squeamish." ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... was purty squeamish by The time home hove in sight and I See two vehickles standin' there Already. So says I, "Prepare!" All to myse'f. And presently David he sobered; and says he, "Hain't that-air Squire Hanch's old Buggy," he says, "and claybank mare?" Says I, "Le's ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... comforted himself with the reflection that the Parisian captain was sure to wage war against the Spaniards as an honorable man, under the influence of Helene's pure and high-minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it. It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; so he shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed Helene, his only daughter, with a soldier's expansiveness; letting fall a tear on the face with the proud, strong look that once he ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Delight from such a Character. Her fault is too hateful to excite Pity in her Punishment; and too small to raise Joy in beholding bar Unfortunate. Besides that such a Joy were not proper for Pastoral. Of the same Nature is a Finical, or Squeamish Character, and many others, at first sight agreeable ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... And then there's Sir EDWARD, who, when he goes bedward, must have his reflections nightmarish! It seems, from such rigs, that our biggest Big Wigs are scarcest to govern a parish. MCDOUGALL again, is agog to restrain all that gives his soul pain—it's a squeamish one!— He thinks he's a stayer as Jabberwock-slayer, mere Angry Boy he, not a Beamish One! These Oracles windy do raise such a shindy, and kick such a doose of a dust up, One would think without them we were wrong stern and stem, and the whole of creation ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... man. Some indeed are caught by the Greenlanders, who have a sufficient excuse for persecuting him with continual attacks, in their total want of vegetables, and every species of food which the earth affords. But the Europeans, who are too nice and squeamish to eat his flesh, send out great numbers of ships, every year, to destroy the poor whale, merely for the sake of the oil which his body contains, and the elastic bones which are known by the name of whalebone, and applied to several purposes. When those who go upon this dangerous expedition ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... in the bushes, and in breaks my little gray mule. Thinks I them 'Rapahoes ain't smart; so tied her to grass. But the Injuns had scared the beaver so, I stays in my camp, eating my lariat. Then I begun to get kind o' wolfish and squeamish; something was gnawing and pulling at my inwards, like a wolf in a trap. Just then an idea struck me, that I had been there before trading liquor ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... argument failed, and brute force when they dared. It was like beating mad hounds from off their worry. What established order at last was that King rolled up his sleeves and began, so that eagerness gave place to wonder. The "Hills" are not squeamish in any one particular; so that the fact that the cave became a shambles upset nobody. The surgeon's thrill that makes even half-amateurs oblivious of all but the work in hand, coupled with the desperate need of winning ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... would wish to answer, that the Almighty frequently accomplishes His purposes by means which appear very singular to the eyes of men, and at the same time to observe that the manner in which that relief is obtained, is calculated to read a lesson to the proud, fanciful, and squeamish, who are ever in a fidget lest they should be thought to mix in low society, or to bestow a moment's attention on publications which are not what is called of a perfectly unobjectionable character. Had not Lavengro formed the acquaintance of the old apple-woman on London Bridge, he would not ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... away as Gordon and the other cop went to work, but most of them weren't squeamish. When it was over, the two picked up their whimpering captive. Gordon pocketed the revolver with his free hand. "Walk, O'Neill!" he ordered. "Your legs are still ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... and squeamish feeling, isn't it?" explained Polly, looking at her companion. Then for the first time since they emerged from the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... leads to that gross degree of familiarity that so frequently renders the marriage state unhappy. Why in the name of decency are sisters, female intimates, or ladies and their waiting women, to be so grossly familiar as to forget the respect which one human creature owes to another? That squeamish delicacy which shrinks from the most disgusting offices when affection or humanity lead us to watch at a sick pillow, is despicable. But, why women in health should be more familiar with each other than men are, when they boast of their superiour delicacy, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... That some there are, squeamish half-thinking cowards, Who will turn pale upon you, call you murderer, And you will walk in solitude among them. A mighty evil for a strong-built mind!— Join twenty tapers of unequal height And light them joined, and you will see the less How 'twill ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... sensitiveness we grow to think of ourselves also, our own preferences, moods and attitudes, as more or less beautiful or ugly; the inner life falling under the same criticism as the outer one. We become aristocratic and epicurean about our desires and habits; we grow squeamish and impatient towards luxury, towards all kinds of monopoly and privilege on account of the mean attitude, the graceless gesture they involve on our ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... imminence of death; offering first ten cans of biscuit, and then twenty, and then property and fine mats in quantities unstinted. But O'olo, although it was like a beautiful dream come true, dallied with the killing, being squeamish in regard to it, and needing a space to confirm his resolution, he saying with derision: "Thou pig-faced person, thou hast not the property thou namest, and even wert thou the Lord of the earth, yet still would I take thy head!" To which the fallen ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... of his 'gentlemen of the guard' and others, who have come as it were on their private concerns, but who are all prepared to unite, as soon as they receive directions from me, to carry out any scheme I may propose. To those who are squeamish I have suggested merely that we seize and bring away the Prince of Orange, carry him on board ship, and thence convey him over to France: but that will never do; before he could be got to the Thames he would be rescued, and our necks would have to answer for our folly. ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... talk of here, a sailing on dry land with a good glass of wine before you; but you'd find it another guess sort of business, knocking about among the icebergs with your beard frozen fast to your ruff, Sir Philip, specially if you were a bit squeamish about ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... in two," replied Joe. "He is too pretty to be risked in such a slaughter pen. I own up to feelin' squeamish on my own account, ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Some time the squeamish sister watched the spot; At length the other, who'd her wishes got, The station took; the lab'rer tried to please The second as the first, but less at ease; So many favours fell not to her share, And only treble ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine |
