"Crossness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "are a guide in youth and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from being a burthen to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things; compose our cares and our passions; and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... and happy time in the school. I was given a little teaching to do, and found it perfectly enchanting. Imagine children with everything greedy and sensual gone, with none of the crossness or spitefulness that comes of fatigue or pressure, but with all the interesting passions of humanity, admiration, keenness, curiosity, and even jealousy, emulation, and anger, all alive and active in them. They were not angelic children at all, neither ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Kitty, with a comical sigh; "the world's awry this morning and I must vent my crossness on somebody, so let it be Peggy. But if I can carry her your note it will atone for my peevish speech a dozen times, for is not Captain Sir John Faulkner coming, and you know as well as all of us that Peggy's airs and graces are most apparent ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... not comfortable in her mind—not that she suspected the least truth in Irene's story, but that she loved her dearly, and was vexed with herself for having been cross to her. She thought her crossness was the cause of the princess's unhappiness, and had no idea that she was really and deeply hurt at not being believed. But, as it became more and more plain during the evening in her every motion ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... shan't want to stay so long at any other place." And it bein' past our lunch time we went and had a good meal, and of course Josiah's crossness subsided with every mouthful he took and his liniment looked like a cosset lamb's in amiability when I proposed we should go to the Fishery Buildin', it wuzn't so very fur from there considerin', though as I have said before every place is a good ways off from anywhere else. You'd have knowed ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... out again to-day." This she said with something almost of crossness in her manner, and Mr. Kennedy went to the afternoon ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... lightened, and his father came and scolded over the back fence, but the prince waved his magic cut toe; then they all banged and went up on a Fourth of July sky rocket, till the father fell off and bumped all his crossness out of him, and like birds of a fevver, they all ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... daring impulse. He remembered Aunt Barbara's salutary remarks about crossness being the equivalent of thinking about oneself. And the effort that it cost him may be taken as the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... hadn't come in from fishin' yet, and when it did come it wuz cross and fraxious, for the other deacon had caught two fish and he hadn't any. He said he felt sick, and believed he wuz threatened with numony, but he wuzn't; it wuz only madness and crossness, that kinder stuffs anybody ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... the bright, vivacious girl, and then bestowing another and tenderer kiss on the motherless baby. "She's for all the world like Peace itself," said Nurse. "There ain't no sort of naughtiness or crossness in her." ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... but crossness when she said this—for which probably a severe rheumatic twinge which just then passed through her shoulder was also partly to blame. But Willie took her up quite seriously, and asked in a tone that showed ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... all looked good to me. The men's hats looked like Josiah's. They looked out of their eyes some as he did out of hisen: they looked good to me. There was one man upbraidin' his wife about some domestic matter, with crossness in his tone, but affectionate care and interest in his mean. Oh, how good, and sort o' natural, he did look to me! it almost seemed as if my Josiah was there by ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... felt a little sad, though I would not have owned it for worlds, for it seemed to me as though my work were so trivial compared to Carrie's—as though I were a poor little Martha, "careful and troubled about many things" about, Deborah's crossness and Jack's reckless ways, occupied with small minor duties—dressing Dot, and tidying Jack's and Uncle Geoffrey's drawers; while Carrie was doing angel's work; reclaiming drunken women, and teaching miserable degraded children, and then coming home and playing sweet sacred fragments of Handel to ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his crossness. "Forgive me, mother. I know you mean to be kind," he said. "You will ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... new automobile waited. He himself leaned against a stone pillar of the piazza, facing his hostess, who sat on the edge of a chair in the tense attitude of protest against delay. She had scarcely recovered from her waking crossness yet, and found herself more irritated than amused at the eccentricities of her guest. She was wondering with unusual asperity why a man with such lack-lustre blue eyes dared to wear a tie of such brilliant ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... the morning's crossness I agreed at once, and retired to the fly-blown smoking-room, where there was ample choice of distraction for a writing man between a moth-eaten volume called King's Concordance and a South-Eastern Railway time-table cover, very solidly fashioned, with lots of crimson and gold, but ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... you could get on the soft side of grandma, but I'm afraid it's impossible. Fancy being able to sing and please people, and travel about in nice cities away from dusty, dreary, slow old Noonoon," said the girl, the crossness melting from her pretty face ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... just preservation of coal, an' that 'twas necessary, an' all that. An' that's another thing, too—this preservation business. I'd like to add a few things to that, an' make 'em preserve in fault-findin', an' crossness, an' backbitin', an' gossip, as well as in coal, an' sugar, an' ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... not that a silly question?" cry I, tartly, venting the crossness born of my desolation on the only person within reach; "if they had, should I be sitting moping here with nobody but Vick to ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarreling with him—for we quarreled sometimes—rather than not have him again; and was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor uncle, must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here the children ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... "Curse her crossness," said George. "If I were ye, dad, I'd kick her out in the lane next time she got on one ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... who, fresh from his afternoon's ramble in the fields, last evening said his prayers dutifully, and lay down to sleep in a most Christian frame, this morning sits up in bed with his hair bristling with crossness, strikes at his nurse, and declares he won't say his prayers,—that he don't want to be good. The simple difference is, that the child, having slept in a close box of a room, his brain all night fed by poison, is in a mild state of moral insanity. Delicate women remark that it takes ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
