"Grumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... corps was toiling on, through mud and rain, at the rate of only a mile an hour, when an hour, more or less, was to decide the fate of the expedition itself. The fatigue was so great, that when urged on to the relief of their comrades, the weary Germans would grumble out, "Oh, let us give them time to ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... was neither big nor burly; he spoke English as well as I did; and there was nothing in his dress which would have made him a fit subject for a picture of rustic life. When he spoke, he was able to talk on subjects unconnected with agricultural pursuits; nor did I hear him grumble about the weather and the crops. It was pleasant to see that his wife was proud of him, and that he was, what all fathers ought to be, his children's best and dearest friend. Why do I dwell on these details, relating to a man whom I was not destined to see again? Only because I had reason to feel ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... one. Indeed, if we were to take out of the gospels what Jesus said to small audiences, we should rob them of their choicest portions. So, if, when we get to the chapel we find that there are more pews than people, let us preach to those who are there. Why grumble at the few who have come, perhaps a long way? Let us feed these with the choicest of the wheat. It may be an historic time for anything you know. There may be someone there whom your sermon may lead to Jesus, and who himself may become ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... and waked up to find himself as thoroughly soaked as though he had just come out of the river. There was no help for it, and it was no use to grumble. After walking to and fro for half an hour, he lay down again, and, between sleeping and waking, finished the night; uncomfortably, it is true, and yet without any positive suffering. There were hundreds, if not thousands, who were enduring the ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... curiosities; and as to the tea, the grounds, apparently the peat of the valley, filled up nearly an eighth of the cup, causing Lucilla in lugubrious mirth to talk of 'That lake whose gloomy tea, ne'er saw Hyson nor Bohea,' when Rashe fretfully retorted, 'It is very unkind in you to grumble at everything, when you know I can't ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... colorless as water; they savor not of Milton, Socrates, or Menu; seem not drawn from any private cistern, but rain-drops out of the pure sky. Whim and conceit are tare and tret. It matters little whether a man whine with Coleridge, or boast with Ben Jonson, or sneer with Byron, or grumble with Carlyle, if every thought is one-sided and warped. The oddity relieves our commonplace, and pricks the dull palate; but we soon tire of exaggeration, and detest the trick. It is egotism, self-sickness, jaundice, adulteration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the shore on the side whence the wind ought to come, if it had any spirit in it; tie the coracle to a stone, light your cigar, lie down on your back upon the grass, grumble, and finally fall asleep. In the meanwhile, probably, the breeze has come on, and there has been half-an-hour's lively fishing curl; and you wake just in time to see the last ripple of it sneaking off at the other side of the lake, leaving all ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... snow. There we tarried for a long half-hour (told on my watch by a fusee-light), and still no signs of our companions. Symonds (the cousin), who abode with us still, began to mutter doubts, and the Alabama man to grumble curses (he had ever a fatal facility in blasphemy), and I own to having entertained divers disagreeable misgivings, though I carefully avoided expressing them. At last our guide thought it best that ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... hate: Each blames the place he lives in: but the mind Is most in fault, which ne'er leaves self behind. A town-house drudge, for farms you used to sigh; Now towns and shows and baths are all your cry: But I'm consistent with myself: you know I grumble, when to Rome I'm forced to go. Truth is, our standards differ: what your taste Condemns, forsooth, as so much savage waste, The man who thinks with Horace thinks divine, And hates the things which you believe so fine. I know your secret: 'tis the cook-shop ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... that I wasent mad with Jim Allcorn, as sum peepul supposed; but it do illustrate the onsertainty of human kalkulashuns in this subloonery world. The disappintments of life are amazin', and if a man wants to fret and grumble at his luck he can find a reesunable oppertunity to do so every day that he lives. Them sort of constitutional grumblers ain't much cumpany to me. I'd rather be Jim Perkins with a bullit hole through me and take my chances. Jim, you know, was shot down at Gains' Mill, and the ball went ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... very unlike his hearty, boisterous, independent self. He moped, and he suffered too. Eleanor could not help thinking he would have suffered less, as he certainly would have moped less, at home; and an unintelligible grunt and grumble now and then seemed to confirm her view of the case; but there they were, fixed in London, and Eleanor was called upon to enter into all sorts of London gaieties, of which always Mr. Carlisle made ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... risky game, and I lost. And I shall now take the consequences. With luck I should have won. I did not have luck, and I am not going to grumble about it. But I am grateful to you for letting me explain. I should not have liked you to go on thinking that I played practical jokes on my friends. That is all I have to say, I think. It was kind of you ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... if you want anything, let us know, and if it can be had you know enough of us to know you shall not want it. We have not much to spare certainly, but necessaries we will try to procure; and so long as we need not groan about the present it is not my way to grumble about the future. We shall ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... hospital; I tend the poor, and some die who afford me a livelihood either by what they leave me, or by what I find among their rags, through the great care I always take to examine them well. I say but few prayers, and only in public, but grumble a good deal in secret. It is better for me to be a hypocrite than an open sinner; for my present good works efface from the memory of those who know me the bad ones of my past life. After all, pretended sanctity ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... while we were talking, having got through my grumble, Kolgrim came along the shore with some Saxon noble whom he had met; and this stranger was asking questions about each ship that he passed. I suppose that Kolgrim had answered many such curious folk already; for when he came near and we could hear what ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... along toward the middle of the afternoon. Far off in the distance somewhere, an action was certainly going on, for the grumble of heavy cannonading came ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... have come down from towns and villages higher up, for they say that the troops are under no control and, when the boats come in after a night's fishing, they come down and help themselves and, if a man ventures to grumble, he gets a musket ball to pay him for his fish. The men here, at first, were against their fishing between this place and the sea; but the authorities stepped in, and said that the more food, the better ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... influence of the night air, he was coughing, and the next night found him breathless. His anger had at first vented itself against his mother, whom he refused to see, and thus the whole labour of nursing him was thrown on Kate. She didn't grumble at this, but it was terrible to have ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... she was monst'ous cross 'n' crabbed, but she warn't never cross ter me. I mind me of er Sat'day, 'n' I'd be spectin' of yer pappy home. I'd git up at th' fust cock-crow, 'n' go wake Melindy, 'n' she'd grumble 'n' laff all in er breath, 'n' say: 'Ann Elisabeth Tyler, ye're th' most onreasonablest creeter that I ever seed! What in natur' do ye want ter git up 'fore day fer? Jest ter make th' time that much longer 'fore Jim Tyler comes? I know ef I was ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... gloating,[14] and hanging down his head in a sullen, pouching manner; a body might read, as we used to say, the picture of ill-luck in his face; and when his father did demand his answer to such questions concerning his villainy, he would grumble and mutter at him, and that should be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... grumble in our Fatherland; every stupid thing, every contrary trifle, vexes us there; like boys, we are always longing to rush forth into the wide world, and, when we finally find ourselves there, we find it too wide, and often yearn in secret for the narrow stupidities and contrarieties of home. Yes, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... on the camp-stool in the centre, where she was to remain clapping her hands, to show she was not producing the manifestations. The gas was put out and darkness prevailed—darkness, but not silence. The disappointed and rejected committee men—and women—first began to grumble in the freedom which the darkness secured. The committee was a packed one. They were Spiritualists. This was vigorously denied by somebody, who said he saw a Press man in the circle, and therefore (such was his logic) he could not be a Spiritualist. All this time the Indescribable Phenomenon was ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... why they should get a meal ready merely because a timepiece says twelve o'clock. Let them wait until a man's hungry," he would grumble. Then, arrived at the cabin, he would be all ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... looked rather blankly at each other, and then the spokesman smiled. "Oh, well," he said, "if you have prohibited both of them, I don't see that we have anything to grumble at." ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... I ain't one o' them blokes as grumble cause a feller's 'ungry. Wot d'yer say to a bit o' cold meat and some ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... perhaps from habit, and then, as might have been expected, the same thing happened that occurs with the competitors for a university position, who openly exalt the qualifications and superiority of their opponents, later giving to understand that just the contrary was meant, and who murmur and grumble when they do not receive ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... of an imaginary dialogue between Cato and Laelius. We found the first portion rather heavy, and retired a few moments for refreshment (pocula quoedam vini).—All want to reach old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it; therefore they are donkeys.—The lecturer will allow us to say that he is the donkey; we know we shall grumble at old age, but we want to live through youth and manhood, in spite of the troubles we shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... morning, as Cardo drove off to Caer Madoc to catch the train at the nearest station, "I mustn't grumble at losing him so soon; he is doing the right thing, poor fellow, and I hope in my heart he may find his wife and bring her home. What a happy party we shall be! The only thorn in my flesh will be Essec Powell; I don't think I can ever get over ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... again, "I dare say you ain't; but if she's willing, you ain't no occasion to grumble, 's I see. She ain't a-going to hear of your starting out hot-foot, 's if she wouldn't keep you. It'd look bad for the ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... the captain, Gallant Kid, commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapped in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why, 'tis hardly three feet square; Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbor there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still; Then ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... looked over the long ridges that lay stretched in rows before him, he was vexed, and began to grumble, and say, "The harvest would be backward, and all things would go wrong." At the mere thought of which he frowned more and more, and uttered words of complaint against the heavens, because there was no rain; against the earth, because it was so dry and unyielding; ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... darkly when informed by his children that they had given shelter to a couple of travelers, one of whom had been wounded in a fight with a brigand, but he said nothing and appeared disposed to accept the situation without even a grumble. He did not, however, enter the chamber in which Giovanni lay and avoided coming in contact with Esperance, who caught but a passing glimpse of him ere he departed again on another expedition, which he did after a stay of only half an hour ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... Barwyke died without making a will, as you know," said Tom. "And all the folk round were sorry; that is to say, sir, as sorry as folk will be for an old man that has seen a long tale of years, and has no right to grumble that death has knocked an hour too soon at his door. The Squire was well liked; he was never in a passion, or said a hard word; and he would not hurt a fly; and that made what happened after his decease ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... parish wi' bastards, to see what ye'll mak o' that,' and away he went. He read Hooke's Pantheon, and made great use of the heathen deities. He railed sadly at the taxes; some one observed that he need not grumble at them as he had none to pay. 'Hae I no'?' he replied, 'I can neither get a pickle snuff to my neb, nor a pickle tea to my mouth, but they maun tax 't.' His sister and he were on very unfriendly terms. She was ill on one ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... mademoiselle; but can you say that these proofs are not in my hands? Should you, however, desire to buy them, you are at liberty to do so. I give you the first option, and yet you grumble." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... destitute, that necessity forces them to steal whatever comes in their way; and the assistants are as much implicated as the prisoners. You'll fare hard; but just do as we do in a calm, wait for the wind to blow, and pray for the best. If you say any thing, or grumble about it, the sheriff will order you locked, up on the third story, and that's worse than death itself. The first thing you do, make preparations for something to eat. We pay for it here, but don't get it; and you'd starve ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... began to grumble at the length of these preparations: 'Do they expect us to dine here?' ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... under the heels of the new race. Mankind will be swamped and drowned in things of its own begetting! And all for nothing! Size! Mere size! Enlargement and da capo. Already we go picking our way among the first beginnings of the coming time. And all we do is to say 'How inconvenient!' To grumble ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... in succession declaring, with many "whews" and "ughs," that it was by all odds the coldest night yet. Undeniably we all felt proud of it, too. A spirited man rather welcomes ten or fifteen degrees extra, if so be they make the temperature superlatively low; while he would very likely grumble at a much less positive chilliness coupled with the disheartening feeling that he was enduring nothing extraordinary. The general exaltation of spirit and suspension of the conventionalities for the time being, which an extraordinarily, ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... "Ef I begin to grumble I am lost," she said stoutly to herself. "Well, now, it seems to me a fine airy room," she said. "It is all as it strikes a body, o' course," she added, very politely; "but the room ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... riders on horseback began to grumble; for by police regulation they were not allowed to pass the hindmost of the cyclists; and they were kept back by my presence from following up their special champions. 'Give it up, Fraeulein, give it up!' they cried. 'You're beaten. Let us pass and get forward.' But at ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... disarmed Mr. Hamilton, and deprived him of his Englishman's right to grumble to his womankind: so he said, quite amiably, that they would wait for Parker's pleasure a little longer, and then relapsed ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... than it is now. Then there were no Acts of Parliament to control its affairs, and it regulated its own conduct much to its own satisfaction, without any outside interference. Of course, sometimes things were managed badly; but the village knew it had only itself to blame, and therefore could not grumble at the Government, or the fickleness of members of Parliament, or the unreasonable conduct of Local Government Boards. Was not the lord of the manor quite capable of trying all criminals? and did not the rector and the vestry ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... patience. First he began to annoy her with words, pretending to be disturbed, and saying that his men were very discontented with her low condition, and especially when they saw that she had children; and of the daughter, that she was born most unfortunately; and he did nothing but grumble. But the lady, hearing these words, without changing countenance or her demeanor in any way, said, "My lord, do with me what you think your honor and your comfort demand, and I shall be satisfied with everything, as I know that I am less than they, and that I was not worthy of this honor ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... it, Penhallow. I have personal memories of that young roast pig, I think your man called it a shoat. Your corps must have caught it hard these last days. I suppose we are in for something unusual. You are the only man I know who doesn't grumble. Francis says it's as natural to the beast called an army as barking is ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... and Jem Richards were now never getting any better. Melanctha now more and more needed to be with Rose Johnson. Rose still liked to have Melanctha come to her house and do things for her, and Rose liked to grumble to her and to scold her and to tell Melanctha what was the way Melanctha always should be doing so she could make things come out better and not always be so much in trouble. Sam Johnson in these days was always very good and gentle to Melanctha. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... terms one by one, shook hands all round, and vowed on the hilt of Amyas's sword to make fools of themselves no more, at least by jealousy: but to stand by each other and by their lady-love, and neither grudge nor grumble, let her dance with, flirt with, or marry with whom she would; and in order that the honor of their peerless dame, and the brotherhood which was named after her, might be spread through all lands, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... one should never practice any technical difficulty too long at a stretch. Young players sometimes forget this. I know that staccato playing was not easy for me at one time. I believe a real staccato is inborn; a knack. I used to grumble about it to Joachim and he told me once that musically staccato did not have much value. His own, by the way, was very labored and heavy. He admitted that he had none. Wieniawski had such a wonderful staccato that one finds much of it in his music. When I first began to ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... overcame her prudence, and being unable to conceal the jewels any longer, she one day said to me, "Bourrienne, there is to be a large party here to-morrow, and I absolutely must wear my pearls. But you know he will grumble if he notices them. I beg, Bourrienne, that you will keep near me. If he asks me where I got my pearls I must tell him, without hesitation, that I have had them a ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... or "redheads," who sing their sweet, merry tunes all summer, and if they do take a cherry or two the farmer should not grumble. They destroy many bugs and caterpillars and eat weed-seeds that might trouble the fruit-grower more than the missing cherries. The yellow warbler, sometimes called the wild canary, flits through bush and tree and trills its gay notes in town and country. ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... with bank bills drawn through their fingers, who are prepared to receive your 50c. It is not unusual to hear a great deal of indignation expressed by travellers on such occasions. No man has a right to grumble at the fare which hospitality sets before him. But when he buys a dinner at a liberal price, in a country where provisions are abundant, he has a right to expect something which will sustain life and health. Those individuals who have the privilege of furnishing meals to railroad travellers ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... bleak early spring with snow on the uplands of Thrace. For those who travel from Paris to Constantinople on that Western moving shuttle, the Orient Express, there would be nothing to trouble the mind unpleasantly—except in that the more comfortable we are, the more we demand and the more we grumble. But if you travel by the ordinary unheated train, where even the first-class carriages are more or less bereft of glass and have the windows loosely boarded up with bits of old packing-cases, you taste something of the persistent northern wind which blows down sleet ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... Lord willed it so, I do not grumble, your Excellency. That's what you should have said, or something in this spirit. Governors, my dear, are very fond of ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat; and the couples are again on the floor. The departing thunders grumble as they go, the rain falls more and more sparingly, and now it is a waltz, and now a quadrille, and now it's a reel again, with Miss Sallie or Louise or Laura or Lucille or Miss Flora "a-comin' ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... Time flies because we fain would fly, It is such ardent souls as you and I, Greedy of living, give his wings to him— And now we grumble that ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... Clematis started to grumble again, but when she looked into the mirror above the wash stand, there was the river, smiling at ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... can grumble at the farmers, acause you deals with them first-hand; but you be too stupid to do aught but hunt by sight. I be an old dog, and I hunts cunning. I sees farther than my nose, I does, I larnt politics to London when I was a prentice; and I ain't forgotten the plans of it. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... she cried, "He's been behind my back long enough. If he never did no worse things behind my back than I do behind his, he wouldn't have cause to grumble. You read me what ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... people at home. As to the law that the colony shall trade only with the mother country, my husband says that this is the rule in the colonies of Spain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands, and that the people here, who can obtain what land they choose and till it without rent, should not grumble at paying this small tax to the mother country. However it be, I fear that troubles will come, and, this place being the head and focus of the party hostile to England, my husband, feeling himself out of accord with all his neighbors, saying a few ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... it is no worse. He that leaps into a volcano, counting it but a puddle, shall not find it a puddle, but a volcano. You have played with firebrands, Mr Louvaine, and must not marvel nor grumble to feel the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the Wapshot girls had not the preference in the marriage, and the remaining baronets of the county were indignant at their comrade's misalliance. Never mind the commoners, whom we will leave to grumble anonymously. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... paying; there were ways and means. He sent up country, and the team came down, six thin, overworked creatures, with new scars upon their slack and baggy hides, and hollow flanks, and ribs that showed painfully. Smoots Beste was about to grumble, but he changed his mind, and took the letter, buttoning it up in the flapped pocket of his tan-cord jacket, and the long whip cracked like a revolver as the lash hissed out over the backs of the wincing oxen, and the white tilt rocked ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... twinkle, there is implied a frequency, or iteration of small acts. And the same frequency of acts, but less subtile by reason of the clearer vowel a, is indicated in jangle, tangle, spangle, mangle, wrangle, brangle, dangle; as also in mumble, grumble, jumble. But at the same time the close u implies something obscure or obtunded; and a congeries of consonants mbl, denotes a confused kind of rolling or tumbling, as in ramble, scamble, scramble, wamble, amble; but in these there is ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... danger of being carried away; and I have more than once seen deputations of this sort sent about their business, followed by a wrathful flow of well-selected oaths that are only used by persons who have a very resourceful vocabulary. It is not an uncommon thing for men to grumble and refuse to go aloft and furl a royal or topgallant sail when it has been carried too long; and I have seen the captain spring up the rigging and appeal to their manliness to follow him. This challenge rarely fails to bring forth volunteers, and those ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... It almost seemed that their meager allowance of a pint and a half each for the twenty-four hours did little more than increase their thirst. They could not safely alter their unpleasant situation, however, and they wisely made the best of it and did not grumble. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... for weeks upon the bare stone floor," mused Raymond, as he sat down again upon his bed. "Sure I need not grumble that I have such a ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the matter a dignity and importance really startling to the waif. If he and what happened to him were worth mentioning to the Lord he had no right to grumble about them; and, during that few moments upon his knees, there was born in the boy's heart a self-respect that was never after ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... grumble all about him, and men's faces showing that they were agreeing with the tremolo appeals ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... the attractive riddle of what they look like. And there are, of course, certain superfine persons who, in the case of a famous artist, think very like the sitter, and are satisfied so long as they get an ornamental picture, or one well up to date. But the truly human grumble, and are more than justified in doing so. Their cravings have been disappointed; they had expected the impossible, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... even the most well-beaten paths new at the thousandth time of traversing them is our ignorance of what may be waiting round the next turn of the road. The veil that hangs before and hides the future is a blessing, though we sometimes grumble at it, and sometimes petulantly try to make pinholes through it, and peep in to see a little of what is behind it. It brings freshness into our lives, and a possibility of anticipation, and even ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... will were forcing him to carry out his design. And his sister seemed almost hard-hearted to him, as if she were thrusting him away to get rid of him. He did not, indeed, dare to say this openly, but he began to grumble and complain a good deal about it, and Barefoot looked upon this as suppressed grief over parting—the feeling that would gladly take advantage of little obstacles and represent them as hindrances to the fulfilment of a purpose one ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... thing—Or, let me rather say it myself: These poets are turning everything upside down; nobody dares to grumble. An author might owe in unsecured debts his twenty thousand—what of it? He is unable to pay, that is all. What if a business man should act in this manner? What if he were to obtain wine or clothes on false ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... principle, and partly from necessity, he ceased to grumble, and from that time forth it was wonderful how much less unpleasant even external things appeared, and how much his health benefited by the tranquillity of spirits thus produced. He was willing to be pleased with all that was done with that intent; and as he grew better, ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... old hombogs! He sall growl and grumble But he vill pay ven it come to ze pinches; I know him, ze cantankerous vieux chappie. Ze German yonder, vy he take ze inches, And get ze Hel-igoland! Now he quite happy. I do ze same. Pom! Pom! Zat blast vos thunder! How he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... wedding present. This separated my wife from her mother, and also from several other dear friends. But the incessant cruelty of her old mistress made the change of owners or treatment so desirable, that she did not grumble much ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... they grumble, Having not got all they want; Neither are they longer humble, Which but ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... out of your compass, To encroach on his art by writing of bombast; And has taken just now a firm resolution To answer your style without circumlocution. Lady Betty[2] presents you her service most humble, And is not afraid your worship will grumble, That she make of your verses a hoop for Miss Tam.[3] Which is all at present; and ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... right," persisted Tommy. "You give me my grub and a shake-down and, say, sixpence a week, and I'll grumble less than ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... absolute dominion in our streets and lanes. We have suffered; we shall suffer; but our suffering is nought and less than nought weighed against the suffering on the Continent. Why, in the midst of a war of unparalleled horror, we grumble if a train is late! We can talk calmly of fighting Germany to a stand-still, even if the job takes two years, and it behooves us to talk so, and to prepare for the task; and for myself I am convinced ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... painter, and a friend of Henry's. When he comes here, as he does very often, he puts us all in a good-humor; even my father-in-law forgets to grumble at the reduced price of stocks and the increased rate of exchange. His picture of Circe charming the pigs is very pretty. Helen and I are both in it; he wanted her ear and hair and my eyes and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... kept faithfully at his task—a pleasant one possibly, but just a thought too much like hard work to be quite entertaining in a novel. Apart from all this and an occasional obscure sentence there is nothing much to grumble at in a story that tells how David, the sailor, unlearned in the ways of ladies, became engaged for insufficient reasons to one Theo, only to fall promptly in love with another, certainly much nicer, called Nancy; and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... very soon they had completed the work necessary for the protection of all. The tools of the enemy "casualties," the spades and picks left behind in deserted villages, were all gladly piled on to the French soldiers' knapsacks, to be carried willingly by the very men who used to grumble at being loaded with even the smallest regulation tool. As soon as night had set in on the occasion of a lull in the fighting, the digging of the trenches was begun. Sometimes, in the darkness, the men of each fighting nation—less than 500 yards away from their enemy—would ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... havin' the willin' hands that can turn to a'most anything. If ye'd seen me diggin' for goold, bad luck to it, ye'd belaive what I tell ye. Ah!" he added with a sigh, "it's a rich man I'd have been this day if that ship had only kep' afloat a few hours longer. Well, well, I needn't grumble, when me own comrades, that thought it so safe in the Blankow Bank, are about as badly off as me. When was it they began to suspec' the bank ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... from the South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... a hundred," answered Noah, snapping his fingers, "and make no bones of it. And harkee, my worthy—lay out every farthing of them in the fare. Let there be good cheer, and no one will grumble at the bill. I am ready to buy the inn, and all ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the same house as before; the only change is a different place for the summer holiday, and, perhaps, the dress-circle instead of the stalls at a theatre. To a man with L200 a week the loss of L20 a week hardly makes any difference at all. He may grumble; he may drop a motor, or a yacht, but in his ordinary daily life he feels no change. To a docker making twenty shillings a week the difference of two shillings is not merely important, it is vital. The addition of it may mean three ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... they must check speed or perhaps stop. This was a species of insult to the "Flying Dutchman," whose way ought to have been kept perfectly clear, for even a check of speed would inevitably cause the loss of several minutes. With an indignant grumble John Marrot cut off steam, but immediately the signals were lowered and he was allowed to go on. Again, in a few minutes, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... a part of the larry! We've been found to be the greatest gentlefolk in the whole county—reaching all back long before Oliver Grumble's time—to the days of the Pagan Turks—with monuments, and vaults, and crests, and 'scutcheons, and the Lord knows what all. In Saint Charles's days we was made Knights o' the Royal Oak, our real name being d'Urberville! ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... he answered, "and I am not going to grumble at the change, seeing that this is holiday time. Berthun came to me last evening, and called me aside, and said that it was the king's wont to dress his folk anew at the time of the Witan, and then wanted ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... in the afterglow. In the colonnade of the Palais Royal the shadows were deepening and growing colder. A steady stream of people poured in and out of the Metro. Green buses stuffed with people kept passing. The roar of the traffic and the clatter of footsteps and the grumble of voices swirled like dance music about Andrews's head. He noticed all at once that the rabbit man stood in front of him, a rabbit dangling forgotten at the end of ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... after day and through the nights, and still there was nothing to be seen but water. The men had several times given vent to their discontent, and now began to grumble again. Columbus soothed them and reminded them of the reward that awaited them when they had attained their goal. "Besides, their complaints were useless, for I have sailed out to reach India, and intend to prolong my voyage until, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... which 'CANNING'S SELF' might have envied! This occasional cleanliness is not the thing that an English or an American husband wants: he wants it always; indoors as well as out; by night as well as by day; on the floor as well as on the table; and, however he may grumble about the 'fuss' and the 'expense' of it, he would grumble more if he had it not. I once saw a picture representing the amusements of Portuguese Lovers; that is to say, three or four young men, dressed in gold or silver laced clothes, each having a young ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... age there were blossoming, side by side, the meekness of Hooker, the subtlety of Bacon, the platonic dream of Spenser, the imperturbable wisdom of Shakespeare. Raleigh had no part in any of these, and to complain of that would be to grumble because a hollyhock is neither a violet nor a rose. He had his enemies during his life and his detractors ever since, and we may go so far as to admit that he deserves them. He was a typical man of that heroic age in ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... often to wonder why the Sydney people hadn't managed to have something like them all these years, instead of the miserable cockatoo things at Homebush that we'd often heard the drovers and squatters grumble about. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... sir knight, it is a marvel to myself. But I am a man who may grutch and grumble, but when I have set my face to do a thing I will not turn my back upon it until it be done. There is one, Francois Villet, at Cahors, who will send me wine-casks for my cloth-bales, so to Cahors I will go, though all the robber-knights of Christendom were ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... eerie, that he should be there at all, a part of Mr. Jermyn's plan, fitting into it exactly, though undreamed of by me. Would indeed that all Mr. Jermyn's plans had carried through so well. But it was not to be. One ought not to grumble. ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... it, underneath birches and hemlocks, I improvised my hearthstone. In sleeping on the ground it is a great advantage to have a back-log; it braces and supports you, and it is a bedfellow that will not grumble when, in the middle of the night, you crowd sharply up against it. It serves to keep in the warmth, also. A heavy stone or other point DE RÉSISTANCE at your feet is also a help. Or, better still, scoop out a little place in the earth, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... almost a walk over. Still, though it was certain that we should have a hard time whenever war came, we have been hoping for years that England would at last interfere to obtain redress for us, and we must not grumble now that what we have been so long expecting has at last come to pass. I believe there will be some stern fighting. The Boers are no cowards; courage is, indeed, as far as I know, the only virtue they possess. In ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... non-existent. Their rifles lay on the saturated mound in front. They were all wet through and through, with a great deal of their equipment below the water at the bottom of the trench. There they were, taking it all as a necessary part of the great game; not a grumble ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... kept very fashionable hours, and always waited dinner for himself till nine o'clock, there was still plenty of time; so, with a loud grumble about the trouble, he seized a large basket in his hand, and set off at a rapid pace towards the fairy Teach-all's garden. It was very seldom that Snap-'em-up ventured to think of foraging in this direction, as he never once succeeded ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... her breakfast, and had withdrawn her thoughts from the engrossing subject of her dream sufficiently to grumble about the aching void where the chops should have been, she sprang up from the table and ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... Lincoln sent for Senator Zack Chandler of Michigan, and proposed a compromise. "General Rosecrans," said he, "has a great many friends; he fought the battle of Stone River and won a brilliant victory, and his advocates begin to grumble about his treatment. Now, I will tell you what I have been thinking about. If you will confirm Schofield in the Senate, I will remove him from the command in Missouri and send him down to Sherman. That will satisfy the radicals. Then I will send Rosecrans ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... not grumble, little wife," he said, cheerily, "but be thankful that things are no worse. And, do you know, I trust it will prove to have been a good providence; inasmuch as it gives us an opportunity to make an effort to rescue these poor ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... Byronic spirit of indifference to events and scorn of trifles,—we say it is "melodramatic," completely forgetting that our attitude towards ourselves and things in general is one of most pitiable bathos. We cannot write Childe Harold, but we can grumble at both bed and board in every hotel under the sun; we can discover teasing midges in the air and questionable insects in the rooms; and we can discuss each bill presented to us with an industrious persistence ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... respects a hard life, and at all times is attended with a fair amount of risk, but you cannot make omelets without breaking eggs, and if any one chooses to spend his life running to earth men who are waging war against Society, well, he must not grumble if he receives ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... those kind of puddings, especially when they are made with strawberry jam. Oh dear, how I envy Alexander Selkirk on his desert island! I am sure he never had any nasty old lessons to learn, and I think he was very stupid to grumble over his solitude when he could do every day simply what he pleased. Well, if I must study, I must; so, here goes," and, drawing the despised grammar towards her once more, Winnie set herself steadily to master part of ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... certain celebrated character, (not "Quintus Curtius," but Geoffrey Crayon, I believe,) that the time we spend in journeying is just so much subtracted from our little span of days, what a fearful loss of life must have resulted from our old modes of locomotion! And yet we inconsiderately grumble at an occasional smash-up! So easily are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... quarantine. The officers of a ship are generally taciturn, surly, and exacting; and the crew are unhappy, discontented, disposed to grumble, and ready to quarrel and fight on the most trivial occasions, and often without any occasion whatever. At the expiration of ten protracted days after we let go our anchor in the outer harbor of Gottenburg, we were again honored with a visit from the health officer. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... A grumble came from the hall without. Evidently his charge, if we may so designate the fellow he had brought there, had his own ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... the order with a grumble, looked from his unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head in definite negation when Max cajoled him with a ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... earnestly that she liked it better every day. "You must come and see me," said the curly-haired little girl, whose name was Arline Thayer. "We recite Livy in the same section, so we have something in common to grumble about. Isn't the lesson for to-morrow ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... piecemeal destruction, went on till sickness and the lateness of the season put the English in a sorry fix. The sack of the city had yielded much less than that of San Domingo; and the men, who were all volunteers, to be paid out of plunder, began to grumble at their ill-success. Many had been wounded, several killed—big, faithful Tom Moone among them. A hundred died. More were ill. Two councils of war were held, one naval, the other military. The military officers agreed ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... "Bah! you always grumble. One would think you were one of your own subjects. Let me hear, Henriquet, how you have governed this kingdom ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble and rumble and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan twenty miles away. And wider still those billows of war Thundered along the horizon's bar, And louder yet into Winchester rolled The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... saying much the same thing regularly every year. Before it is delivered, my speech (like the Queen's) is looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before. When it is delivered, and turns out not to be the novelty anticipated, though they grumble a little, they look forward hopefully to something newer next year. An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the Kitchen—that's the moral of it. After breakfast, Mr. Franklin and I had a private conference on ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... my brother, to one who, like myself, is old and sickly and not far from his eternal habitation. Yet why should I grumble at it who need no such reminder of that which awaits me and all of us?" and he leaned back in his chair and sighed, while ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... prudent never have large hours; nor should you, if you want to be comfortable. And you get your reward, I am told, in living longer; in having, that is, a few more of those years that cluster round the end, during which you are fed and carried and washed by persons who generally grumble. Who wants to be a flame, doomed to be blown out by the same gust of wind that has first fanned it to its very brightest? If you are not a flame you cannot, of course, be blown out. Gusts no longer shake you. Tempests ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... rush. We might get good rain now, and, anyway, it wouldn't cost much to put the potatoes in. If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket; if the crop was a failure, I'd have a better show with Mary next time she was struck by an idea outside housekeeping, and have something to grumble about when I ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... his old post at the russet apple, and went up the meadow to the horse-chestnut trees that he himself had planted, and there, in peace and quietness and soft cool shadow, waded about in the dew, without any one to grumble ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... dear, I can't say as I don't prefer the summer; but there!—the Almighty sends it, and it must be right, and I don't think folks have a right to grumble and go rushing off to them foreign parts, a-leaving their own country and the weather God gives them, because they say they must have sunshine. I allays thinks they've no sunshine in their hearts, or they wouldn't be so up and down ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... daresay you'll miss them when you are away, for all your scolding when you are with them. No, no, I don't mean that you are unkind to them, but you do grumble a lot! All the same I won't be unjust, and I know that you ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... he had hardly left his lodgings before their hush was interrupted by the grumble of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... slunk back to his fellows. There was a grumble that died away in a minute or two, and Terence, turning on the other side, ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... when he became more absorbed in reflectiveness, and seemed to have less taste for conversation. However, he was perfectly cheerful; there were no further symptoms to excite alarm. Nor did the brooding period last very long. The only permanent change was that he ceased to grumble at his hard lot, and appeared to find his ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... o'clock when they returned to the theater. The rehearsal of the day's performance was in full swing. Cabinski was about to grumble at them for coming late, but Majkowska gave him such a crushing look that he merely ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... power gradually diminishes in the same way as it increased—the peals become less loud and less frequent, the lightning feebler and less brilliant, until at length it seems to take another course, and after a few exhausted volleys it dies away with a hoarse grumble in the distance. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Mrs. Day, who did not grumble, but who nevertheless knew herself to be a martyr, would rise from her delicious rest in her chair over the fire, accompanied by Deleah to hold the candle, would descend to the cellar to cut the cheese—both ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... spot six hundred feet higher, where I halted for a while on a rocky island fairly clear of snow. As coolie after coolie arrived, breathing convulsively, he dropped his load and sat quietly by the side of it. There was not a grumble, not a word of reproach for the hard work they were made to endure. Sleet was falling, and the wet and cold increased the discomfort. There was now a very steep pull before us. To the left, we had a glacier beginning in a precipitous fall of ice, about one hundred feet in height. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... steak, and ham, and eggs, and cold chickens, and fish balls, and hot rolls, and corn cakes, and brown bread-all prepared so nice and delicately, that even the most fastidious could have found nothing to grumble at. Indeed it was said of the the landlord of the "Independent Temperance," that he spared neither pains nor expense in the management of his house, which had gained much fame over the country, though it had thrice made him a bankrupt with three score of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... the cook's sleeve was ever above the elbow. Countrymen came down from distant villages into towns and cities, to see perverters whom they had never heard of, and to learn the righteousness of hatred. When heretics waxed fewer the religious began to grumble that God, in losing his enemies, had ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... though he lived at Strassburg up to 1521, did not join the standard of the Reformation. He had learned to grumble, to find fault, to abuse, and to condemn; but his time was gone when the moment for action arrived. And yet he helped toward the success of the Reformation in Germany. He had been one of the first, after the discovery of printing, to use the German language for political purposes. His fly-sheets, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Jew than with a Christian. The former will "jew" me perhaps, but his commercial cleverness will induce him to allow me some gain in order that I may not be quite disheartened: the latter will strip me of my skin and will grumble because ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Clod. Never grumble, Nor fling a discontent upon my pleasure, It must and shall be done: give me some wine, And fill it till it leap upon my lips: [wine Here's to the foolish maidenhead you wot of, The toy ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... them all. Poor Shanks; he was a peculiar mortal. He would laugh at men in pain, and think it sympathy. If we could get no food or drink on the march, after having wearily toiled away for hours, he would not be disposed to grumble—he would laugh. Such tragic incidents as the pony jumping over the precipice ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... as well as before, and better—for I was frank with him and knowledgeable. He couldn't understand missionaries, real or sham: but he understood a square deal, and didn't charge interest on bowels of mercy. His only grumble was, 'I'll put you on your honour. Tell me, please, there's no more of you hereabouts. It's a long passage to and fro: and if you're a man, you'll see that I'm almost as crowded as you are lonesome. Don't start me beating all this brush ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of industrial economy is, that there is hardly any amount of business which may not be done, if people will be content to do it on small profits; and this all active and intelligent persons in business perfectly well know: but even those who comply with the necessities of their time grumble at what they comply with, and wish that there were less capital,(257) or, as they express it, less competition, in order that there might be greater profits. Low profits, however, are a different thing from deficiency of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... prized by the winter sportsman more than any other bird in the bag. In the first place, there is its scarcity. Half a dozen to every hundred pheasants would in most parts of the country be considered a proportion at which none could grumble, and there are many days on which not one is either seen or shot. Again, there is the bird's twisting flight, which, particularly inside the covert, makes it anything but an easy target. Third and last, it is better to eat than any other of our ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... which lay somewhere at its bottom. But the man was stout in heart and full of hope. He set his seamen to work to drag along the coast, and for weeks they went on fishing up sea-weed, shingle, and bits of rock. No occupation could be more trying to seamen, and they began to grumble one to another, and to whisper that the man in command had brought them on a ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... and continued at it for near two years together, felling Timber, and fetching it out of the Woods, laying Foundations, hewing Stone, till they were almost killed with labour. And being wrought quite tyred, they began to accuse and grumble at one another for having been the occasion of all this toil. After they had laboured thus a long while, and were all discouraged, and the People quiet, the King sent word to them to leave off. And now it ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... subject to French dictation. Being himself generally an old Cavalier, or the son of an old Cavalier, he reflected with bitter resentment on the ingratitude with which the Stuarts had requited their best friends. Those who heard him grumble at the neglect with which he was treated, and at the profusion with which wealth was lavished on the bastards of Nell Gwynn and Madam Carwell, would have supposed him ripe for rebellion. But all this ill humour lasted only till the throne was really in danger. It was precisely when ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
