"Irritating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great territorial franchises. He had been forced to modify his policy to gratify the lord of Glamorgan, and win over the house of Mortimer by the erection of a new franchise that was a palatinate in all but name. But such great "regalities" were, after all, exceptional. Much more irritating to an orderly mind were the innumerable petty immunities which made half the hundreds in England the appendages of baronial estates, and such common privileges as "return of writs," which prevented the sheriff's officers from executing his mandates on numerous manors where the lords claimed that ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... became also one of the principal causes of the American Revolution. The passage of this act and the laying of its impositions upon the colonies formed the climax of England's mercantile policy there, where irritating revenue laws had already, as in Massachusetts, for some years ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... it is the conditions of this treaty they are discussing downstairs. I hear the voice of our general director, "Come, my dear fellow, you know I am an old Corsican myself," and then the other's quiet replies, broken, like his tobacco, by the irritating noise of his scissors. The "dear fellow" does not seem to have much confidence, and until the coin is ringing upon the table I fancy there will not be ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... centre in the brain, together with the very similar threads which supply the nerves of smell for mustard and pepper. That is why the smell and taste of these pungent substances are so much alike, as everybody must have noticed, a good sniff at a mustard-pot producing almost the same irritating effects as an incautious mouthful. As a rule we don't accurately distinguish, it is true, between these different regions of taste in the mouth in ordinary life; but that is because we usually roll our food about instinctively, without paying much attention to the particular ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... overcome. General Lyautey began his great task of civilian administration. His aim was to support and strengthen the existing government, to reassure and pacify the distrustful and antagonistic elements, and to assert French authority without irritating or discouraging ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... his fishing, losing no time and speaking to no one, and his two mates, though hearing him in the deep silence, pretended not to do so, for fear of irritating him, knowing him to be so haughty ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... whilst a passage exists along the centre of the canal that shall permit a daily evacuation to occur. The dejections, even, may be loose in character, and still the same sequence of events ensue. From the irritating influence of preternaturally retained feces, colicky pains are, as a rule, induced, and the ultimate effects may be such as to lead to ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... Sheldon was not sentimental, and any exhibition of feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear—what was it that showed in the expression of his ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... into a state of frenzy so violent, that at last it could be induced by touching any part of its body.... The dog had no reason of hatred against any individual; ... both sight and hearing had been destroyed; and many persons the animal had never seen, provoked its rage by irritating the wound." ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... convicted of assault, nine broke the assize of beer, two had failed to repair their houses or buildings. In all thirty-four were in trouble out of a population of some sixty families. The account is eloquent of the irritating restrictions of the manor, and of the inconveniences of ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... Dunmore proclaimed martial law in the colony, and executed his long-threatened plan of giving freedom to all slaves who could bear arms and would flock to his standard. But these measures, though partially annoying, had the effect of irritating and rousing the people rather than breaking their spirit." (Tucker's Life of Jefferson, vol. i. p. 78). Before the middle of the next year Dunmore made his escape from Virginia, after setting fire to ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... we shall not want him now,' he answered, with one of his irritating sniggers, and I fully understood the significance of his words. I try to do the Turtons no injustice, reminding myself that, to begin with, they were far from rich, and that they had lost the forty pounds or more which ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... would not yield the paper, but began again to read it: Vavasor's writing, out of the bank, was one of those irritating hands that wrong not only with the absence of legibility but with the show of its presence, and she had not yet got so clear a notion of his verses as a mere glance of them in print would have given her. Why she did not quite like them ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... a like purpose. Or, there is a simple lotion made by dissolving a very small piece of alum and a piece of lump sugar of the same size in a quart of water. Put the ingredients into water cold and let them simmer. Bathe the eyes frequently with it. Sties in the eyes are irritating and disfiguring. Foment with warm water; at night apply a bread and milk poultice. When a white head forms, prick it with a fine needle. Should the inflammation be obstinate, a little citerine ointment may be applied, care being taken that it does not ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... journey from Yaroslav to Nizhni is beautiful, but I had seen it before. Moreover, it was very hot in the cabin and the wind lashed in our faces on deck. The passengers were an uneducated set, whose presence was irritating. At Nizhni we were met by N., Tolstoy's friend. The heat, the dry wind, the noise of the fair and the conversation of N. suddenly made me feel so suffocated, so ill at ease, and so sick, that I took my portmanteau and ignominiously fled ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... had committed to memory these causes of evil and their remedies, many a badly-built chimney might have been cured, and many smoke-drawn tears, sighs, ill-tempers, and irritating ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his assistants took up specially prepared switches, cut from a mountain ash, and gripping them tightly in their hands, approached the recumbent form of the werwolf. This, however, was more than Ivan could stand—he had objected strongly enough to the fumigation, which, being nauseous and irritating, had made his wolf-wife gasp and choke; but when it came to flogging her—well, it turned him sick and cold. He forgot discretion, prudence, everything, saving the one great fact—monstrous, incredible, abominable—that the being he loved, adored, and worshipped ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... question was worded with the very purpose of offering insult to the Church. Take for example the second question: whether the dominion of the pope and his satellites is for or against Christ. The monarch could not have thrown the question into a more irritating form. Certainly Galle showed forbearance in arguing the point at all. His answer was an appeal to history. From the days of Gregory popes had enjoyed vast riches along with temporal power; this showed that they were justified in possessing wealth.[143] Galle's logic on the subject ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... feeling entered at this moment Ringfield's young and untried heart, his vanity was deeply wounded, and the thought that Miss Clairville could allow Edmund Crabbe to caress her was like irritating poison in his veins. Yet he was in this respect unfair and over-severe; the fact being that Pauline very soon observed, on coming into closer contact with the guide, the traces of liquor, and she then adroitly kept him at a distance, for in that moment of disenchantment ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... of inaction, always irritating to a lad of Will's restless temperament. Meantime, we at home were ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... which impede the flow of blood, compress the organs of the chest or abdomen, or restrict the movements of the body, are very injurious, and should not be worn. Articles of dress which are colored with irritating dye-stuffs, should ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... in the afternoon to which Lincoln replied in the evening. Shortly after this Lincoln wrote Douglas a letter proposing a series of joint discussions, or challenging him to a series of joint debates. Douglas replied in a patronizing and irritating tone, asked for a slight advantage in his own favor, but he accepted the proposal. He did not do it in a very gracious manner, but he did it. They arranged for seven discussions in towns, the locations being scattered fairly over the entire ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... between the lines of the rather odd letter of recommendation the girl handed me. I had dealt with many girls of Katie's type in my teaching days. I knew the childish temper, the irritating curiosity, the petty jealousy, the familiarity which one not understanding would deem impertinence, with which I would have to contend if I engaged her. But the other applicant for my work, the grim vision who had just left, decided me. I would try this eager girl ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... roaming listlessly among the houses of the wealthy, hears, as he lingers on the pavement of a summer night, the melodies which float upon the air from the open balconies above him. A vague sense of unknown sweetness comes upon him, mingled with an irritating feeling of envy that some favoured son of Fortune should be able to stand over the shoulders of that singing syren, while he can only listen with intrusive ears from the street below. And so he ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... quite close to them, with only a bank of flowers between; and they said the palms were pretty and were growing very tall, and the Marquis coughed, and Victorine began scrabbling with her toes on the marble floor in that irritating way she has, and they neither of them spoke. At last the Marquis dashed at it, and said, as she already knew, their parents had arranged they should marry, and he hoped he would make her happy. At that moment the piano struck up very loud in the salon, and prevented Victorine ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... an Abolitionist?" rejoined Mr. Green. "It is a fact that he has actually spoken at their meetings. I was surprised to see him travelling with you in England. It must be peculiarly irritating to the South to see a man of his position siding with those vulgar agitators. Really, unless something effectual can be done to stop that frenzy, I fear Southern gentlemen will be unable to recover ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... spends not much," says the second character. "So little," is the reply, "that I dare wager the French King spends more in Pages and Laquays, than he of Spain among all his Court Attendants." Buckingham's train jeered at the abstemious fare they received.[284] It was in such irritating contrast to the lofty airs of those who provided it. "We are still extream poor," writes the English Ambassador about the Court of Madrid, "yet as proud as Divells, yea even as rich Divells."[285] Not only at Court, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... a vain poet and a discreet lover," continued Chvabrine, irritating me more and more. "Listen to a little friendly advice: if you wish to succeed, I advise you not ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... Margarita?" I demanded, tapping her foot with some irritation, for she really was irritating. In fact she completely upset the theory that tact and adaptability constitute her sex's ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... to pursuing her own interest and inclination in opposition to those of her worthy old friend: but as she was now circumstanced, she considered the immediate prosecution of her journey as her only resource against first irritating Delvile by an abrupt disappointment, and appeasing him next by a concession which would make ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... other volunteers of his corps, lately declare, that, on the occasion of a certain grand review, her Tom looked so entirely different from all the rest. No doubt he did to her, poor old lady,—for he was her own. But the irritating thing was, that the old lady wished it to be admitted that Tom's superiority was an actual fact, equally patent to the eyes of all mankind. Yes, my friend: it is a thing very slowly learnt by most men, that they are very much like other people. You see the principle which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... Government, as the sequel will show, were driven by the unpatriotic attitude of the Liberal Opposition into a precisely opposite course in both these respects. Their demand was vague in substance, and irritating in manner; while their inadequate defensive preparations were more than neutralised by the loudness with which, in deference to the views of the Liberal Opposition, they proclaimed their reluctance to undertake military ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... an absolute monarchy; or, as is today perhaps more frequently the case, in a condition of unmitigated anarchy. A free society cannot consist of units not free. The problems of parental discipline arise and appear as persistently irritating and perplexing stumbling-blocks in many a home simply because that home is organized altogether out of harmony and relation with the normal life in which it is set. Society environing the home gives its members the habits of twentieth-century ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... laugh was particularly irritating and disagreeable at that moment, and her mother, who was a ubiquitous flag of truce on such occasions, hastened ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... alternative that seemed to remain to continental sovereigns in presence of the exactions and the imperious will of Napoleon. The Pope alone, as already for two years past, was still resisting his demands, and was evincing an independence with regard to him which was every day irritating more and more the all-powerful master of Europe. Sadly disabused of the illusions and the hopes which had drawn him to Paris for the coronation of Napoleon, Pius VII. had preserved in his personal communications with the emperor a paternal and tender graciousness. He had much to obtain and much ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... wilfully irritating you are! This Mr. Drake, of course. By the way, I suppose he will get on?' She spoke in a voice which implied regret for the supposition, and almost appealed for a denial ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... have been very irritating to Saint-Gaudens when he fell a victim to that extraordinary official Puritanism which sometimes exercises a petty censorship over works of art in America. The medal that he made for the World's Fair was rejected at Washington because it had ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... in occasionally at night because the enemy had an irritating habit of putting over a few rounds of gas, either shell or T.M., at irregular intervals. He caught out a few of the East Lancs. by this trick, which naturally produced a state of "wind" in the division so that everyone was more than ever "gas alert." After a few nights of ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... the Representatives, have been a fortnight debating between a more or less irritating answer to the President's speech. The latter was lost yesterday, by forty-eight against fifty-one or fifty-two. It is believed, however, that when they come to propose measures leading directly to war, they will lose some of their numbers. Those who have no wish but ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... bodies turned into a safe camping ground for insects, simply because these poor animals have a stain in their pedigree. In summer time, when flies are troublesome, we may often see a long-tailed brood mare at grass protecting both herself and her suckling foal from these irritating pests by the free use of her tail; but docked mares are deprived of this means of driving away insects, and have been known to unwittingly injure their young by kicking and plunging violently in their efforts to rid themselves of attacking flies. The unfortunate foal is unable to take ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... built around it was ornamented with skulls. The inside was very rough. Something like an altar stood in the center of the floor; and a fire of logs was kept burning before it, and never allowed to go out, filling the place with smoke, and irritating the eyes of two old Indians who tended it in half darkness. The Frenchmen were not allowed to look into a secret place where the temple treasure was kept. But, hearing it consisted of pearls and trinkets, Tonty conjectured the Indians had got it from ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... that during supper and afterwards my guest allowed me more than my share of the conversation. He made an admirable listener, quick, courteous, adaptable, yet with something in reserve (you may call it a facile tolerance, if you will) which ended by irritating me. Young men should be eager, fervid, sublimis cupidusque, as I was before my beard grew stiff. But this young man had the air of a spectator at a play, composing himself to be amused. There was too much wisdom in him and too little emotion. We did not, of course, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... glassy water, dwindling smaller and smaller, but sending back the sound of voices and laughter long after it itself had become an indistinguishable speck in the gleaming water, wished himself one of the crew. But as fate had ordained otherwise he retreated to his piano, and succeeded in irritating Captain Oliphant considerably by his brilliant execution, vocal and instrumental, of some of his ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... couldn't spare any of her attention to any other man, not the least crumb of her time, not the least particle of her thought! He needed it all. To see it withdrawn from him for the merest instant was irritating—seemed a disaster. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Staedeler. It is a heavy, oily and colourless liquid, of specific gravity 1.541 at 0 deg. C., and boiling-point 97.7 deg. C. It has a greasy, somewhat bitter taste, and gives off a vapour at ordinary temperature which has a pungent odour and an irritating effect on the eyes. The word chloral is derived from the first syllables of chlorine and alcohol, the names of the substances employed for its preparation. Chloral is soluble in alcohol and ether, in less than its own weight of water, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... by irritating the tips without any object being left in contact with them. Nine radicles, suspended over water, had their tips rubbed, each six times with a needle, with sufficient force to shake the whole bean; the temperature was favourable, viz. about ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... slighter provocation than we endured, jerk off a collar, tear it in two, and throw it to the winds, chased by the most soul-harrowing expletives. But we were sternly rebuked for complaining, and if we ventured to introduce our little fingers between the delicate skin and the irritating linen, our hands were slapped and the ruffle readjusted a degree closer. Our Sunday dresses were relieved with a black sprig and white aprons. We had red cloaks, red hoods, red mittens, and red stockings. For one's self to be ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... so sweet and satisfying lying there talking desultorily with her. It was sweeter than sunshine, and not so evanescent. It was even irritating the way the church-clock kept on chiming: there seemed no space between the hours, just a moment, golden and still, whilst she traced his features with her finger-tips, utterly careless and happy, and he loved her to ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... point was gained if they could settle once for all, by a solemn compact, the matters which had, during several generations, been in controversy between Parliament and the Crown. They therefore most judiciously abstained from mixing up the irritating and perplexing question of what ought to be the law with the plain question of what was the law. As to the claims set forth in the Declaration of Right, there was little room for debate, Whigs and Tories were generally ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... waters which require so large potions to be effective, it is not characterized by the harshness and irritating power of some of the more recently discovered springs. It seems to us a sort of golden ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... time he was speaking he was performing the operation known as "washing the hands with invisible soap," a trick which always has an irritating effect ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... extreme case, but a great many men do interfere in their wives' department to a most irritating extent. To my mind the perfect way is for the whole financial budget of the house to be left to the wife, just as the whole budget of the office or estate is left to the husband. I am now dealing of course with people of limited means. As a rule, a man has quite ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... the other, now assuming as genteel an attitude as the irritating set of his pinched five-dollar suit would permit; "well, then, sir, the peculiar principles, the strictly philosophical principles, I may say," guardedly rising in dignity, as he guardedly rose on his toes, "upon which our office ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... proceedings which cause and inflame this disorder, after many years' incessant struggle, we find ourselves wholly unable to oppose and unwilling to behold. All our endeavors having proved fruitless, we are fearful at this time of irritating by contention those passions which we have found it impracticable to compose by reason. We cannot permit ourselves to countenance, by the appearance of a silent assent, proceedings fatal to the liberty and unity of the empire,—proceedings which exhaust the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with Doctor Lefebre the change in his life became for Max more intimately real than it had been before. The fact that he was travelling second-class, though an insignificant thing in itself, brought it home to him in a curious, irritating way. He felt that he must be a weak, spoiled creature, not worthy to call himself a soldier, because little, unfamiliar shabbinesses and inconveniences disgusted him. He remembered how he had revelled in his one trip abroad with Rose and some friends ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... cared for the earl's honour or her own. So little did he understand men! so tenacious was he of his ideas! She had almost forgotten the case of Dr. Shrapnel, and to see it shooting up again in the new path of her life was really irritating. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... if his mind sometimes flew back to Peter Masters' offer, it was never with any desire to open negotiations with him, nor did he ever remind Aymer of the possibility. They fought together against the difficulties that beset the great venture and their comradeship reduced the irritating trivialities of the first start to ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... diet, recommended in The Healthy Life, for a month I find the nuts and cheese are far too heavy for the apparent weak condition of my stomach, also that the salads and casserole-baked vegetables are too irritating to the membrane of the stomach. I have no desire to return to flesh food and ordinary feeding, which I feel would not be good for me. From eggs I cannot obtain any good results. The continuance of loss of weight is worrying me, ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... approached the hills, they found themselves in a more broken country. They climbed and descended with a rather irritating regularity. The spurs of the Pyrenees keep their form right down to the plains and the road to Torre Garda passes over them. Juanita leant sideways out of the carnage and stared upwards into ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... fatalist, if he had a sensible soul, would commisserate the prejudices of his fellow-man— would lament over his wanderings—would seek to undeceive him—would try by gentleness to lead him into the right path, without ever irritating himself against his weakness, without ever insulting his misery. Indeed, what right have we to hate or despise man for his opinions? His ignorance, his prejudices, his imbecility, his vices, his passions, his weakness, are they not the inevitable consequence of vicious institutions? ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... unripe it possesses the same properties as the latter. The large proportion of tannin which both species contain in their unripe state, makes them very useful in treating diarrhoea and dysentery. They are administered in the form of a decoction, by enema. The sap of the trunk is very irritating. The roots are used by the American Indians to treat epilepsy. Lemon juice is the antidote for ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... the shouts of the home-coming men. Joan could not keep away from the door; and the yawning of Denas, her shifting movements, her uncontrolled sleepiness, irritated Joan. In great anxiety, companionship not perfectly sympathetic is irritating; mere mortals quiver under its infliction. For Denas could not perceive any special reason for unusual fear; she longed to go to bed and sleep, as she had done many a time before under the same circumstances. She laid the Bible on the table before Joan and said: "Won't you read ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... much strained and neither side was in the mood to cover with charity the shortcomings of the other. Perhaps the board at New York was too exacting, perhaps the board at Boston was not sufficiently zealous, under the circumstances. But what were the real irritating causes which kept the two boards at loggerheads over the matter need not here be determined. This fact is clear that the arrangement was rescinded by the New York management, and their agents thrown into Massachusetts. This action ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... favourite walks, and I never meet them now. I think he must keep them chained up to the cucumber-frames, so completely have they disappeared, and he only lets them loose when he knows I am driving, or at meals, or in bed. But is it not irritating to be sitting under your favourite tree, pencil in hand, and eyes turned skywards expectant of the spark from heaven that never falls, and then to have a man appear suddenly round the corner who ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... not conscious of it. He was as secular, as cocksure, as irritating as ever, when Ancrum probed him on the subject of the Hall of Science or the various ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... giving a good many little scratches, which did her feelings some good, but her cause none at all, by the vexation they produced. 'If she could only be made to understand,' said poor Miss Pearson, 'how little she gains by irritating her father, and that he is really a very dreadful person when he is thoroughly offended! Poor child! my ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Pelusium, and gave the command of them to Achillas, the officer who had murdered Pompey. The city rose when they came in, and Caesar found himself blockaded in the palace and the part of the city which joined the outer harbor. The situation was irritating from its absurdity, but more or less it was really dangerous. The Egyptian fleet which had been sent to Greece in aid of Pompey had come back, and was in the inner basin. It outnumbered Caesar's, and the Alexandrians ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Maggie, Grace, and Paul were figures, guarded and defended, outwardly friendly. Grace behaved during those months very well, but Maggie knew that this was a fresh sign of hostility. The "Chut-Chut," "My dear child," and the rest that had been so irritating had been after all signs of intimacy. They were now withdrawn. Maggie made herself during that winter and the spring that followed as busy as possible. She ruthlessly forbade all thoughts of Martin, of the aunts, of ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... site would be a beginning, but by no means the end, of the process of diverting socially-created rent of land into the public exchequer. Taxation will do something towards that end; but taxation would be a long, irritating, and untrustworthy way of trying to secure the whole annual value of the land for the community."[462] "The taxation of land values is not a land reform. To get the full usefulness and the full value of the land for the community there is no way but for the State ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... brief explanation, Pierrette got out, wished us a merry "Bon jour!" and disappeared. Then, with the Count mounted at my side, I backed out into the roadway, and we were soon speeding along that switchback of a road with dozens of dangerous turns and irritating tram-lines that leads past Eze into the tiny Principality of His Royal Highness Prince Rouge et Noir—the paradise of gamblers, thieves, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... Sowing What You Really Reap Autumn Determination Two Lives Backward and Forward When? The Futile Thought The London Season Christmas The New Year February Tub-thumpers I Wonder If . . . Types of Tub-thumpers If Age only Practised what it Preached! Beginnings Unlucky in Little Things Wallpapers Our Irritating Habits Away—Far Away! "Family Skeletons" The Dreariness of One Line of Conduct The Happy Discontent Book-borrowing Nearly Always Means Book-stealing Other People's Books The Road to Calvary Mountain Paths ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... him anew. But having done so he could not shake off the impression which the man's words had made on him. While he lived he was a constant and an irritating check upon James McMurrough. If the young man saw a chance of getting rid of that check, was he one to put it from him? Colonel John's face grew long as he pondered the question; he had seen enough of James to feel considerable doubt about the answer. The fire ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... that he was actually making progress into the fastnesses of her heart, and that he might in time gain his ends by propinquity and his own undeniable force and personality, a sudden, cheeky knocking upon the door proved intensely irritating. It was a very small messenger-boy with a box of jonquils. Blizzard watched very closely the expression of Barbara's face while she opened the box. She held up the flowers for him ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the dividing ridge of the littoral range on the 9th, and descended to Seetakoond bungalow, on the high road from Chittagong to Comilla. The forests at the foot of the range were very extensive, and swarmed with large red ants that proved very irritating: they build immense pendulous nests of dead and living leaves at the ends of the branches of trees, and mat them with a white web. Tigers, leopards, wild dogs, and boars, are numerous; as are snipes, pheasants, peacocks, and jungle-fowl, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... red rushed to the boy's face. It was an irritating fact that in the senior class of that particular Los Angeles high school a Japanese boy stood at the head. This was embarrassing ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and company drill in full swing, also part of the battalion drill, and one or two men know their gun drill very fairly. This is so far satisfactory, and I think, if the whole country was not corrupt, they might go on well and quickly, but really it is most irritating to see the jealousies of the mandarins of one another. The people are first-rate, hard-working, and fairly honest; but it seems as soon as they rise in office they become corrupt. There is lots of vitality in the country, and ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... beautiful domain. Twice during five years in a professional capacity (though several times on pic-nics) had the Rev. Cooper Smith made his way to Tor Bay. The people had received him with a patronising kindness, that was peculiarly irritating to his sensitive and somewhat ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... the curtailment of the promise's sealing was as foreign looking as the room itself. Dapper, dressed in a sort of elaborate carelessness, his figure alone carried with it an air of assurance that Hartmann always found almost as irritating as the man's gracefully exaggerated manner and speech. His blonde hair was brushed back from a high, narrow forehead. A turned-up moustache and a close-trimmed and pointed Van Dyke beard ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... regularly through the mails, was distributed through the post-offices as an item of party service; and matter of a political character, passing through the mails in the usual course and addressed to patrons belonging to the opposite party, was withheld; disgusting and irritating placards were prominently displayed in many post-offices, and the attention of Democratic inquirers for mail matter was tauntingly directed to them by the postmaster; and in various other ways postmasters and similar officials annoyed and vexed those holding opposite political opinions, ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... out. Lastly, the coats of your stomach were irritated by your disorder—so they have raked it like blazes. This is the mill-round of the old medicine; from irritation to inflammation, from inflammation to mortification, and decease of the patient. Now, instead of irritating the irritated spot, suppose we ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... if they cannot strive. After all I am persuaded that they get a fair amount of happiness. Simple pleasures are the greatest, perhaps the only real pleasures. We all like to be free of responsibilities. There is no rent-day coming round with dread certainty and irritating monotony to the nomads. No rate collector irritates them with his imperious "demand note." No school-board officer rouses them to a sense of duty by his everlasting efforts to force their children to school. No butcher, no ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... been particularly irritating, and all my nerves were screaming. He had been maintaining that the human soul was itself a form, an eternal form, and that the light within his brain would go on forever and always. I ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... Duties. An advance guard is a detachment of a marching column thrown out in advance to protect the main column from being surprised and to prevent its march from being delayed or interrupted. (The latter duty is generally forgotten and many irritating, short halts result, which wear out or greatly fatigue the main body, the strength of which the advance guard is supposed ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... out of place there, could be?—the presence of Mr. Henderson, who devoted himself to her, made the lack unnoticed. The talk ran, as usual, on the opera, Wagner, a Christmas party at Lenox, at Tuxedo, somebody's engagement, some lucky hit in the Exchange, the irritating personalities of the newspapers, the last English season, the marriage of the Duchess of Bolinbroke, a confidential disclosure of who would be in the Cabinet and who would have missions, a jocular remark across the table about a "corner" (it is impossible absolutely here, as well as at a literary ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... I saw him I abstained from applauding, knowing, by a lightning-quick intuition, that it would be highly irritating to him. He showed no emotion; if he had done, I should not have thought the occasion was anything special to him. It was his absurd gravity, stony inexpressiveness, which impressed me with the fact that ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... husbands or wives. They are easily spotted if one is only keen in noticing what takes place, because they are constantly showing their childishness, and we can be sure that they will continue both to reveal and to nurse their weakness throughout life in such a way as to be discouraging and irritating in marriage and ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... the midst of which they were written; of the flat, marsh-riddled country, in which few Northerners saw any lasting charm; of the untidy, down-at-the-heels plantations; of the "people," wards of the nation, childish, irritating, endlessly amusing; of the daily toil of Northern men in managing farms and of Northern women in managing households under Southern and war-time conditions; of the universal preoccupation with negro needs; of the friendly interchange of primitive hospitality; ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... all make discoveries to our advantage as well as our discomfiture. You, sir, might find that the talent for argument on which you pride yourself is to me only irritating wrong-headedness, and I might find that the bright wit that I fancy I flash around makes you feel tired. Jones's eyeglass would drop out of his eye because he would know it only made him look foolish, Brown would see the ugliness of his cant, and Robinson would sorry that he had been born a bully ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... many months since we have been favoured with a call from so cultured and learned a gentleman as the Hon. Andoneran P. Balderson, late of Quito, Hancock County, Iowa, who has finally determined to settle in our midst. Cramped by the irritating conventionalities of an effete civilisation, Colonel Balderson comes among us for that larger freedom and wider horizon which his growing powers demand. He comes with the ripened experience of a jurist, a soldier, and ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... structure back to a hoary antiquity. To many it stood as a symbol of everything Robert Rushbrook did or had done—an improvement of all previous performances; it was like his own life—an exciting though irritating state of transition to something better. Yet the visible architectural result, as here shown, was scarcely harmonious; indeed, some of his friends—and Maecenas had many—professed to classify the various improvements by the successive fortunate ventures in their owner's financial ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... calculating brains, high inhuman officers who studied battlefields as greater chessboards. So I—a little black ant in a shadow on the earth under the eternal sky—used to think like this, and to stop thinking these silly irritating thoughts turned to the job in hand, which generally was to take up one end of a stretcher laden with a bloody man, or to give my shoulder to a tall soldier who leaned upon it and stumbled forward to an open door which led to the operating-table and an empty ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... a frozen silence, excepting for his inane laughter. He made a few more irritating remarks which he seemed to think were very funny, and then he disappeared inside his tank and prepared to follow us. We had gone ahead a couple of hundred yards when we heard bombs exploding, and looking back we saw the tank standing still, with fireworks going off ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... came two men aboard with a letter from the agent in San Francisco, which agent was irritating on account of slowness, and had weedy-looking hair. But the ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... amount of money lost may not have been great, but it had the irritating feature of being an unknown quantity and the additional vague risk of making all his winter work fruitless. It is useless to set traps if some one else is to follow around and rob them. So that night he told his wife the whole story. Discuss it as they would, there was no clue of any ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the two incompatible administrations was anxious to strike the first blow. Mr. Lincoln's administration began with the policy outlined in his inaugural address, that of insisting on collection of the duties on imports, and avoiding all other irritating measures. Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, even talked of compensating for the loss of the seceding States by admissions from Canada and elsewhere. The urgent needs of Fort Sumter, however, soon forced an attempt to provision it; and this brought on a ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Try something else!" And then I made my second mistake. I arose and, bowing to the invisible one in the gloom, I said: "That, was not Mozart, but Beethoven." There was an explosion of laughter, formidable, brutal. The feminine voice rose above it all in irritating accents. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... really being quite at sea as to what she was talking about. That uncertainty indeed he could but frankly betray by taking her up, as he cast about him, on the particular ambiguity that his voice perhaps already showed him to find most irritating. "Let it show? 'It,' ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... what is coming. Astounding as it may be, Mr. Wright contends that Defoe himself was the original of the story: that Defoe, provoked by his wife's irritating tongue, made a kind of vow to live a life of silence—and kept it for more than ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... persist in believing they are my clothes. Don't you do the same, if you want to be friends with me." Remembering what the physician had said to me, I made the necessary excuses and succeeded in soothing her. Without reverting to the irritating topic of the name, I merely inquired what her plans were, and assured her that she might command my services if she required them. "Why do you want to know what my plans are?" she asked, suspiciously. I reminded her in reply that I held the position of English ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... this rule and keep it to the end. For nothing wastes your powers so much as apprehension. The hardest work, if done with common sense, is after all a tonic. But fear lest that work will not yield you as much as you wish is a sort of irritating cocaine of character, numbing and deadening all of your powers and at the same time lashing your mind and nerves with the knotted thongs of unhappiness. Besides, fretting is so trivial, so little, so commonplace. Fail if you must, but do not ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... attempted reproduction of what was conceived by another faculty, and foolishly let pass away. If I go on, even hurry the more to get on, with the printing,—it is to throw out and away from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, unlike the woman at her spinning-wheel, 'He thought of his flax ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... of female friends, this tone is even perceptible under their warmest felicitations, and through the smiling mask of compliment shine eyes moist with the most irritating quality of compassion. 'So glad! so delighted! But why, why didn't you consult me?'—this complicated expression might be rendered: 'I could have saved you from this—I was so pleased to ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... changes in the exterior temperature of the heels. The feet of the horse may be alternately heated by the bedding and cooled by draft from the open stable door; or they may first be made hot and sensitive by the irritating action of the urine and filth on the stable floor, and then violently reacted on by the cold breezes of the open air, or they may be moist and reeking when the horse is led out to work, and then chilled for a long period by ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... that instant, as her keen gaze searched his dust-caked face, she met the full, free look of his eyes. Her own did not fall, though she felt a warmth steal to her cheeks. Madeline very seldom blushed. And now, conscious of her sudden color a genuine blush flamed on her face. It was irritating because it was incomprehensible. She received the papers from Stewart and thanked him. He bowed, then led the black down the path ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... and irritating cranks. I have met scores of them. They are intense, but shortsighted. Some are delightfully ingenuous, with the lovable simplicity of the child. Others are of a morbid and carping disposition, with an inordinate ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... In a word, M. le Duc had returned from the gay life of the capital to show himself for a week among the loyal peasants belonging to the old chateau, and their quaint habits and costumes afforded him a mild amusement." Such passages, however, may be matched with irritating dozens in which ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... god of sanity. To prove that the oracle had [83] been right after all, improbable as it seemed, in the signal honour it had put upon him, would be henceforward his proper business. Committing him to a sort of ironical humility towards others, at times seemingly petty and prosaic, certainly very irritating, in regard to himself, in its source and motive, his business in life as he conceived it was nothing less than a divine possession. He becomes therefore literally an enthusiast for knowledge, for the knowledge of man; such knowledge as by a right method ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... utterance. To this Richard had worked himself in fretting over his position; he was the real sufferer, though decency compelled him to pretend it was not so. He had come to think of Emma almost angrily; she was a clog on him, and all the more irritating because he knew that his brute strength, if only he might exert it, could sweep her into nothingness at a blow. The quietness with which Alice accepted his revelation encouraged him in self-defence. He talked on for several minutes, walking about and swaying his arms, as if ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... for calling you by your name, but do you know I feel as if any prefix in your case would be irritating, from the fact that you strike me as a girl who is utterly above and beyond such idle conventionalities. One would almost as soon think of saying Miss to ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... character in contempt, made him but the more unreasonably resent the involuntary homage which its exhibition in Dr. Danvers's person invariably extorted from him. He felt in this good man's presence under a kind of irritating restraint; that he was in the presence of one with whom he had, and could have, no sympathy whatever, and yet one whom he could not help both admiring and respecting; and in these conflicting feelings were involved certain gloomy and humbling inferences about himself, which he hated, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... causes for gaiety, Alice Lee had the pleasing feeling that she was restored to the habitation and the haunts of her childhood, from which she had not departed without much pain, the more felt, perhaps, because suppressed, in order to avoid irritating her father's sense of his misfortune. Finally, she enjoyed for the instant the gleam of self-satisfaction by which we see the young and well-disposed so often animated, when they can be, in common phrase, helpful to those whom they love, and perform at the moment of need some ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... on dry distillation succinic acid, the proportion varying from about 3 to 8%, and being greatest in the pale opaque or "bony'' varieties. The aromatic and irritating fumes emitted by burning amber are mainly due to this acid. True Baltic amber is distinguished by its yield of succinic acid, for many of the other fossil resins which are often termed amber contain either none of it, or only a very small proportion; hence the name "succinite'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to find any one in this crush!" Miss Winmarleigh said. There was a cackly tone in her voice, especially when raised above the din of the music, which was peculiarly irritating to sensitive ears. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... "Oh, irritating sometimes, but a genius; I suppose his treatment of the girls is a sample of his Early Teutonic ideas of civility. He likes better to teach the Columbia boys—says their work in future years'll do him more credit. But we get used to him and don't mind it, we who were here last year. And he's ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark |
