"Meddlesome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were sitting in the back parlour—that she had had an interview with Morris Townsend; and on receiving this news the girl started with a sense of pain. She felt angry for the moment; it was almost the first time she had ever felt angry. It seemed to her that her aunt was meddlesome; and from this came a vague apprehension ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... for seven-and-a-half dollars. In his rage at the price he exclaimed: "As a public man I have given twenty of the best years of my life to bringing about a friendly understanding between capital and labor. I have succeeded, and may God have mercy on my meddlesome soul!" ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... and keeping THEM off. One perceived this," she went on—"out of the abundance of one's affection and one's sympathy." It all blessedly came back to her—when it wasn't all, for the fiftieth time, obscured, in face of the present facts, by anxiety and compunction. "One was no doubt a meddlesome fool; one always IS, to think one sees people's lives for them better than they see them for themselves. But one's excuse here," she insisted, "was that these people clearly DIDN'T see them for themselves—didn't see them at all. It struck one for very pity—that they were making a mess of ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... your nice frock. Do let the furniture alone, child. Ring for Bridget, if any thing wants cleaning. You're a real Meddlesome Matty, Bertha." ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... meddlesome dunce!" said Jacob, all in a blaze of anger, "I'll teach you to mind your own business, and let other people's quarrels alone." And, suiting his action to his words, he struck Mike in the face so hard that the blood ran from ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... being meddlesome,' continued Percy, 'I thought I saw a way of being even with that scoundrel. Your papers had got into my pocket, and, as I had nothing else to do, I looked them over after parting with you, and saw a way out of the difficulty. I was coming in the morning to return them and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she was debating whether or not to speak some thought which she feared Del might regard as meddlesome. "When you finally do have to get out," she said presently, "it'll be like giving up your ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... think the vrouw meddlesome, mynheer," said Raff. "She has been sore touched of late about a lad whose folks have gone away—none knows where—and I had a message for them ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... persuading others that He was a taskmaster. They also brought up an evil report of the good land, saying it was not half so good as some pretend it was. They also began to vilify His servants, and to count the very best of them meddlesome, troublesome, busybodies. Further, they could call the bread of God husks; the comforts of His children, fancies; the travel and labour of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... afterward with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The greatest poet has less a marked style and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... from Winchester, to strengthen Fort Cumberland, which was now to become headquarters; thus weakening the most important points and places, to concentrate a force where it was not wanted, and would be out of the way in most cases of alarm. By these meddlesome moves, made by Governor Dinwiddie from a distance, without knowing any thing of the game, all previous arrangements were reversed, every thing was thrown into confusion, and enormous losses and expenses ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... a certain meddlesome spirit, which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... she said; "and not only that, but I must refuse it to my guests, and have nothing of the kind in my house; not even those choice wines your uncle bought, Neither wine for myself nor ale for my servants! It was quite out of the question, you know. Mr. Warden was meddlesome to the very verge of impertinence about it, until I was compelled to give up inviting him to my house. He went so far as to doubt my being a Christian! And it was of no use telling him I followed our Lord's example more strictly by drinking wine than he did by abstaining from it. He ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... "Confound that meddlesome Yankee! what was he prowling around there for?" interrupted Mr. Scott, angrily. "He has no business prying into Harold Scott Mainwaring's affairs, and I'll have him understand it; let him attend ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... to do things for other people. The word is now restricted to its bad sense of meddlesome. Cf. Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... again, there was a violent outburst of wrath against that meddlesome Aunt Teresa, and Mr. Meyer himself waxed so wroth that he felt bound to pour forth his grievances outside as well as inside the house. He still possessed two or three acquaintances whom he had learnt to know in his official days: they were now leading counsel in the supreme court, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Because the land you are standing on is my land. Because my own land was only taken from me by a crime, and a worse crime than poaching. This has been a single estate for hundreds and hundreds of years, and if you or any meddlesome mountebank comes here and talks of cutting it up like a cake, if I ever hear a word more of you and ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... wishes to get some of it, through his mediation, for Katharine, his eldest daughter. He gets it, and gives it to the "poor damsel," who is languishing, as he says, and who dies the next month,—all the sooner, I have little doubt, for this uncertain and violent drug, with which the meddlesome pedant tormented her in that spirit of well-meant but restless quackery, which could touch nothing without making mischief, not even a quotation, and yet proved at length the means of bringing a great blessing to our community, as we shall see by and ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... peacocks, darning-needle, pen, and cooking-spoon, did not get off so easily; for the Professor was down on her with all manner of mirth-provoking accusations, criticisms, and insults even. He alluded to her domestic infelicity, her meddlesome disposition, sharp tongue, bad temper, and jealousy, closing, however, with a tribute to her skill in caring for the wounds and settling the quarrels of belligerent heroes, as well as her love for youths in Olympus and on earth. Gales of laughter greeted ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them. Meddlesome Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou. While you are shaking hands please take notice—cautiously—of their attire. Yes, cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a stare as a lady in a box at ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... The writer observes:—'It must not be inferred when such remarks are absent from the reports that nothing is done. I have great difficulty sometimes in overcoming the feeling that my questions on these points are a meddlesome interference in private matters.' Bearing that remark in mind, I say here are instances which I am sure reflect as much credit on the individuals as on the interest they represent and the county to which they belong. I am sure I shall be excused for trespassing on your ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... retaining its vitality. Perhaps the great secret of that permanence has been that Muggleton did not give his followers too much to believe or too much to do. He disdained details, he was never precise and meddlesome. If the Muggletonians wished to pray, let them; to sing, there was no objection; to meet together in their conventicles, it was a harmless diversion. But they must manage these things themselves, and provide for ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... rest of us, Christopher Quarles had his weaknesses. Whenever he failed to elucidate a mystery he was always able to show that the fault was not his, but somebody else's; either too long a time had elapsed before he was consulted, or some meddlesome fool had touched things and confused the evidence, or even that something supernatural had been at work. Once, at least, according to the professor, I had played the part of meddlesome fool, and one of my weaknesses being a short temper, ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... retorted Grace Ferrall hotly, "before they begin to bully you. There was no earthly reason for you to talk to Stephen. No disinterested impulse moved you. It was a sheer perverse, sentimental restlessness—the delicate, meddlesome deviltry of your race. And if that poison is in you, it's well ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... my men, this," he said, "where a meddlesome tipstaff will not let a true-blooded Englishman pay toll to his Majesty's excise. But old Sour-chops is gone, and we will have 'tother bottle now to drink better manners to him; so bear a hand, Nettle, Thistle, or whatever you ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... the doorway toward the table; she had her hands closed upon what seemed trinkets, some of which glittered and dangled from them. She said, "Will you go to him and tell him that this meddlesome minx, here, had no business to say anything about me to him, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... divine prerogative. Such a supernatural mechanism seems to an independent and uncowed nature a profanation and an imposture. Away, it says, with all intermediaries between the soul and God, with all meddlesome priestcraft and all mechanical salvation. Salvation shall be by faith alone, that is, by an attitude and sentiment private to the spirit, by an inner co-operation of man with the world. The Church shall be invisible, constituted by all those who possess this necessary ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that night we discussed our adventures and made plans to prevent their recurrence. It was evident, for one thing, that we would have to moor our boats off shore in such a way that they would be out of reach of meddlesome persons, and yet could be drawn in toward shore by anyone who knew how. This was the way we did it. A pair of galvanized iron ring bolts were procured on Jack's next trip to Lamington for provisions, also a light rope about forty feet long. The ring bolts were screwed into a pair of stout anchor ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... Carney The Little Gentleman Unknown The Crust of Bread Unknown "How Doth the Little Busy Bee" Isaac Watts The Brown Thrush Lucy Larcom The Sluggard Isaac Watts The Violet Jane Taylor Dirty Jim Jane Taylor The Pin Ann Taylor Jane and Eliza Ann Taylor Meddlesome Matty Ann Taylor Contented John Jane Taylor Friends Abbie Farwell Brown Anger Charles and Mary Lamb "There Was a Little Girl" H. W. Longfellow The Reformation of Godfrey Gore William Brighty Rands The Best Firm Walter G. Doty A Little Page's Song William Alexander ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... blood letting would do nobody any harm, neither would there be much of that, for they scorned to use any weapon sharper than their fists or a good thick rung: the women and children would take stones of course. Nobody would be killed, but every meddlesome authority taught to let Scaurnose and fishers alone. Peter objected that their enemies could easily starve them out. Dubs rejoined that, if they took care to keep the sea door open, their friends at Portlossie would not let them starve. Grosert said he made no doubt the factor would have the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... know Sarah's temper, or you would wonder no more. I tried it when I came to Croydon, and we kept on until about two months ago, when we had to part. I don't want to say a word against my own sister, but she was always meddlesome and hard ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... that coffee-pot. I decided I needed that coffee-pot in my business. I reached over to get the coffee-pot. Then I discovered a woman beside me, my mother. She was the most meddlesome woman I had ever known. I had not tried to do one thing in three years that that woman ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... slight crashing noise, upsetting some lumber that stood against the wall, and raising a cloud of dust, which caused the man of manacles to step back and rub his eyes. With a muttered curse on the meddlesome official, Tchartkoff sprang forward to raise the picture. As he did so, a small board, forming one of the sides of the frame, and which had been cracked by the fall, gave way altogether under the pressure of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... following quotation from Poetry (9 ['16]: 51) may serve as a starting-point in discussing Mr. Kreymborg's qualities: "An insinuating, meddlesome, quizzical, inquiring spirit; sometimes a clown, oftener a wit, now and then a lyric poet ... trips about cheerfully among life's little incongruities; laughs at you and me and progress and prejudice ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... contemplating the hole—the amateur editor invariably pulls it in after him. But until his first notes fall due he is an iridescent glory. He adores himself with a long-tailed hand-me-down Albert Edward and carries the universe in his arms. He pokes his meddlesome proboscis into everything and gives oodles of advice, unasked. He may not have as much principle as a tomcat in rutting time, but he poses before all men as a "guardian of public morals." When he places the awful seal of his disapproval upon a fellow mortal he ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... public way leads close along the front; while, behind the house, and inaccessible to eyes profane, are drawn terraced gardens, beautifully kept, and blooming with a perpetual succession of the choicest flowers. The woods and shrubberies around, attempted some half a century back to be spoilt by the meddlesome bad taste of Capability Brown, have been somewhat too resolutely robbed of the formal avenues, clipped hedges, and other topiarian adjuncts which comport so well with the starch prudery of things Elizabethan; but they are still replete with grotto, fountain, labyrinth, and alcove—a very paradise ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... twenty-four hours. I put on my bonnet, and went in one direction, and sent Rose in another, and Mis' Swan found herself in a pretty mess, with her name on everybody's lips. But, will you believe in the ingratitude of human nature, the woman's own husband called me a meddlesome old busy-body, after I had solemnly warned him of his wife's unfaithfulness, and I was made the laughing stock of the town where I was born, and have lived a long and useful life. Nobody can tell me anything to convince me that my suspicions wasn't ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... physician, careless in exposing herself and often obscene in her talk. Most of her productions were determined by the environment. She was therefore quite distractible, very alert; sometimes she was meddlesome, again irritable, irascible. The following illustrates her productions: "Send for my husband, S.—He had one sister as big as that. She likes candy.... My father is underneath and my mother is on top because she is fat and he ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... moment Caldew might have realized the expediency of Phil's suggestion, but his professional dignity was affronted at what he considered the young man's attempt to interfere in the case and direct the course of the police investigations. It was the desire to snub what he regarded as a meddlesome interposition in his own business ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... "you know," and apologetic "I am sure I thought I was acting for the best," gave, considering her agitation, a tolerably accurate account of the whole interview. Her interlocutor saw plainly that she had acted from a sincere conscientiousness, and not from a meddlesome, mischievous interference; so he only thanked her for her kind interest, and suggested that he had now arrived at an age when it would, perhaps, be well for him to conduct matters, particularly of so delicate a nature, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... 'heir of the saw-mills' hath not heard your insolence. Firm is a steady lad; but he knoweth well which foot to kick with. No fear of losing the way to Sylvester's ranch with Firm behind you. But, meddlesome as you be, and a bitter weed to my experience, it shall not be said that Sampson Gundry sent forth a fellow to be frozen. Drink a glass of hot whiskey before you get to saddle. Not in friendship, mind you, Sir, but ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore |
