"Nagging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nagging and an unhappy business to know that they were watched and overheard everywhere save in that one unwired room. It could have made for tension between them. But there was another thought to hold them together. This ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... it is painful but because it is profoundly immoral and hopelessly unsuitable. Repress the egoistic demands of the child when he interferes with the work or rest of others; never let him either by caresses or by nagging usurp the rights of grown people; take care that the servants do not work against what the parents are trying to insist on in this ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... of substantives [posion] The butcher lays thee low, [the] Thus the Comic Latin Grammar is lepidissimus, funniest [lipidissimus] it has not different persons, as taedet, it irketh [taedat] the magging or talkative mood [probably error for "nagging"] Amavissem, I should have loved [Amivissem] Amandum, to love, if you 're doom'd, have a care. [you 'r] Ab, ad, ante, &c. prepositions. [printed as shown: missing "are"?] From neco, necui, and mico, word ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... he speak to her as he spoke to his mother? Would he speak to their children so?... She could not bear to think it, and yet she could not believe that marriage would change him all through. What if their marriage made them both miserable?—made them like some couples she had known on the Marsh, nagging and hating each other. Was she a fool to think of marrying him?—all that difference in their age ... only perfect love could make up for it ... and he did not like the idea of living in the country—he was set on his business—his "career," as he called it.... She did not ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... exclaimed her husband, "I've never had a pain in my life. I wish you wouldn't keep nagging at me all the time to have an operation performed, whether I need it or not. Let my appendix alone. It's always treated me with extreme loyalty and respect, so why the deuce should I turn upon the poor thing and ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mrs. Carr reproachfully, while Jane, recovering her nagging manner with an accession of spirit, remonstrated feelingly: "Charley, you really must be ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... should in his difficulty with Sydney and Amelia. I'm so sorry! George is more upset than I've ever seen him—they've got what they wanted, and they're sailing before long, I hear, to live in Florence. Father said he couldn't stand the constant persuading—I'm afraid the word he used was "nagging." I can't understand people behaving like that. George says they may be Ambersons, but they're vulgar! I'm afraid I almost agree with him. At least, I think they were inconsiderate. But I don't see why I'm unburdening myself of all this to you, poor darling! We'll have forgotten ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... By dint of continually nagging at the men below from his commanding position above, the second-mate hurried them up so with their work that in a very short space of time the decks were scrubbed and washed, the sun drying them almost without ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... that I was much inclined to pity her when I saw her disagreeable face at first, especially as she was condemned to live with a man as greedy as her father; but when I saw that red-nosed creature eternally nagging and growling at those two unhappy servants, measure their food, and rival with her father in avarice, my first impulse of compassion was immediately turned to aversion for that wicked red-nose. Notwithstanding my good nature, I felt a strong temptation to contradict ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... are not sympathetic," you say. "They are often nagging, and use the confidences of the daughter to make her uncomfortable." Well, if this be so, you, at least, can learn the lesson, and by your habits of thought fit yourself to be the wise, loving, companionable, sympathetic confidante ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... the sofa used to divert himself the whole day by assembling as many human beings around him as possible and driving them to desperation by his unendurable nagging and chiding; they, on the other hand, had by this time discovered that the best defence against this domestic visitation was never to answer so ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... laid him down to sleep beside a brook—having been chased thither betimes, no doubt, by a nagging bedfellow. I have no wife, nor mean to take one, and find it more to my comfort to sleep here by the River Charles and dream of Malvern, secure that I shall wake to find myself detached from it ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... had produced. That the union of her parents was unclean, that it was altogether foul and by far worse than a divorce, she still felt confident, but she saw that her mother was totally unable to comprehend the difference between a clean separate life and the nagging poison dealt out as daily bread to the husband with whom she lived; but she saw that because of that very inability to understand the difference, the mother must be left to find the light in her own way. In her desire to help, Elizabeth had but increased her mother's burdens, ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... the clouts, the stack of carefully balanced periodicals went flying over the floor; and with the clouts, the nagging, and the hectoring, and the bullying, that had rankled for close on two years in Toddles' turbulent soul, rose in a sudden all-possessing sweep of fury. Toddles was a fighter—with the heart of a fighter. And Toddles' cause was just. He couldn't reach ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... about Adriana. Shakespeare makes her a jealous, nagging, violent scold, who will have her husband arrested for debt, though she will give money to free him. But the comedy of the play would be better brought out if Adriana were pictured as loving and constant, inflicting her inconvenient affection upon the false husband as upon the true. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... the Little Colonel was more embarrassed than ever. She could not tell Fidelia that it was because a little poodle received the fondling and attention that belonged to them, and that it was Fidelia's continual faultfinding and nagging that made the boys tease her. So after a pause she changed the subject by asking her what she wanted most to see ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... many moments without my senses. When I recovered them there was a great to-do in the garden, but I had the drawing-room to myself. I sat up. Rosenthall and Purvis were rushing about outside, cursing the Kaffirs and nagging ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... fair thing for the whole police force to keep worrying at a little boy like me," he said, in shame-faced apology. "I'm not doing nothing wrong, and I'm half froze to death, and yet they keep a-nagging at me." ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... much-tried endurance broke down under the petty gnatlike irritations of Fonseca and his myrmidons. It was on the deck of his own ship, in the harbour of San Lucar, that he knocked down and soundly kicked Ximeno de Breviesca, Fonseca's accountant, whose nagging requisitions had driven the Admiral ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... afflicted, to raise the fallen, to help one's neighbor in every possible way, to bear with his infirmities, to endure hardships, toil, ingratitude in the Church and in the world, and on the other hand to obey government, to honor one's parents, to be patient at home with a nagging wife and an unruly family, these things are not at all regarded as good works. The fact is, they are such excellent works that the world cannot possibly estimate ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... years and has silently endured the caprices of her betters all that time, when she sets up as a lady on her own account will do her best to compensate herself for this interminable suppression of her natural instincts. But Mr. Margari used only to laugh when his wife began nagging at him. "Alios jam vidi ego ventos, aliasque procellas," he would say. He was only too glad to have a home of ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... I'm getting old. His mate said he'd gone to visit his mother, so I thought no more about it. Until this morning. Then I remembered. Jim Killian never knew his mother. He was brought up by an uncle and aunt, both of them dead ten years now. Struck me all of a sudden. It had sort of been nagging at the back of my head that something was fishy about that mate's story anyway, so this morning I went to his house and I ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... such a view of insurance in her brain. She now recalled expressing it—and regretted. But she was silenced. She tried to take her mind of the subject of money. But, like Mildred, she could not. The thought of imminent poverty was nagging at them like toothache. "There'll be enough for a year or so?" ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... climax, he had been forced to abandon two thousand dollars to his enemies; and as the Maggie crept north at three knots an hour the knowledge that he must, even against his desires, install a new boiler, overwhelmed him to such an extent that he found it impossible to submit silently to the nagging of the navigating officer. One word borrowed another until diplomatic relations were severed and, in the language of the classic, they "mixed it." They were fairly well matched, and, to the credit of Captain Scraggs be it said, whenever he believed ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... engagement luncheons," said Aunt Annie, limping about the long table, and grumbling at everything as she went. Annie had wrenched her ankle in alighting from her car, and was cross with nagging pain. "Here, put Natalie next to Leslie, Norma; no, that puts the Gunnings together. I'll give you Miss Blanchard—but you don't speak French! Here, give me your pencil—and confound these things anyway——Fowler," she said to the butler, "I don't ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... a plaguy business," answers Jove, "for me to offend Juno and put up with all the bitter tongue she will give me. As it is, she is always nagging at me and saying I help the Trojans, still, go away now at once before she finds out that you have been here, and leave the rest to me. See, I nod my head to you, and this is the most solemn form of covenant into ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... been spoiled? I believe, as a general thing, more children are spoiled by what the Scotch graphically call 'nagging' than by indulgence. What do you think Josey would have been, if Mrs. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... of these luxuries, on Ambrose Tester's part, was dependent naturally, on the death of his father, who was still very much to the fore at the time I first knew the young man. The proof of it is the way he kept nagging at his sons, as the younger used to say, on the question of taking a wife. The nagging had been of no avail, as I have mentioned, with regard to Francis, the elder, whose affections were centred (his brother himself told me) on the winecup and the faro-table. ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... For these reasons it has been, as you know, my constant endeavour to reduce the number of our complaints. I may sometimes have abstained when I ought to have protested from my great dislike of ineffectual nagging. But I feel that the attempt to remedy the hundred-and-one wrongs springing from a hopeless system by taking up isolated cases, is perfectly vain. It may easily lead to war, but will never lead ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... do!" exclaimed Abel without moving, and his tone implied that the ceaseless nagging had got at last on his nerves. He was a robust, well-built, red-brown young fellow, who smelt always of freshly ground meal, as though his body, from long usage, had grown to exhale the cleanly odour of the trade he followed. His hair was thick, dark and powdered ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... which point conclusively to Lucan's intention to have made the vengeance of Brutus and Cassius the climax of his poem. The problem which the poet had to resolve was how to prevent the interest from nagging, as his heroes were swept away before the triumphant advance of Caesar. He concentrates our attention at the outset on Pompey. Throughout the first eight books it is for him that he claims our sympathy. And then he is crushed by his rival and driven in flight to die an unheroic death. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... adorable," said she, and was at once aware of a guilty, nagging impression that she would not have said it to him half an hour earlier ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... was a sad scene, only restrained by respect for my friend. I need not tell it. There was a man's side to the question, a strong one. The wife had a terrible temper, a peevish, nagging, maddening fashion of talking. She was a woman very hard for a man to ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... things was routine. Sergeant Madden had the traffic desk that morning. He would reach retirement age in two more years, and it was a nagging reminder that he grew old. He didn't like it. There was another matter. His son Timmy had a girl, and she was on the way to Varenga IV on the Cerberus, and when she arrived Timmy would become a married man. Sergeant Madden ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... persists in judging him by this standard. In the "freshness" of his age and kind, he is skeptical as to her good looks and other fascinations, and takes wicked satisfaction in giving her to understand that he, at least, "is not fooled by her tricks and manners." If her "nagging" is a thorn under his jacket, his cool disdain is a grain of sand inside of ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... fears are within ourselves. I know a man who has a nagging wife; she has a constant wish for new things. He bought her a hat, and for two days she was happy; then she nagged, and he bought her a dress. Three days later she demanded a necklace, and he gave her a necklace. ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... sea-sickness, he had not the will even to loosen his sash or rid himself of his weapons. The hunting knife with the big handle dug into his ribs. His revolver bruised his leg, and the final straw was the nagging of Tartarin-Sancho, who never ceased whining and carping:—"Imbecile! Va! I warned you didn't I?.... But you had to go to Africa!.... Well now you're on your way, how do ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... sick enough shortly after. But the doctor spanked Rilla then and there and he made such a thorough job of it that she never meddled with anything in his office afterwards. We hear a great deal nowadays of something that is called 'moral persuasion,' but in my opinion a good spanking and no nagging afterwards is a much ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... dawn to dark for a hire that barely kept him going. The farmer was the owner of Jimmie's time, and Jimmie disliked him heartily, because he was surly-tempered and stingy, abusing his horses and nagging at his hired man. Jimmie's education in farm-economics was not thorough enough to enable him to realize that John Cutter was as much of a slave as himself—bound by a mortgage to Ashton Chalmers, President of the First National Bank of ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... capacity. Outside of their business they knew absolutely nothing; they were even ignorant of Paris. To them the great city was merely a region spreading around the Rue Saint-Denis. Their narrow natures could see no field except the shop. They were clever enough in nagging their clerks and their young women and in proving them to blame. Their happiness lay in seeing all hands busy at the counters, exhibiting the merchandise, and folding it up again. When they heard the six or eight voices of the young men and women glibly gabbling the consecrated ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... suffragettes are justified in regarding politicians as the obstacles in the way of their demands, there still remains the question of the disadvantage of their method. This method is by some euphemistically described as the introduction of "nagging" into politics; but even at this mild estimate of its character the question may still be asked whether the method is calculated to attain the desired end. One hears women suffragettes declare that this is the only kind of argument men understand. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... maternal compassion for this helpless dear with her double chins and self-sacrificing past, and she wondered whether her father had not had the same attitude during the years of nagging reproach at his lack of material prosperity. She resolved to come home that night with a budget of news items concerning Steve's return, even bringing a rose from the floral offering that was to ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... nagging disturbing thought in his mind. It had to do with Mike Fueyo and the Silent Spooks, and a lot of red Cadillacs. But he pushed it resolutely away. It had nothing to do with the evening he was about ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... you haven't," she said calmingly. "Of course you haven't. Besides, even if you had, it serves her right. Every one could see she's a nagging woman. And they seemed quite prosperous. They're hysterical— that's what's the matter with them, all of them—except the eldest, the one that never spoke. I ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... appearance did not inspire the generality of mankind with esteem; but it must have been otherwise with his employers. He had the reputation of being an uncomfortable commander, meticulous in trifles, always nursing a grievance of some sort and incessantly nagging. He was not a man to kick up a row with you and be done with it, but to say nasty things in a whining voice; a man capable of making one's life a perfect misery if he took a dislike ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... and September 2003 - the country continues to struggle to boost investment and agricultural output, and ethnic reconciliation is complicated by the real and perceived Tutsi political dominance. Kigali's increasing centralization and intolerance of dissent, the nagging Hutu extremist insurgency across the border, and Rwandan involvement in two wars in recent years in the neighboring DRC continue to hinder Rwanda's efforts to ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... loved, Abraham had nagged a little all his married life when things went wrong. And Angeline, fretted and nervous, herself worried almost sick over Father's condition, was guilty once in a while out of the depths of her anxiety of nagging back again. So do we hurt those whom we love best as we would and could hurt ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... wondered. Were you as unconscious of me as you seemed? Was it possible that you didn't know. And if you did know, was it possible that you were—waiting? That it only needed a word of mine to put everything between us on a different basis? I couldn't get rid of that idea. It kept nagging at me. But after what you told me last night—and you certainly told it straight—that idea's exploded. What you said explains everything about you. I know now that I haven't a chance in the world. From now on, I imagine, I'll be able to treat you like ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... "Oh, you poor lamb—please don't look so awful! It was my fault. I put you up to this with my nagging ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... of Confucius, name Yen Yen, style Tzu-yu, born 510 B.C.; ii. 7, told that feeding parents is not the whole duty of a son; iv. 26, says nagging at princes brings disgrace; vi. 12, when governor of Wu-ch'eng has Tan-t'ai Mieh-ming; xi. 2, was a man of culture; xvii. 4, encourages music in Wu-ch'eng; xix. 12, says Tzu-hsia's disciples can sprinkle the floor; xix. 14, says mourning should ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... The patient was a Galician Hebrew, a shirtwaist operator. Not much was known about her make-up, but it is certain that she was a bright girl. The patient herself said after recovery that her father was nagging her constantly with complaints that she was not making enough money, although he himself did not work and she contributed much to the support of her family. She disliked him very much and claimed that all her relatives worried her, except ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... I am, I tell you. I'm not grumbling, am I? I know as well as you do she's miles too good for me. Haven't I said so? Then what the devil do you keep on nagging at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... Philanthropy, no matter how noble its motive, does not make for self-reliance. We must have self-reliance. A community is the better for being discontented, for being dissatisfied with what it has. I do not mean the petty, daily, nagging, gnawing sort of discontent, but a broad, courageous sort of discontent which believes that everything which is done can and ought to be eventually done better. Industry organized for service—and the workingman as well as the leader must serve—can pay wages sufficiently ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... episode in the Farmers' and Merchants' burglar-proof had become an episode forgotten—or at least forgiven. "You know men—a little; but when it comes to the women ... well, if I didn't keep continually nagging at you, your two heroines—with neither of whom you are really in love—would degenerate into rag dolls. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... does not consist in inconsistent nagging; harshly insisting on unquestioning obedience to some unreasonable command one moment, and weakly giving way—to avoid a scene—on some matter vitally affecting the ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... seemed everlastingly nagging at the children. It was a habit, but they didn't seem to mind. Most Bushwomen get the nagging habit. I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most willing, and affectionate little girl I think I ever ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... by the College of Spiritual Athletics. Terms for ordinary nagging, two shillings and sixpence per hour. ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... father; mother likes the idea of my getting married, but they used often to be nagging about something. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... charming. She was smilingly cruel; regaled him with Lord Uxmoor's wealth and virtues, and said he was an excellent match, and all she-Barfordshire pulling caps for him. Severne only sighed; he offered no resistance; and at last she could not go on nagging a handsome fellow, who only sighed, so she said, "Well, there; I advise you to join us before the opera is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... accomplishment," retorted Hamilton. "We cannot go through life successfully with the bare gifts of the Almighty, generous though He may have been. If I find that I have need of cunning, or brutality,—than which nothing is farther from my nature,—or even nagging, I do not hesitate to borrow ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... I, "what say you to a banquet now?"—She knows what I mean. "With all my heart," says she. So I read although it be on a Sunday, so good are your letters; and you must know, I have copies of many, and after a little while we are as much alive and brisk, as if we had no nagging at all, and return to the duties of the ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... won conquest and David's apparent lack of prowess, Jud continued his jeering and nagging, but David set his lips in a taut line of finality and endured in silence until there came the ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... not the best way, even though it isn't really wrong ethically, he will probably concede the point, provided,—and don't overlook this,—you "go about it in the right way, and in the right spirit." It isn't likely you will be given a patient hearing, if in the past you have been in the habit of nagging and browbeating him. Don't look upon tactful ways of gaining your point as evidence of weakness. It is distinctly an evidence of strength of character, and, each time you win a point in a friendly debate with your husband, you will have gained much. He will respect you all the more because ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... it was her father's custom to spend long hours in his library, sometimes far into the gray dawn. He found this preferable to the presence of his sharp-tongued second wife, who was always nagging him for more money, or to put his property into her name as proof positive of his unbounded, undying ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... inexplicable way has eluded all screens and nettings comes singing its way about your face. It is just one. It seems so small. If it were only big enough to hit, something worthy of one's strength. But the mean little nagging specimen seems to elude every effort of yours. Maybe you take calm, deliberate measures to end its existence, but meanwhile you are thoroughly aroused and lose quite a bit of ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... through the school, I noted everywhere a happy and courteous relation between pupils and teachers. They spoke pleasantly to one another. I heard no nagging or scolding. I saw no one sulking or pouting or in bad temper. And yet there was every evidence of respect and obedience on the part of the pupils. There was none of that happy-go-lucky comradeship which I have sometimes seen in other ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... each other like two cocks, though at some distance apart, out came Nicolas from the kitchen to ask if I wished my cloak brought down, which he had taken up with the bag. In his rustic innocence he stepped between my nagging gentleman and myself. The gentleman at this ran forward in an access of rage, and threw Nicolas aside, saying, "Out of the way, knave! You're as great a clown as ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... ought not to be read in a fierce, nagging spirit which demands, What is the good of this? or, Who cares for that? His talk, it must be admitted, is not of masterpieces. The books he takes down are—in some instances, at all events—sad trash. Smart's poems, for ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the street leading to the quay, and camels, strung in groups of five, came swinging in, or kneeling in the dust, waved their long, bird-like necks, and lifted up a mournful bellow, as if protesting in a bored, Oriental way, at a fate which compelled them to bear burdens for the nagging race of men. ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... is also not efficacious. We are justified in having our indignation aroused at times and in letting the offender feel our displeasure. There is something calm and impressive about genuine indignation, while scolding is apt to become nagging and to arouse ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... time wear out even a stone. I have ruined my life to satisfy one of your whims; surely that ought to suffice. If I can't have peace in the house, I will take my hat and walk out of it. I can not endure this eternal nagging, that I must treat Jessie better—more as becomes a betrothed lover. You know very well that I do not love her. My marriage with her will be all your doing. My heart is with Dorothy; and when a man loves as I loved her, even if that love is destroyed, ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... kept nagging at his brain until he admitted it. Turned it over and over and looked at it from all sides. What wasn't ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... be a most reverent servant to the soul. But in fact, and particularly in hours stately with momentous things, what a sacrilegious trick it has of nagging its holy mistress with triflet light as air—small as gnats yet ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... husband, sternly; "I don't want any of your back answers. It goes on all day long up to bedtime, and last night I laid awake for two hours listening to you nagging in ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... be led like a cow," groaned Mrs. Kohler. "Oh, it is good that he has no wife!" She was reproaching herself for nagging Fritz when he drank himself into foolish pleasantry or mild sulks, and felt that she had ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... did not realize, it is difficult for those in the same house to realize, where things were tending. Henrietta's temper became less violent; there are fewer occasions for losing a temper when one is grown up, but she took to nagging ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... international assistance and political reforms - including Rwanda's first local elections in March 1999 - the country continues to struggle to boost investment and agricultural output and to foster reconciliation. A series of massive population displacements, a nagging Hutu extremist insurgency, and Rwandan involvement in two wars over the past four years in the neighboring DROC continue ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... retired collegiate assessor Plemyanikov, was sitting on the back-door steps of her house doing nothing. It was hot, the flies were nagging and teasing, and it was pleasant to think that it would soon be evening. Dark rain clouds were gathering from the east, wafting a breath of moisture every now ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... amusing to watch two middle-aged ladies nagging each other, at two o’clock in the morning, on a public square, as they do in Lohengrin? Do people find the lecture that Isolde’s husband delivers to the guilty lovers entertaining? Does an opera produce any illusion on my neighbors? I wish it did on me! I see too plainly the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... with his father's wishes. They could easily do that, or thought they could, by making life at the ranch unbearable for him. That, he was convinced, was the reason that Betty had adopted her cold, severe, and contemptuous attitude toward him. She expected he would find her nagging and bossing intolerable, that he would leave in a rage and allow her and Taggart to come into possession of the property. Neither she nor Taggart would dare make off with the money and the idol as long as he was at the ranch, for they ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... might see the whole face of society, nevertheless choose to spend all a life's space poring upon some single vice or blemish? I would not for the world discredit any sort of philanthropy except the small and churlish sort which seeks to reform by nagging—the sort which exaggerates petty vices into great ones, and runs atilt against windmills, while everywhere colossal shams and abuses go unexposed, unrebuked. Is it because we are better at being common scolds than at being wise ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... while the shadow of a very real man followed her down the road—a shadow in grotesquely flapping rags, with head flung back. A dozen times she caught herself listening for the tramp of his feet beside hers, and flushed hotly at the nagging consciousness that pointed out each time only the mocking echo of her own tread. Like the left-behind cottage, the road ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... regularity of the beast—went and came daily in the same occupations with the infallible accuracy of mechanism. But, as they said in their idiom, they had eaten their white bread first. Mademoiselle Cormon, like all persons nervously agitated by a fixed idea, became hard to please, and nagging, less by nature than from the need of employing her activity. Having no husband or children to occupy her, she fell back on petty details. She talked for hours about mere nothings, on a dozen napkins marked "Z," placed in the ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... nagging woman, Constance," he went on in a somewhat softened tone. "In fact you have been a good wife; you have never thrown it up to me that I was unable to make good to the degree of many of our friends in purely commercial lines. All you have ever ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... the small things that worried her—things so trifling in themselves that it would sound foolish to mention them—the daily nagging details, the gathering load of responsibility upon her shoulders, the indifference which she had to dispel, the inertia that had to be overcome, the ruffled feelings to be soothed, the squabbles to be settled, the hidden hostilities which she had ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... a better sort of woman to live with than you. If Lua nagged at me as you are nagging, and as you nag at Adam, I would beat her black and blue from head to foot. I have done it too, slave as ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... my eyes, and I knew that Madame Renard was boiling with rage, for she kept on nagging at me: 'Oh, how horrid! Don't you see that he is robbing you of your fish? Do you think that you will catch anything? Not even a frog, nothing whatever. Why, my hands are tingling, just to think ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... this last touch of deliberate, selfish aloofness that startled Stanton's thoughts with the one persistent, brutally nagging question: After all, was a woman's undeniably glorious ability to save a drowning man the supreme, requisite ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... many tons of turkeys not only to voters, but to families who are represented by no vote. By a judicious management some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of that, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable societies, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys for Christmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be allowed to eat turkey again. As he does not distribute his Christmas favors ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... "I want you and Sidney to come over and live at Quien Sabe. I know—you can't make me believe that the reporters and officers and officious busy-faces that pretend to offer help just so as they can satisfy their curiosity aren't nagging you to death. I want you to let me take care of you and the little tad till all this trouble of yours is over with. There's plenty of place for you. You can have the house my wife's people used to live in. You've got to look these things in the face. What are you going to do to get along? You ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... me for nagging; I am but a woman; you would not have been so cruel to your own flesh and blood ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... when a girl's happy at home, I do think it's a pity for her to jump into being a woman at eighteen. More'n one I've coaxed into waiting. But when a girl's disposition is wearing thin through bickering and nagging day in and day out, the sooner she's in a home of her ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... the inquisition had dragged along until everybody looked drowsy and tired but Joan, Brother Seguin, professor of theology at the University of Poitiers, who was a sour and sarcastic man, fell to plying Joan with all sorts of nagging questions in his bastard Limousin French—for he was from Limoges. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... his afternoon nap, a thing that had not happened in years. He stayed on the front gallery and kept count. Those moving distant black specks typified uneasiness for the squire—not fear exactly, or panic or anything akin to it, but a nibbling, nagging kind of uneasiness. Time and again he said to himself that he would not think about them any more; ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... baseless suspicions a reality, his unjust accusations justified. And, of course, what is true of the husband is also true of the wife. Many a wife has driven her indolent husband into the hands of prostitutes or mistresses by her incessant nagging, false accusations and vicious epithets applied to all his ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... on connubial acquaintance. He was lazy and sloven of mornings, and since he had no office to go to he grew more neglectful of his appearance than ever. His end-to-end cigarettes got on Kedzie's nerves and cost a nagging amount of money, especially as she could not ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... last night. And she told me if you didn't stop your nagging she'd go away from home and stay. Said she could ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... you can help it, but you know—yes, you must know that parsons are as jealous of each other and as nasty to each other as actors, singers, writers, or any other 'professional' persons in the world. In fact, I believe if you were to set two spiteful clergymen nagging at each other, they'd beat any two 'leading ladies' on the operatic stage, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... you can keep track of your men in a sneaking way that will make them despise you, and talk to them in a nagging spirit that will make them bristle when they see you. But it's your right to know and your business to find out, and if you collect your information in an open, frank manner, going at it in the spirit of hoping to find ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... him, most of which seemed likely to be fulfilled. Bud fought back, telling Marie how much of a snap she had had since she married him, and how he must have looked like ready money to her, and added that now, by heck, he even had to do his own cooking, as well as listen to her whining and nagging, and that there wasn't clean corner in the house, and she'd rather let her own baby go hungry than break a simp rule in a darn book got up by a bunch of boobs that didn't know anything about kids. Surely to ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... England for trial, should be put into operation against the colonial agitators. When the Virginia legislature protested against this step, it was dissolved. Hillsborough and North acted as though they believed that a policy of scolding and nagging, if made sufficiently disagreeable, would bring the colonists to their senses. That the Whigs did not cease to pour contempt and ridicule on the folly of such behaviour was probably one reason why the government persisted in its course. The American ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... of weaklings Ivan, always gentle-mannered, shrinking from argument or petty conflict as other men from a nagging woman's tongue, undertook, by rehearsing, to explain his heart's work. Had it not been for Nicholas, he would soon have left the field to his opponents. Upborne by the conductor, he did manage to endure two rehearsals. The ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... her fault. She knew it was going to rain, and she had not let him have a nickel for car fare—she who had five thousand dollars. She let him walk the streets in the cold and in the rain. "Miser," he growled behind his mustache. "Miser, nasty little old miser. You're worse than old Zerkow, always nagging about money, money, and you got five thousand dollars. You got more, an' you live in that stinking hole of a room, and you won't drink any decent beer. I ain't going to stand it much longer. She knew it was going ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... to you, Lucy," said Margaret. "I don't mind their nagging, but I do mind standing in your way. And they'll keep you back as long as I'm still ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... had one very good point in her character: she was not of a nagging disposition. When she scolded she did it thoroughly, and was perhaps a long time doing it, but she never carried it ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... my eyes, and then I knew that Madame Renard was boiling with rage, for she kept on nagging at me: 'Oh! how horrid! Don't you see that he is robbing you of your fish? Do you think that you will catch anything? Not even a frog, nothing whatever. Why my hands are burning, just ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... threw in their lot with the other Ireland and accepted its ideals, that business which now goes to their shipyards and factories would cease if they were absorbed in a self-governing Ireland whose spokesmen had an unfortunate habit of nagging their neighbors and of conveying the impression that they are inspired by race hatred. They believe that an Irish legislature would be controlled by a majority, representatives mainly of small farmers, men who had no knowledge of affairs, ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... Roberts's heresy was forgotten and his religion merely smiled at. Certainly it struck no roots outside his own heart. Even his family did not share his belief. When he married, as he did when he was nearly fifty, his wife was impatient with his Faith—indeed, fearful of it, and with persistent, nagging reasonableness urged his return to the respectable paths of Presbyterianism. To his pain, when his girl, his Philippa, grew up she shrank from the emotion of his creed; she and her mother went to the brick church under the locust-trees of Lower Ripple; and when her mother ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland |
