"Petulance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quiet of the place: the drowsy hum of diligent bees, the cattle browsing in a field near by, the ecstatic trill of a bird. The world of bustle and flurry with its seething vats of evil and corruption, its sordid discontent and petulance, its ways of pain and darkness, seemed far removed from that place of peace and calm solitude. Phoebe could not bear to think that across the seas men were lying in the filth of water-soaked trenches, agonizing ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... receive you into his parlor as though he were a distillation of smiles, and yet his heart may be a swamp of nettles. There are business men who all day long are mild, and courteous, and genial, and good-natured in commercial life, damming back their irritability, and their petulance, and their discontent; but at nightfall the dam breaks, and scolding pours forth in floods ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... the cousin. The Squire thought that the cousin was falsely delicate, and pleaded that all girls like to be taken abroad when they're married. The second half of the body of the letter was very much disfigured by the Squire's petulance; so that the modesty with which he commenced was almost put to the blush by a touch of arrogance in the conclusion. That sentence in which the Squire declared that an estate ought not to be crippled for the sake of the widow was ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... investigation. Nor was he guilty of those faults of temper and of manner to which, more than to any grave delinquency, the unpopularity of his associates is to be ascribed. He had as little of the insolence and perverseness of Orford as of the petulance and vaingloriousness of Montague. One of the most severe trials to which the head and heart of man can be put is great and rapid elevation. To that trial both Montague and Somers were put. It was too much for Montague. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that Leipzig ought to have been too precious in his eyes, for him to smear his drivel and snivel on so honorable and famous a city; but in his own imagination he is no ordinary man. I perceive that if I permit the petulance of all these thick-heads, even the bath-maids will finally ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... the closing words at him on a cry that lifted them above the petulance of vanity; but his sense of her words was lost in the surprise of her face. Under the flying clouds of her excitement it was no longer a shallow flower-cup but a darkening gleaming mirror that might give back strange depths of feeling. The girl had stuff in her—he ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... glance at us as if to question us, she ran away to her partner with the careless petulance of ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... had begun by putting on a pouting face, burst into tears. Her adopted parents had always been more tolerant and indulgent to her than if she had been a child over whom they felt entire rights, and instead of rewarding her petulance with such a blow as would have fallen to the lot of a veritable Talbot, Richard shrugged his shoulders and left the room—the chamber which had been allotted to Dame Susan at the Manor-house, while Susan endeavoured to cheer the girl by telling her not to grieve, for her father was ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... manager had offered to appoint him reader of plays at a pleasant fee!... Following that attempt at bribery came the anger of an actor-knight who declined to admit Gilbert to his theatre, a piece of petulance ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... well sit down," she said with some petulance. "There's nothing up here to hurt you." There was so much meaning in her tone of the things that would hurt me on the floor below that I hastened to show my confidence in her, and drew up a chair ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... come for me to speak. I laid a hand gently on his shoulder. He brushed it off. I laid it on again. He brushed it off once more. I was endeavouring to lay it on for the third time, when he moved aside and desired, with a certain petulance, to be informed if I thought I was a ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... you over at the last moment; it is very inconsiderate and unkind. But I suppose he can't help it, poor fellow," with a touch of regret for her petulance. "I am very extravagant, Ma. I spend no end on clothes, though you wouldn't think it to look at me now. Philip just trots off to the City and makes the money, so it does not matter ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... encountering weather was met by a spoilt child's resentment. Moreover, her young husband, and even his father, always thought the ladies were hard upon her, and would not have her vexed; and as their presence always brightened and restrained her, they never understood the full amount of her petulance and waywardness, and when they found her out of spirits, or out of temper, they charged all on her ailments or on want of consideration from her mother ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sabrey," said the old gentleman, with an air of petulance, and without deigning any direct answer to the troublesome question,—"why is it that you cannot take the opinion of your friends, who know so much more than you do about these matters, instead of raising, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... not your wife!' she answered; and flashed her eyes on him in sudden petulance; and then, 'Well, perhaps if my lady had her choice—to be wife to a rake can be no bed of roses, Sir George! While to be wife to a ruined rake—perhaps to be wife to a man who, if he were not ruined, would treat you as the dirt beneath his feet, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... accomplishments that wealth could purchase. But how many things are necessary to happiness which money cannot obtain! Thus secluded from all with whom she might converse on terms of equality, she heard none of those intimations of her defects, which envy, petulance, or anger, produce among children, where they are not afraid of telling ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... agreeableness for the consummate favor which she is forced to decline you. Not to put too fine a point upon it, it is bad enough to be refused anyhow you can arrange the circumstances, but to be refused as Lombard had been, with a petulance as wounding to his dignity as was the refusal itself to his affections, is to take a bitter pill with an ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... was about six inches square, and inside it he found another packet, which contained a packet, and so on. At the fourth he hurled the whole thing into the snow. Denys took it out and rebuked his petulance. He excused himself on the ground of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... handsome, so beautiful, in budding youth; there was such a free, gay petulance in his manner; there seemed so little of real evil in him; he put himself on equal ground with the rustic Septimius so generously, that the latter, often so morbid and sullen, never felt a greater kindness for fellow-man than at ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... coming over. The friends noticed that there were trunks on the rack of this carriage, and that though the day was so hot and sultry, the windows were closed. As the wheels locked, one of the windows was dashed down with some petulance, and a head appeared through it, while a sharp, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... fragmentary diary of a brilliant girl, half impatient of her own success in an art for which she was peculiarly gifted, yet the details of which were sincerely repugnant to her. It crackled and sparkled with naive arrogance. It criticized a new world and fresh forms of civilization with the amusing petulance of a spoiled daughter of John Bull. It was flimsy, flippant, laughable, rollicking, vivid. It described scenes and persons, often with airy grace, often with profound and pensive feeling. It was the slightest of diaries, written in public for the public; but it was universally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... to the finger-tips. His character was a curious effervescing mixture of talent, learning, vanity, childish petulance, inquisitiveness, sagacity, ecstatic patriotism, and ambition. He was a splendid orator, with the voice of an old coster-woman; a savant with the presumption of a school-boy; a kind-hearted man, with the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... and the dews of evening as they fell, to feel the divinity of wind and sunlight. The romance and ecstasy that at Wiesbaden had soaked her spirit came no more. She was watching for the weak spots, the passages with which he had struggled and she had struggled; she was distracted by memories of petulance, black moods, and sudden caresses. And then she caught his eye. The look was like, yet how unlike, those looks at Wiesbaden. It had the old love-hunger, but had lost the adoration, its spiritual essence. And she thought: 'Is it my fault, or is ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he, perhaps, with larger eyne, Was pleased, instead of vexed, at seeing Some little petulance in mine, And loved me all the more, for being; ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... Ralph, in comic petulance; "you're the original laddie with a bucket of cold water. As we figured it out last night, we shall be far away from here on our way to the Esmeralda mine before Ramon and the real soldiers of fortune whose fame we have ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... look and word, as well as act, of diminished attention and watchfulness; you will surely feel deep self-reproach if, from any cause, you are unable to control your own temper, and to bear with cheerful patience the petulance of hers. ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... never to be got over for my seducing her away; these angry commands to leaver her:—What shall we say, if all were to mean nothing but MATRIMONY? And what if my forbearing to enter upon that subject come out to be the true cause of their petulance and uneasiness! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... how that bitter weeping, which began so soon, grew more passionate and more bitter when the end came. We are singularly happy if we do not know the pang of remembering some fault to the loved dead—some hasty word, some momentary petulance, some selfish disregard of their happiness, some sullen refusal of their tenderness. How the thought that it is all irrevocable now embitters the remorse! How passionately we long that we could have one of the moments again, which seemed so trivial ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... first revelation of that glance would contain something of grief, wretchedness, remorse. The fisherman's countenance wore a shadow of annoyance, but it was expressive, above all, of a childish petulance ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... wall," said Sherburne, musing; for, under the other's influence, his petulance was gone. He knew that he was not a part of this life, that he was ignorant of it; of, indeed, all that was vital in it and in men ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Generally, men of very grave, reflective, and unprejudiced minds, students in the philosophy of society and history, men known for their lofty ideal of liberty or of culture, appeared to be on the side of the North; and the calm, unfaltering attitude, free from petulance and invective, of those operative classes in Lancashire, whom the war ruined for a while, has often been pointed to as showing that the more informed and intelligent workingmen were also for the North. They endured a great calamity without murmuring, because they thought the cause just which had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... a lock," I said, "and no key for that." It only aggravated my feeling of mockery to discover that both parts of the lock were still strong. In my petulance I flung the door ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... eyebrows closed together in an offended frown, and seemed to darken his whole face. This unsolicited offer of assistance hurt his dignity. He showed a touch of the petulance which came now and then when he was annoyed, to suggest that he might not possess so strong a character as ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... contempt whom better fortune animated to rebel against him, did not fail to raise a great number of enemies in the different classes of mankind. Those who thought themselves raised above him by the advantages of riches hated him because they found no protection from the petulance of his wit. Those who were esteemed for their writings feared him as a critic, and maligned him as a rival; and almost all the smaller wits were ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... of Walkirk, I fear with some petulance, if he had known of the incumbrance attached to this candidate; and he replied that she had informed him that she was married, but he had no idea she intended to bring her husband with her. He was very sorry that this ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... therefore prepared to descend the hill. My position as President of the Republic did demand a certain amount of personal dignity; and how was I to uphold that in my present circumstances? "Jack," said I, "it is the sign of a noble mind to bear contumely without petulance. Since our horses have gone before us, and Crasweller and the crowd have gone, we will follow them." Then I put my arm within his, and as I walked down the hill, I almost took joy in thinking ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... that in a fit of petulance at some childish misdemeanour, my mother once told me that I came into the world on the unlucky day of the fool's month. It was her picturesque way of saying that I was born on the thirteenth of April. I have often since had occasion to think that there ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... as if he had made a vow of patience. When at moments his eyes flashed with petulance, self-will, and anger, he restrained those flashes promptly, and looked with alarm at her, as if to implore pardon. This acted still more on her. Never had she such a feeling of being greatly loved as then; and when she thought of this, she felt at once guilty and happy. Vinicius, too, had changed ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... wisdom of the ministers was further weakened by the gratuitous abandonment of the malt tax, apparently in a fit of petulance, on the ground, explicitly stated, that, if another war tax must be raised, two or three millions more or less would make little difference. By a temporary suspension of the sinking fund, a deficit might be converted into a surplus; Vansittart, however, neglected to take advantage of this ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Miss La Creevy,' returned Mrs Nickleby, with a petulance not unnatural in her unhappy circumstances, 'it's very easy to say cheer up, but if you had as many occasions to cheer up as I have had—and there,' said Mrs Nickleby, stopping short. 'Think of Mr Pyke ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... and down indefatigably, preparing everything for the accommodation of the guests, smoothing down Deborah's petulance, and keeping her mother from over-exertion or anxiety. Much contrivance was indeed required, for besides the colonel and his son, two soldiers had to be lodged, and four horses, which, to the consternation of old ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fears to St. Clare; but he threw back her suggestions with a restless petulance, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and said with the petulance of a spoiled child, "Hush your mouth, you old smartie! What good d't do you to go an' ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... this explosion of petulance and brow-beating, I endeavored to demonstrate to him the unfairness of his remarks, and the disadvantage to himself if he should appear to connive at the ruffianly behavior of his people. But I ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... at the letter, long after he had finished reading it; there was nothing of the petulance of a spoiled child in this simple, this heartbroken farewell. And Nina herself was in every phrase of it—in her anxiety not to be a trouble to any one—her gratitude for very small kindnesses—her wish to live in the ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... never be as much to be pitied as his brother,' said Albinia, with tenderness that accused her petulance. 'At least he can never be a lonely twin with that sore spot in his heart. Oh, Maurice, how can any one help dealing ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the girl's words and remembered how she looked when she uttered them,—her piteous eyes resting on the embers, her weak little mouth quivering, her small hands at work,—but when she heard them, she only recognized in them a new touch of the old petulance to ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... began his brother, yet with no petulance in his tone, "pray go not too hard with me at the start. I thought I had done fairly well, to sit at the table of the council of coinage on my first day in London. 'Tis not every young man gets so far ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... when it is known that, at the very same time, he was in the constant habit of divination and fortune-telling, and that he was predicting splendid success, in all his undertakings, to the Constable of Bourbon, we can only wonder at his thus estranging a powerful friend through mere petulance and perversity. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... does not answer, unless a slight shrug and a passing his hand across his face with a rather dispirited gesture be an answer. I feel ashamed of my petulance. ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... character of their Sunday amusements, but equally indifferent as to the cleanliness of the tools with which they performed the arduous labors of old-sledge, euchre and division-loo. Woodruff cleared away the debris from the table, and flung it into one corner with some petulance which did not escape the notice of his visitors. Finally part of a box of bad cigars was introduced, and among the fumes engendered by those indispensable "weeds," a ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... spark into a deep adytum, of the existence of which he had never even dreamed. Unconsciously he leaned toward her, but she pressed back against the iron bars, and drew her dress aside as if shunning a leper. There was no petulance in the motion, but its significance pricked him, like ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... heard the sound of their wheels, and instantly opened the door. Lucia's half-formed intention of making some kind of apology for her petulance, had no time to ripen. Maurice helped her down without speaking, bade her good night, exchanged a word or two with her mother, and drove slowly ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... friend of the whole family," she returned, with a petulance which she made an effort to disguise. "Roscoe and he got acquainted somewhere, and they take him to the theater about every other night. Sibyl has him to lunch, too, and keeps—" She broke off with an angry little jerk of the head. "We can see the New House from the second corner ahead. Roscoe ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... Wizard; whom at first She played about with slight and sprightly talk, And vivid smiles, and faintly-venomed points Of slander, glancing here and grazing there; And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer Would watch her at her petulance, and play, Even when they seemed unloveable, and laugh As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew Tolerant of what he half disdained, and she, Perceiving that she was but half disdained, Began to break her sports with graver fits, Turn red or pale, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... a little box, and some other trifles; for after all there was only one old fellow who had been unruly, and he now shewed as much impatience with his companions as he had done with us, and I therefore set his manner down to the score of petulance. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... never a word, only shook his head. "You're going overboard, I tell you," was the captain's refrain. "Law be damned! I'm king here." At last I must confess my voice suddenly broke in the middle of a vigorous threat. I felt a gust of hysterical petulance, and went aft and stared dismally ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... the lowly and the distinguished. And though the intensity of the feelings of all was manifest by a mere glimpse round the court, yet any momentary display of eccentricity on the part of a witness, or of petulance or repartee on the part of counsel, would occasion a momentary merriment which, in point of fact, served only as a sort of relief to the strained feelings of the audience, and instantly disappeared. The tombstone ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... open page of history for you to read at leisure in any good library. You will find that the anti-English complex has its influence sometimes in the pages of our historians, but Professor Dunning is free from it. You will find, whatever transitory gusts of anger, jealousy, hostility, or petulance may have swept over the English people in their relations with us, these gusts end in a calm; and this calm is due to the common-sense of the race. It revealed itself in the treaty at the close of our Revolution, and it has been the ultimate controlling factor in English dealings ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... dazzled by the brilliancy which cast distinction upon her family, thanks to the wit of the grand-daughter of Henry IV. The king, jealous, as a young man and as a monarch, of the superiority of those who surrounded him, could not resist admitting himself vanquished by a petulance so thoroughly French in its nature, whose energy more than ever increased by English humor. Like a child, he was captivated by her radiant beauty, which her wit made still more dazzling. Madame's eyes flashed like lightning. Wit and humor escaped from her scarlet lips like persuasion from the ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sidewalk, his Derby hat on his head, his corn-cob in his mouth. For a moment he turned, and, looking back, flung out his hand with a gesture expressive of petulance and dismissal towards an invisible person at his door. And then he came towards us sedately, caressing his pipe, eyes on the ground, and seated himself in the Fourth Chair ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... controlling influence, however, to allay such a feeling was the unbounded and unimpaired confidence in General Lee. The conduct and bearing of the men were characterized by the same sterling qualities they had always displayed. The only exhibition of petulance that I witnessed was by a staff officer who bore no scars or other evidence of hardships undergone, but who acquired great reputation after the war. He "could not submit to such degradation," etc., threw away his spurs and chafed quite dramatically. When a bystander suggested that we cut our way ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... other pieces of his meeting with any applause, the reader will probably look upon him as a man of little genius; he had a power however of rendering his conversation agreeable by a facetious and gentleman-like manner, without any of the stiffness of the scholar, or the usual petulance of a poet. He always lived in affluent circumstances, and by mixing with genteel company, his habit of elegance was never lost, a fate which too frequently happens to those, who, notwithstanding the brightest parts, are excluded the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... Ghost in Hamlet, that he must have had a voice that was full and resonant and deep. So from reading the plays of Moliere we can imagine the robust figure of Magdeleine Bejart, the grace of La Grange, the pretty petulance ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... days he forgot she was unapproachable, forgot how forbidding were her eyes, how stony her lips. Flinging himself forward, his knee on the chair at her side, his face pressed hardly in the folds of the cloak on her shoulder, he clasped his arms about her with a boyish petulance, saying, "Christie, Christie, my little girl wife, I love you, I love you, and ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... Lieutenant-Governor. Under the circumstances, however, he could not refuse to contribute to Colonel Fitz Gibbon's list; and it is recorded that when one of his sons called upon him for the amount which he had subscribed, he handed over the sum with justifiable petulance, saying: "There, go and make one great fool of yourself again."[85] Such of the rioters as were possessed of means contributed to the fund according to their respective ability, but the others were not allowed to bear more than a very ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... kind of special sympathy. 'How many times have my own words grown hateful to me! I don't mean now on my own lips, but on the lips of those who had adopted my opinions! How many times have I passed from the petulance of a child to the dull insensibility of a horse who does not lash his tail when the whip cuts him!... How many times I have been happy and hopeful, and have made enemies and humbled myself for nothing! How many times I have taken flight like an eagle—and returned crawling ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... the Intelligence officer could ill disguise his astonishment. Here, standing in front of him, was the girl who had taught him his first lesson in staff jurisprudence. The memory of the incidents at the farmhouse, her petulance with the Tiger, her tears for her lover, had been almost effaced by the vicissitudes of the last forty-eight hours. If he had ever thought of the girl at all, it had been in the same spirit as a mariner recalls a passing ship, whose shapely lines were barely distinguishable ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... should have hankered so constantly for office. It is strange enough that the man who wrote as a dictator of public opinion in the Tribune on the 9th of November could write two days later the letter to Seward, dissolving the political firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley. In that letter the petulance of the office-seeker is shown, and the grievous disappointment that he did not get the nomination for lieutenant-governor, which went to Raymond, stands out plainly."—James F. Rhodes, History of the United ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... and example of the crusades: Gens nobilis, prudens, bellicosa, dapsilis et nitida .... Quos enim Britones, Anglos, Ligures, si bonis eos moribus videamus, non illico Francos homines appellemus? (p. 478.) He owns, however, that the vivacity of the French degenerates into petulance among foreigners, (p. 488.) ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... face was a wholesome one to look into. She did not shake her head and look solemn or shocked. Neither did she laugh at his petulance. She merely said, with the sweetest of little smiles, "You may live, Jeff, to be a very useful machine yet; if not quite as strong as you were—though even that is uncertain, for doctors are fallible, you know. Never forget that, Jeff—doctors ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... calls "baulked dispositions." To say that instincts are repressed, is to say there is a maladjustment between the individual as he comes into the world, and the world as he finds it. This maladjustment may vary in intensity. It may be exhibited in nothing more serious than boredom, or petulance, or hyper-sensitiveness. It may be a chronic sense of not fitting in, of being lost in a blind alley. One has but to review one's list of acquaintances to see how many people there are who feel somehow frustrated ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... yeek of petulance and scampered into the living room. In a moment, he was back with something elongated and metallic which he laid on ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... who is frank will admit his disappointment. Here and there, of course, amusing passages illuminated by Sydney Smith's humour or Jeffrey's slashing and swaggering retain a few sparks of fire. The pertness and petulance of the youthful critics are amusing, though hardly in the way intended by themselves. But, as a rule, one may most easily characterise the contents by saying that few of the articles would have a chance of acceptance by the editor of a first-rate periodical to-day; and that ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... stands out, with even more distinctness than in Boswell's "Life," as one of the most honest, earnest, patient laborers in the whole field of literature. Carlyle makes us almost love this man, in spite of his awkwardness, dogmatism, and petulance. Johnson in his day was an acknowledged dictator on all literary questions, surrounded by admirers of the highest gifts, who did homage to his learning,—a man of more striking individuality than ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... One does not like him the less for it, but it is, in spite of all the disconcerting jokes with which it may be covered, a futile and ridiculous occupation. Persistently there emerges from the record the impression of something childish, whether in petulance or gaminerie, a crudeness as well as a shrewdness of judgment and ideal. Where Butler thought himself complete, he was insufficient; and where he thought himself insufficient, he was complete. To himself he appeared a hobbledehoy by ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... the body into beauty or into ugliness. Worrying, fretting, unbridled passions, petulance, discontent, every dishonest act, every falsehood, every feeling of envy, jealousy, fear,—each has its effect on the system, and acts deleteriously like a poison or a deformer of the body. Professor James of Harvard, an ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... uttered as he ascended the table. 'George,' he muttered, 'you are first in hand,' and thereafter he took farewell of his friends. Only one word of petulance escaped his lips: when the halters were found too short, his contempt for slovenly workmanship urged him to protest, and to demand a punishment for the executioner. Again ascending the table, he assured himself against further mishap by arranging the rope with ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... petulance repressed, A selfish inclination firmly fought, A shadow of annoyance set at naught, A measure of disquietude suppressed, A peace in importunity possessed, A reconcilement generously sought, A purpose put aside, a banished thought, A word of self-explaining unexpressed,— ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... presided by his counsels, as of Europe in general. For if there ever was a sovereign who bid fair to realize the project of universal monarchy, it was the Emperor Charles V., of whose intrigues Wolsey was at once the instrument and the dupe. The influence which the bigotry of one female,6 the petulance of another,7 and the cabals of a third,8 had in the contemporary policy, ferments, and pacifications, of a considerable part of Europe, are topics that have been too often descanted upon not to be generally known. To ...
— The Federalist Papers
... refrain from another cry, and was very angry with herself for her petulance. She regretted the loss of the drive, too, which would have been a real treat after the week of confinement to ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... depths of the armchair, Diantha had flung her hat aside. Her face was dreamy as she looked down at the little head against her shoulder. All her girlish coquetry, every trace of juvenile mischief, the occasional flashes of petulance which told that she was her mother's daughter had vanished. She looked a ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... our petulance will pass— Our feet will tread the dew-kissed grass; Our souls will break their narrow cells, An' swell with love once more. And with the blue skies overhead, The harsh an' hasty words we've said ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... maintained himself without sound or motion, bolt upright, staring straight ahead. Mr. Fopling had a vacant expression, and his face was not an advantageous face. It was round, pudgy, weak, with shadows of petulance about the mouth, and the forehead sloped away at an angle which house-builders, speaking of roofs, call a quarter-pitch. His chin, acting on the hint offered by the forehead, was likewise in full retreat. Altogether, one ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... or I should be ashamed to be outdone in that true magnanimity, which makes one thankful for the wounds given by a true friend. I believe I was guilty of a petulance, which nothing but my uneasy situation can excuse; if that can. I am but almost afraid to beg of you, and yet I repeatedly do, to give way to that charming spirit, whenever it rises to your pen, which smiles, yet goes to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Smith, who had always to be convincing not only others but himself that he was a strong man whose views were unassailable, the eyes of Buckingham Smith like black holes in his handsome face, the stylish gestures and coarse petulance of Buckingham Smith, the shy assurance of little old Prince. He envied the pair. Their existence had a cloistral quality which appealed to something in him. They were continually in the studio, morning, afternoon, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... theory upon it. Who knows not that in the trying spring-time, the "colic of puff'd Aquilon" makes life hard for man and beast in Norfolk, and that across our fields the cruel gusts burst upon us with a bitter petulance, unsparing, pitiless, hateful, till our vitality seems to be steadily waning? It was in the month of March that the great plague smote us first:—did it not come to us on the wings of the wind that swept across the sea the germs of pestilence, say from Norway, or some neighbour ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... in a letter in the following collection[57], to which the reader is referred. Originally only the chief officer of those Praetorian troops in Rome by whom the Emperor was guarded, until, as was so often the case, he was in some fit of petulance by the same pampered sentinels dethroned, the Praefectus Praetorio had gradually become more and more of a judge, less and less of a soldier. In the great changes wrought by Constantine the Praetorian guards disappeared—somewhat ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... deal of mischief. He was vain, headstrong, with a dash of craft and a large amount of ambition. He had no love for his father, and no ballast of high principle, to say nothing of religion. He was a spoiled child grown to be a man, with a child's petulance and unreason, but a man's passions. He loved his unfortunate sister, but it was as much wounded honour as love which led him to the murder of his elder brother Amnon. That crime cleared his way to the throne; and David's half-and-half ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... now an English classic. It is striking, to see a man of talent thus vindicating his genius in the grave, making a posthumous defence of his character, and compelling posterity to acknowledge the distinctions of which he was defrauded by the petulance of his time. His example and his success administer a moral which ought not to be thrown away. There are many individuals in our own time, who might thus nobly avenge themselves on the injustice of their age. The Frenchman's maxim, Il n'y a que bonheur, et malheur, is unanswerably true; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... with refreshments, and brought it to her side. She ate and drank ravenously. The food acted on her like magic; she sat upright—her eyes sparkled, her pallor left her, and the slight shade of petulance and ill-humor which had characterized her when she entered the room gave place to a ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... quite close to the bird in order to hear the queer canticle distinctly, and when you do hear it you will wonder why nature ever put such a song into a bird's larynx. The Harris sparrow also utters an explosive alarm-call, which expresses not a little petulance ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... improvement. His room was full of sketches and drawing-material: these attracted visitors, and visitors were a trouble. Perhaps there was impertinence in their curiosity, very likely their presence hindered him; but, nevertheless, it was by no means like the sweet-tempered Clarian to show irritability and petulance, and finally, closing his door obstinately against all comers, to elect for solitude and silence at his work. No,—the boy was changed, grown morbid, a pervert, ripe for whatever Devil's sickle might be put forth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... steps," she declared, with sudden petulance. "The hospital's more out of funds than ever, and more crowded. They'll ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... improve the last four lines. In fact, I suppose, if they were mine, I should not omit 'em; but your verse is, for the most part, so exquisite that I like not to see aught of meaner matter mixed with it. Forgive my petulance and often, I fear, ill-founded criticisms, and forgive me that I have, by this time, made your eyes and head ache with my long letter; but I cannot forego hastily the pleasure and pride of thus conversing with you. You did not tell me whether I was to include the "Conciones ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... The petulance that relatives show towards each other is in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated mood. Melbury followed her. She had ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... upon; there is a raw thin air of ignorance and uncertainty about it, not filled up by any recorded opinion; and curiosity, impertinence, and vanity rush eagerly into the vacuum. A new book is the fair field for petulance and coxcombry to gather laurels in—the butt set up for roving opinion to aim at. Can we wonder, then, that the circulating libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and their grand-daughters, when a new novel is announced? That mail-coach copies of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... "Mr. Smith especially," "which relieved the colony well." To the report that was brought him that he was charged with starving the colony, he replies with some natural heat and a little show of petulance, that may be taken as an evidence of weakness, as well as of sincerity, and exhibiting the undignified nature of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in his petulance, I calmly continued: "I put my left hand beneath hers and my right upon the table. I could see her left hand lying in her lap, and as she turned sidewise to the table I was able to keep in view both ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... the Duchess did not know to be the token of heart complaint. He was confined to his room, and it was kneeling by his bedside that Eutacie poured out her thankfulness for her child's preservation, and her own repentance for the passing fit of self-will and petulance. The thought of Rayonette's safety seemed absolutely to extinguish the fresh anxiety that had arisen since it had become evident that her enemies no longer supposed her dead, but were probably upon her traces. Somehow, danger ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dead," she complained, with pretty petulance, as soon as they had shaken hands. "There hasn't been a stampede for a week. That masked ball Skiff Mitchell was going to give us has been postponed. There's no dust in circulation. There's always standing-room now at ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... this love had been mine, how would that life have been transfigured! The petty faults of my husband under which I chafed would not have moved me; I should have welcomed Martha and her father to my home and made them happy there; I should have had no conflicts with my servants, shown no petulance to my children. For it would not have been I who spoke and acted but Christ who ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... different from the petulance that she had sometimes displayed, as on the occasion when she had been jealous of poor Bessie. And Bessie recognized the difference. It seemed to reveal a new side of Dolly's complex character, the side that was loyal and fine. Dolly was not resenting any injury, real ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... of acting a part. When he actually came into the grove he found her seemingly lost in a reverie as she gazed out over the wide expanse in front of her. He was hot after his walk, and with something very like petulance threw himself into a cane armchair, exclaiming as he did so with the easy ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... Icilius, but that, being a restless man, and even now breathing the spirit of the tribuneship, he was seeking an opportunity for creating a disturbance. That he would not afford him the chance of doing so on that day; but in order that he might now know that the concession had been made not to his petulance, but to the absent Verginius, to the name of father and to liberty, that he would not decide the case on that day, nor introduce a decree: that he would request Marcus Claudius to forego somewhat of his right, and to suffer the girl to ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... in was not her father but a man of thirty-five, a stranger to her. A man with a projecting chin. His keen grey eyes wore at the moment of his entrance an expression of boredom and petulance, but when he caught sight of her, this passed, as a cloud from the sky. He came across the floor smiling. "Pardon me," he said—but said it as if no pardon were needed, "I found the stables—insupportably dull. I set out on a voyage of discovery. I have found my America!" And he bowed in a style ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... liege," said Ella, who hardly knew whether to smile or frown at the sarcastic petulance of his guest, who went on with a sly smile—"And now old Dunstan does not know where I am. He left me with a huge pile of books in musty Latin, or crabbed English, and I had to read this and to write that, as if I were no prince, but a scrivener, ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... evident his absence would be unregretted; for he could not but remark the cold and altered manner of Mad. de la Tour, which she vainly endeavored to disguise, by an air of studied politeness; nor the reserve and petulance of De Valette, which he did not attempt to conceal. La Tour was too politic to display his dislike towards one, whose services were so useful to him; though his prejudices were, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... [Undue assumption of superiority.] Insolence. — N. insolence; haughtiness &c. adj.; arrogance, airs; overbearance[obs3]; domineering &c. v.; tyranny &c. 739. impertinence; sauciness &c. adj.; flippancy, dicacity|, petulance, procacity[obs3], bluster; swagger, swaggering &c. v.; bounce; terrorism. assumption, presumption; beggar on horseback; usurpation. impudence, assurance, audacity, hardihood, front, face, brass; shamelessness &c. adj.; effrontery, hardened front, face ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... makes is not, to me, altogether effaced by the fact that Henry V. at his accession is said to be in 'the very May-morn of his youth,'—an expression which corresponds closely with those used by Laertes to Ophelia. In some passages, again, there is an air of boyish petulance. On the other side, however, we should have to set (1) the maturity of Hamlet's thought; (2) his manner, on the whole, to other men and to his mother, which, I think, is far from suggesting the idea of a mere youth; (3) such a passage ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... beyond his faculties to divine that her not forsaking of Edward might haply come to mean something disastrous to him. The touch of Mrs. Lovell's hand made him forget Rhoda in a twinkling. He detained it, audaciously, even until she frowned with petulance and stamped her foot. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... decision on the case has been complete. On these last three days I have finished my review of Tytler for Lockhart and sent it off by this post. I may have offended Peter by censuring him for a sort of petulance towards his predecessor Lord Hailes. This day visited by Mr. Carr, who is a sensible, clever young man, and by his two sisters[292]—beautiful singer the youngest—and to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... displeased at my petulance and boldness, I was about to commence a kind of defence, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... In mere self-defence we turn against the world, when it turns against us; brood over the undeserved slights we receive; and thus the genial current of the soul is stopped, or vents itself in effusions of petulance and self-conceit. Mr. Wordsworth has thought too much of contemporary critics and criticism; and less than he ought of the award of posterity, and of the opinion, we do not say of private friends, but of those who were made so by their admiration of his ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... preaching troubled him at times, and he too had his darker moments. Sometimes he paced up and down Howard Bacon's study never saying a word, or perhaps bursting out in boyish petulance, "When I am down, the parish is down. Why can't they stay up?" At a staff meeting one morning he told the incident of an organization that had requested him to address them, and when he asked on what subject, the reply ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... I should think not,' says the serjeant. '"Ion" is very different.' The Talfourd household, as it is described by Mr. Lestrange, is a droll mixture of poetry and prose, of hospitality, of untidiness, of petulance, of most genuine kindness and most ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... you, Angelique," said he, "I did not expect so much condescension after my petulance at the Governor's ball; I was wicked ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... mocked as 'a weird sibyl'; the other member (Sir James Graham), whom he could not say he greatly respected, but whom he greatly regarded; and the third member (Sir C. Wood), whom he bade learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective. Lord John Russell congratulated him on the ability and the gallantry with which he had conducted the struggle, and so the curtain fell." Morley's ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... kingdom have a fair, open, and exact report of the actual proceedings of their representatives and legislators, which in our constitution is highly to be valued; though, unquestionably, there has of late been too much reason to complain of the petulance with which obscure scribblers have presumed to treat men of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... time of action. Kisses however were snatched at times, or where a handkerchief round the neck interposed its feeble barrier, it was not extremely respected: the hands of the men went to work with their usual petulance, till the provocation on both sides rose to such a pitch, that my particulars's proposal for beginning the country dances was received with instant assent: for, as he laughingly added, he fancied the instruments were in tune. This was a signal for preparation, that the complaisant Mrs. Cole, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Paula's show of petulance was perhaps not wholly because she had appeared to seek him, but also from being reminded by his criticism that Mr. Woodwell's prophecy on her weakly succumbing to surroundings was slowly working out ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... that her sudden smile had brought out the dimples in the oval face and that her petulance had been swept away by ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... occasioned by incompetent mothers and nurses! Commit a child to the care of a worthless ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done. Let the mother be idle, vicious, and a slattern; let her home be pervaded by cavilling, petulance, and discontent, and it will become a dwelling of misery—a place to fly from, rather than to fly to; and the children whose misfortune it is to be brought up there, will be morally dwarfed and deformed—the cause of misery to themselves as ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... boy Bearing their double life abroad in one— Beginning new the world, and bringing hopes That in their path fell flower-like. Not at ease They dwelt, though; for a slow discordancy Of temper—weak-willed waste of life in bursts Of petulance—had marred their happiness. And so the boy, young Reuben, as he grew, Was chafed and vexed by this ill-fitting mode Of life forced on him, and rebelled. Too oft Brooding alone, he shaped loose schemes of flight Into the ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... petulance and impatience toward his mother and his tutor, all of which was quite a natural consequence of his education. Every endeavor to restrain him was met with imprecations and curses. About then would have been a good time to apply heroic treatment, instead ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... is going on in the real world, where things change. Peter dreamt of green things coming up and hawthorn hedges growing edible. Rhoda's cough grew softer and her eyes more restless, as if she too had her dreams. She developed a new petulance with Peter and with the maid-of-all-work, and left off tying the kitten's neck-ribbon. It was really a cat now, and cats are tiresome. She said she was dull all day with so little to do. Peter, full of compunction, suggested ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... nor good taste in the feast of carnival; a kind of universal petulance makes it resemble the bacchanals of the imagination; but in imagination only is this resemblance, for the Romans are in general very sober, and except the last day of carnival, tolerably serious. We often make sudden discoveries of every sort in the character of the Italians, ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... in some inexplicable way that a curtain had been lifted from a phase of life hitherto hidden from him; as if he were standing on the threshold of a new world, where women only weep for something real and tragic, not just butterfly tears of petulance like the women of ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... they must look upon all their subjects as on a level. They are rather apt to hate than to love their nobility, on account of the occasional resistance to their will which will be made by their virtue, their petulance, or their pride. It must, indeed, be admitted that many of the nobility are as perfectly willing to act the part of flatterers, tale-bearers, parasites, pimps, and buffoons, as any of the lowest and vilest of mankind can possibly be. But they are not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... monk now interfered, with a serious and true eulogium on Madam Basile: in a few words he made mine also, adding, that so far from blaming, he ought to further the pious charity of his wife, since it was evident she had not passed the bounds of discretion. The husband answered with an air of petulance, which (restrained by the presence of the monk) he endeavored to stifle; it was, however, sufficient to let me understand he had already received information of me, and that our worthy clerk had ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... him, all traces of petulance smoothed quite out of her face. Her cheeks were brilliantly pink, her hair blown by the breeze. She carried her wide-brimmed straw hat on the pommel of her saddle; evidently it had not proved satisfactory as a riding hat. Altogether, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... treasure-house of their text one of the most precious jewels that ever the prodigal afterthought of a great poet bestowed upon the rapture of his readers. Some of these, by way of thanksgiving, have complained with a touch of petulance that it was out of place and superfluous in the setting: nay, that it was incongruous with all the circumstances—out of tone and out of harmony and out of keeping with character and tune and time. In other lips indeed than Othello's, at the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and unguarded expressions as these that Cecilia offended; a slight difference in the manner makes a very material one in the effect. Cecilia lost more love by general petulance than she could gain by the ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth
... her, and hastened through his meals that he might be alone with his thoughts. The sun had sunk, and the moon was well over the eastern mountains, before he visited the rose garden. Amy was there, and she greeted him with a pretty petulance because he had not come before. Then, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... guess we can make out a full day's work in Canada, can't we? It is best to take it moderate," said Mr Snow, smiling benignly on Rose. He was tolerant of the young lady's petulance, and not so ready to excite it as he used to be in the old times, and generally listened to her little sallies with a ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... even in the moment of her humiliation. She came to a dead stop when she had made a few steps into the room, and cast furtive glances at the dread tribunal, and began to cry. She was trembling with nervous eagerness, with petulance and impatience. Almost all her judges, except the Rector and Mr Proctor, had been known to Rosa from her earliest years. She was not afraid of them, nor cast down by any sense of overwhelming transgression—on the contrary, she cast an appealing look round her, which implied that ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... how to humor me, and walked beside me, saying nothing. I glanced at his face, half shamed of my petulance, and I saw that he was no longer smiling. His lips were closed in that firm straight line which I had already seen once or twice, and which during years of trial became habitual to him. My own petty anger vanished ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... roughly to sketch to-night? I will not attempt to map it, but I feel very confident which way it does not run. I am sure it does not run through the region of disaffection, complaint, threatening, restlessness, petulance, or secession. Mere fretfulness never carries its points. No, the true way to better things is always to begin by holding on manfully to that which we already are convinced is good. The best restorers of old fabrics are those who work with affectionate loyalty as nearly as possible on ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... boy's heart gave a leap. Seventy-nine—an old man! ... he should never meet him in open festival and challenge him. There would not be time.... The music stole about him and quieted his pulse. He stood watching the face as it bent above the keys. It was a noble face. There was a touch of petulance in it, perhaps of pride and impatience in the quick glance that lifted now and then. But it was a grand face, with goodness in it, and strength and power. The boy's heart went from him.... If he might but touch a fold of the faded gown—seek a blessing from the wrinkled hands ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... of Jamieson, and in 1826 he spoke boldly of himself as breaking into "unknown and untrodden paths." It is not impossible that Sir Walter Scott's patronage of Jamieson had something to do with the ungenerous petulance of Borrow's references to the great ...
— Grimhild's Vengeance - Three Ballads • Anonymous
... I see now, Joe," said Rodd, who was rather ashamed of his petulance to the man. "She was end on to us, and I didn't see the mizzen. Why, she's ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... which the Papist was eaten alive by rats, and the Rationalist and Republican was slowly seethed in molten lead, the fate of each being, of course, a just judgment of heaven on those who presumed to differ from the author. Thus the voice of morality is confounded with that of tyrannical petulance and self-love. Not only is Scott not personal, but we cannot conceive his being so. We cannot think it possible that he should degrade his art by the indulgence of egotism, or crotchets, or petty piques. Least of all can we think it possible that his high ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... crime of dullness. Then Fielding himself steps forward, and after pleading for this his 'favourite Child,' on whom he has bestowed "a more than ordinary Pains in her Education," he declares, with the same hasty petulance that characterised that previous outburst in the preface to David Simple, that indeed he "will trouble the World no more with any children of mine by the same Muse." Two months later the Gentleman's Magazine prints a spirited appeal against this resolution. "His fair ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... a little while, I fear the slumber of ages will be at end—the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of the spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver of Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the petulance of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded of that once ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... flushed a little, but she was anxious not to give way to petulance just then: "Well, you are quite right, Harry: it was thoughtless of me. I should like to go down and see her this morning; but I have sent Jakes over to the blacksmith's, and I am afraid of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... here nor there," says he with petulance. "Sandy would of been just as happy if he'd lost the whole eighteen dollars him and Buck ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... confronted by the most formidable adversary whom she has ever known, and her defence is entrusted to Canning and Perceval. Canning's armoury contains nothing more serviceable than "schoolboy jokes and doggerel rhymes, an affronting petulance, and the tones and gesticulations of Mr. Pitt." Perceval, instead of looking after ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... 1920 Mr. Wilson dismissed him, brutally, abruptly, with the petulance of an invalid too tired to be fair; for a reason so obviously disingenuous that Mr. Lansing had the sympathy of the country. He should either have told the truth then and there or forever have held his peace; and had he remained mute out of the mystery would have grown a myth. The fictitious ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... human traits—'weak' is hardly the word I should have used. His rebuke of the Sabbatarians, His personal violence to the hucksters, His outbursts against the Pharisees, His rather unreasoning petulance against the fig-tree because it bore no fruit at the wrong season of the year, His very human feeling towards the housewife who bustled about when He was talking, his gratification that the ointment should ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Scotland, had died: and his power had devolved on Murdac, his son, a prince of a weak understanding and indolent disposition; who, far from possessing the talents requisite for the government of that fierce people, was not even able to maintain authority in his own family, or restrain the petulance and insolence of his sons. The ardor of the Scots to serve in France, where Charles treated them with great honor and distinction, and where the regent's brother enjoyed the dignity of constable, broke ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... in appearance at least, be the mere appendages of the two princesses, wait upon them, give them the foremost place, supply their present needs from what was provided for themselves, and it was quite possible have likewise to control girlish petulance and inexperience in the strange lands where her charges must appear at their very best, to do honour to their ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in a pleading petulance as she looked into his face, still holding on to the sleeve of his coat to detain him the longer, "just think of this letter of Pencoyd's; nothing has ever been offered you better than this. He has the very best people in ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... visit to the Austins and the vow he had registered on his return. There was thus an artificial element in his punctilio that at times might almost raise a smile. But it stood on noble grounds; for this was how he sought to shelter from his own petulance the woman who was to him the symbol of the household and to the end the beloved of ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you; why won't you let it come out for me as well as for him?" he would say, addressing his violin, half in fun, half in petulance, after some vain but not very sustained effort to draw out of it tones in any way approaching those which in Herr Wildermann's hands seemed to come of themselves. "No, I've no patience with you. It's too bad," and down he would fling violin ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... Antigone, Ophelia, or such like distressed heroines, in awful, grim earnest is not a conception that readily occurs even to the most affectionate and imaginative of kitten owners. Zora accepted Emmy's explanation of her petulance with a spirit entirely unperturbed, and resumed the perusal of her letter. It was from the Callenders, who wrote from California. Zora must visit them on her way ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... picked up somewhere a little mongrel cur, with bandy legs, a long back, and huge flapping ears. Of this uncouth creature he chose to make a favourite, in despite of all taste and opinion; and I remember one instance which he alleged, of what he called Brown's petulance, was, that he had criticised severely the crooked legs and drooping ears of Bingo. On my word, Matilda, I believe he nurses his high opinion of this most awkward of all pedants upon a similar principle. He seats the creature at table, where he pronounces a grace that sounds like ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... appreciate the fact that the Prince was trying to do something more lasting for him than merely conferring a commission, he was overwhelmed with a sense of the injustice he had done his Highness. He also realized his own petulance with intense shame. ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... about me the feathered host, that choir invisible, poured forth a song of universal praise to greet this new-born day. With this joyful clamour in my ears, this fresh, green world before my eyes, I grew joyful too, and hasted towards the brook, my foolish petulance quite forgotten. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... its childlike petulance, but I knew that drowsiness would do its work, and that he was now safely stowed away for at least ten hours. He would not interfere with my ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... from his and sat again in the chair before the mirror. "Len," she said with a touch of petulance in her voice, "you get into grouches and spur your imagination to all sorts of absurdities. I'm very sleepy. Why can't you reserve ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... more than another should feel thus abashed, it is certainly one who has first to ask their pardon for the petulance of boyish expressions of partial thought; for ungraceful advocacy of principles which needed no support from him, and discourteous blame of work of which he ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... fault," Sylvia rejoined, with some petulance. "When I held my best hand I was deceived by your lead. Besides, as I told the others, I didn't mean to play; you shouldn't have come down ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... five, and they turned homewards, taking a bye road so as to avoid meeting Mr. Faulkner. And now Lionel began to talk of Caroline, and wonder how she had sped. He seemed to throw off his own private troubles as he talked of hers, and his fit of petulance was melting fast away. At last he made up his mind to inquire how she had caught Sorrel, and was positively interested in the narration, laughing at the idea of the scrape they would have been in if Sorrel had made his way to the road, and Mr. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... he is—your Senor Ramon," she said to her father, as if she were chiding him for a petulance in calling; "your sight is not very good, my poor little ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer |
