"Petulant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beauties—cultured, vivacious, and belonging to one of the oldest families in that Commonwealth of Blue Bloods. The many moves and changes during the last month or two considerably interrupted our communications and mail facilities, and Jones had not received the expected letters. He became restless, petulant, and cross, and to use the homely phrase, "he was all torn up." Instead of the "human sympathy" and the "one touch of nature," making the whole world akin, that philosophers and sentimentalists talk about, it should be "one sight of man's misery"—makes the whole world "wish him ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of literature, where a malicious pleasantry like the 'Rejected Addresses'—which the parties ridiculed might well consider more annoying than a direct satire—instead of being met by querulous bitterness or petulant retaliation, has procured for its authors the acquaintance, or conciliated the good-will, of those whom they ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... alone in his library. 'T was therefore in vain for him to sit at breakfast with eye aslant and thought-laden brow, as if meditating a long day's seclusion; somehow or another, he never got above an hour to himself. He was often momentarily petulant on these occasions, and soon saw through the designs of his enemies; but he so heartily and tenderly loved them—so thoroughly appreciated the affection which dictated their little manoeuvres—that he soon surrendered at discretion, and, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... curled in petulant disdain. The poor Duchess seemed to him of very little importance at that moment. He walked across the room to where Mr. Podgers was standing, and held ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... her wedding-ring, as if she were under a vow to be different from all other women; and Will sat down opposite her at two yards' distance, the light falling on his bright curls and delicate but rather petulant profile, with its defiant curves of lip and chin. Each looked at the other as if they had been two flowers which had opened then and there. Dorothea for the moment forgot her husband's mysterious irritation against Will: it seemed fresh ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... have been the source of much virulent invective and petulant declamation against the proposed Constitution. They have been held up to the people in all the exaggerated colors of misrepresentation as the pernicious engines by which their local governments were to be destroyed and their liberties exterminated; as the hideous ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... thou, who thus in numbers pert And petulant, presum'st to flirt With Memory's Nine Daughters: Whose verse the next trade-winds that blow Down narrow Paternoster-row Shall 'whelm ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... was sentenced to a lifer, and, the mask of John Ward being torn from him, he was sent to Sheffield to stand his trial as Charles Peace. The leap from the train is already recorded; and at his last appearance in the dock he rolled upon the floor, a petulant and broken man. When once the last doom was pronounced, he forgot both fiddle and crowbar; he surrendered himself to those exercises of piety from which he had never wavered. The foolish have denounced him for a hypocrite, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... was a good while clearing up, while Jack's temper came and went like a flash, and the air was all the clearer for the escape of dangerous electricity. Of course Mamma had to stop and deliver a little lecture, illustrated by sad tales of petulant boys, and punctuated with kisses which took off the edge of these ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... literary production—the time of Hawthorne and Poe—to our own time, and, like Nestor, he reigned among the third generation. As far as the world knows, the shadow of a literary quarrel never fell on him; he was without envy or jealousy, incurious of his own place, never vain, petulant, or severe. He was even too good-humoured, and the worst thing I have heard of him is that he could never say "no" to ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Lessingham's, calling to Matthews from the staircase, though, for an instant, I hardly recognised it, it was so curiously petulant. Pushing past Matthews, I stepped into the hall. A young man, I suppose a footman, in the same undress as Matthews, was holding a candle,—it seemed the only light about the place. By its glimmer ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Worth's laconic answer sent the blood of healthy anger into her face, made her eyes shine. And it brought from Ina Vandeman a petulant, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... from selling the bedsteads and other furniture. She had nothing with which to buy food and while we were walking the streets we smelt the delicious odor of food from the restaurants and became whining and petulant. This was the first time mother had ever heard her children crying for bread when she had none to give them. The experience was trying, but her stout heart faced it calmly. In the Old World, her folks and father's folks had been rated as ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... the other hand, he saw a sombre picture, the miry verge beyond these faces, in which passion was extinct and nothing was left of the drama but the cords and pulleys and bare mechanism. Mme. de Beauseant's counsels, the words uttered in anger by the forsaken lady, her petulant offer, came to his mind, and poverty was a ready expositor. Rastignac determined to open two parallel trenches so as to insure success; he would be a learned doctor of law and a man of fashion. Clearly he was still a child! Those two lines ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which through' the poem, or through the music, we attain to but ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and now in his banishment from heaven he finds but cold entertainment here on earth, nay, is denied all admittance into the court of princes, where notwithstanding my handmaid Flattery finds a most encouraging welcome: but this petulant monitor being thrust out of doors, the gods can now more freely rant and revel, and take their whole swinge ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... at the paper. Mr. Blunt threw one of the doors open, but before we passed through it we heard a petulant exclamation accompanied by childlike stamping with both feet and ending in a laugh which had in ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... difference in her own feeling; and the vision of herself as the mother of the future Marquis de Chelles was softened to happiness by the thought of giving Raymond a son. But all these lightly-rooted sentiments went down in the rush of her resentment, and she freed herself with a petulant movement. "Oh, my dear, you'd better leave it to your brother to perpetuate the race. There'll be more room for nurseries ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... persevering in her pursuits, but prone to resentment on every trifling occasion, and still subject to finding herself cause for repentance. On these occasions Miss Campbell conducted herself with composure and dignity, as if she considered a petulant child below the notice of a sensible woman: by this means the pride of the culprit was humbled; she was taught to retread her first steps, and perceive that she was an insignificant being, obliged to the suffrage of her friends, and only capable of being valuable in proportion to her docility and ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... home to-night, though, Miss Judith," said another voice, in a coaxing, wheedling tone, such as one uses towards petulant children. "He's coming home to-night, sure enough!" It was a pleasant voice, with a strong, capable ring about it. One instinctively felt that the possessor of it was a woman to be ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... bullyragging on the part of one of his subordinates seemed indeed a spiritless creature. Meanwhile Lincoln, apparently devoid of sensibility, was seeking during the anxious months of 1862, in one case, merely how to keep his petulant Secretary in harness; in the other, how to quicken ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... Princess Marguerite, heartless, proud, and petulant, received the cold addresses of Henry with still more chilling indifference. She refused to make even the slightest concessions to his religious views, and, though she made no objection to the decidedly politic partnership, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Adams himself. There was no abler, more honest, or more patriotic man in public life; yet in the presidency he was, especially at this juncture of affairs, a misfit. He was cold and reserved when every consideration called for cordiality; he was petulant when tolerance and good humor were the qualities most needful. He could neither arouse enthusiasm nor win friends. He was large visioned and adept at mapping out broad policies, but he lacked the elements of leadership requisite to carry his plans into ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... upon the ground—glancing, with a petulant expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I saw you were still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the little alley called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with the overlapping and riveted ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... actualities by a light touch on the sleeve of my shirt, and a half-laughing, half-petulant voice ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... jackdaws, too, from their resting-places, and sent them sailing about in the clear sunny air, their black forms reflected from the moat, and their sharp, petulant cries sounding like protests against ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... wreathe in my raven hair jewels the rarest That ever illumined the brow of a queen, I should think the least one that were wanting, the fairest, And pout at their lustre in petulant spleen. Tho' the diamond should lighten there, regal in splendor, The topaz its sunny glow shed o'er the curl, And the emerald's ray tremble, timid and tender— If the pearl were not by, I should sigh for ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... loving, and of appreciating love. During the first year, Lillie had often seemed to herself in a sort of wild, chaotic state. The coming in of a strange new spiritual life was something so inexplicable to her that it agitated and distressed her; and sometimes, when she appeared more petulant and fretful than usual, it was only the stir and vibration on her weak nerves of new feelings, which she wanted the power to express. These emotions at first were painful to her. She felt weak, miserable, and ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... have some things very pretty indeed," said Matty, in rather a petulant tone; for she could not bear that any fault should be found with her beautiful cottage. "I'm sure that the porcelain jars on the mantelpiece are fit for the palace of a princess; and just look at my gilded French mirror, and my ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... who had raised the difficulty partly out of half-petulant contradiction, 'I am pretty sure it will be Jass. I don't think Lady Myrtle noticed me much, and I don't want to go. I don't like her; at least I don't care about her unless she could be made nice to you. And any way she wouldn't ask me questions, ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... the afternoon, when the young painter regained his own studio, he threw himself upon his battered sofa with a sigh of relief that was half-petulant. He had had an afternoon doubly successful; for he had taken a long-contemplated plunge. In his pocket was another whole year of frugality; or a month, one little month, of extravagance. His question now was, which should it be? If he took a scholarship with either of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... and eager for admiration; ecstatic about trifles, frivolous in her tastes, and weak and wavering in performing her duties; if her religious observances are merely the formality of lip service; if she be petulant to her friends, pert and disrespectful to her parents, overbearing to her inferiors; if pride, vanity, and affectation be her characteristics; if she be inconstant in her friendships; gaudy and slovenly, rather ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... least, must be to keep to it for life. An easy short cut to freedom would tempt too many from the harder but nobler way of compromise, conciliation, and self-subordination. If one is weak and erring, or petulant and unkind, the other must patiently and lovingly seek to help, to educate, to uplift; seventy times seven times is not too often for forgiveness; and many a marriage that seemed hopelessly wrecked has been saved by magnanimity and tactful affection. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... on his days of grand reviews and grand diplomatic audiences. I never saw him more condescending, more agreeable, or, at least, less offensive, than on the day of his last levee, before he set out to be inaugurated a King of Italy; nor worse tempered, more petulant, agitated, abrupt, and rude than at his first grand audience after his arrival from Milan, when this ceremony had been performed. I am not the only one who has made this remark; he did not disguise either his good or ill-humour; and it was only requisite to have eyes ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... another. It seemed like some lost spirit of the night. It passed within ten feet of the scouts, never noticing them. It seemed intent with a kind of diabolical intentness. Meanwhile the voice continued, now mournful, now petulant, now clear, now modulated, according to the ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Why name your loss? All that Minna could lose is not Minna. You are still the sweetest, dearest, loveliest, best creature under the sun; all goodness and generosity, innocence and bliss! Now and then a little petulant; at times somewhat wilful—so much the better! So much the better! Minna would otherwise be an angel, whom I should honour with trepidation, but not dare to love. (Takes her ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... No. 9, is the first one of those tone studies of Chopin in which the mood is more petulant than tempestuous. The melody is morbid, almost irritating, and yet not without certain accents of grandeur. There is a persistency in repetition that foreshadows the Chopin of the later, sadder years. The figure in the left hand is the first in which a prominent ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... low and the sky was dull; there was just enough water to lap against the sides of the boat, and make it rock up and down. The boat fretted like a petulant child, and pulled at the rope as a dog pulls against its chain, but it could not get away, for ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... this: refusing a small favor asked of me,—nothing more than telling what had happened at school one morning. No matter who asked it; but there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no heart to speak;—I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away, and the first battle of life was lost. What remorse followed I need not tell. Then and there, to the best of my knowledge, I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned my ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of words, the schoolboy's vain parade, Of books and cases—all his stock in trade— The pert conceits, the cunning tricks and play Of low attorneys, strung in long array, The unseemly jest, the petulant reply, That chatters on, and cares not how, or why, Strictly avoid—unworthy themes to scan, They sink the speaker and disgrace the man, Like the false lights, by flying shadows cast, Scarce seen when present and ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... will—which regulates the lives of us poor men no less than the motions of the stars, and binds the whole universe, high and low, into one system: and we may have arrived at the blessed wish to conform with this law rather than to strive and kick against the pricks and waste our short time in petulant rebellion. So far, so good: but how are we to know the law? How, with the best will in the world, are we to distinguish order from disorder? What assurance have we, after striving to bring ourselves into obedience, that we have succeeded? ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the loveliest creature he had ever seen. Yes; she was the golden girl of his dreams. Within his grasp, so to speak, and yet he could not hope to seize her, after all. Was she meant for that popinjay youth with the petulant eye and the sullen jaw? Was he to be the lucky ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Inconveniencies which Writers for the Stage labour under, besides 'tis observable, that an obsequious prolifick Muse generally meets with a worse Reception than a petulant inanimate Author; and when a Poet has finished his Labours, so that he has brought his Play upon the Stage, the best Performance has oftentimes the worst Success, for which I need only instance ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... chieftain's banner in an ancient battle, may be seen any sederunt day betwixt nine and ten, high towering above all the fluctuating and changeful scene in the Outer House, where his eccentricities often make him the centre of a group of petulant and teasing boys, who exercise upon him every art of ingenious torture. His countenance, originally that of a portly, comely burgess, is now emaciated with poverty and anxiety, and rendered wild by an insane lightness about the eyes; a withered and blighted skin and complexion; ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Do not throw away my letter in despair of your friend, dearest Mary; only read to the end, and perhaps my character may be in some measure redeemed. There was a weight on my spirits I could not, because I would not, remove. I became ill-tempered and petulant without cause; before papa and mamma I tried to restrain it, but did not always succeed. Percy and Herbert both spoke to me on this unwarrantable change; and I think almost for the first time in my life I saw ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... month Ralph's money ran out, and then he was petulant and often upbraided her. Those were the only times when he essayed to study, and he would not walk with her of evenings, so destitute. Then Fanchette amused her: "Sew in my room," she would say; "Ralph will come for you at eight o'clock." But Ralph never went, and Fanchette poisoned his little ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... matter with me: I wish I did. Somehow, I don't feel satisfied with myself or anyone else, and I half believe I hate everybody," was Toinette's petulant reply. ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... suggested a turn in the village to stretch our limbs before dining. But he would have none of it, and when I pressed the point with sound reasoning touching the benefits which health may cull from exercise, he grew petulant as a wayward child. She might descend whilst he was absent. Indeed, she might require some slight service that lay, perchance, in his power to render her. What an opportunity would he not lose ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... spark of malice, as though Rainham were aware that his suggested topic was not without attraction to his friend. He was a slight man of middle height, and of no apparent distinction, and his face with all its petulant lines of lassitude and ill-health—the wear and tear of forty years having done with him the work of fifty—struck one who saw Philip Rainham for the first time by nothing so much as by his ugliness. And yet few persons who knew him would ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... fit of petulant anger Jack had followed the man's suggestion, caught up a heavy Greek lexicon, and thrown it with all his might, or rather with all his weakness, at the servant's head. Edward ducked down, and the book went through the glass of one of the cases; and at the same moment ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... tales and traditions afford an artless picture of the men and the times. Yet his narrative is too often defective, trifling, and improbable. Till something better shall be found, his learned and spiritual interpreter (Ockley, in his History of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 21-342) will not deserve the petulant animadversion of Reiske, (Prodidagmata ad Magji Chalifae Tabulas, p. 236.) I am sorry to think that the labors of Ockley were consummated in a jail, (see his two prefaces to the 1st A.D. 1708, to the 2d, 1718, with the list of authors at ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... shoulder, and was as much bewildered as he by what I saw. Cloudy as was the night, glimpses of something white appeared everywhere, going and coming, or flopping fitfully about. There were odd sounds, too, as of soft footfalls, and now and then low, petulant cries. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... but he was only gazing down, rather cross-eyed, on his grizzled mustache, with an obvious petulant interest in the increase of white hairs in it. Evidently his had been but a chance shot. 'Niram stepped up on the grass at the edge of the porch. He was so tall that he overtopped the railing easily, and, reaching a long ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... hand? The nosegay hung incomprehensibly on Midwinter's mind as he walked round, on the chance of meeting Allan, to the back of the house. "What does the nosegay mean?" he asked himself, with an unintelligible sense of irritation, and a petulant kick at a stone that ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... means of the political or religious veto.(28) The revolution hadswept away thesebarriers; andin consequence that absurd system now began fully to develop its results, and to put it in the power of any petulant knave to overthrow the state in due form of law. What was under such circumstances more natural, more necessary, more truly conservative, than now to recognize formally and expressly the legislation of the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... man, she thought, there was little to fear; but there was nothing to love. If she asked, he would give, if she opposed him, he would surrender, if she lost her temper and commanded, he would obey with petulant docility. She should be obliged to take refuge in vanity in order to get any satisfaction out of her life, and she was not naturally vain. The luxuries of those days were familiar to her from her childhood. Though she had not lived in a palace, she had ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... curtsey to death. I am standing at Stella's bedside, and the white-capped nurse has gone. There are dim lights about the room, and heavy carts lumber by in the dawn without. A petulant sparrow ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... all my remaining youth and vigor to have laid my burning hands upon the back of her cool, round neck, and to feel that bright, silk, golden mane enveloping me and caressing my skin. I was never tired of hearing her disdainful, petulant voice, those vibrations which sounded as if they proceeded from clear glass, whose music, at times, became hoarse, harsh, and fierce, like the loud, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... yourself how vain it was to argue with my father. The despair that seized upon me after such an interview was, besides, embittered by remorse; for I was at times petulant, but he invariably gentle; and I was fighting, after all, for my own liberty and pleasure, he singly for what he thought to be my good. And all the time he never despaired. "There is good stuff in you, Loudon," ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... accountant arrogant assailant assistant attendant clairvoyant combatant recreant consonant conversant defendant descendent discordant elegant exorbitant important incessant irrelevant luxuriant malignant petulant pleasant poignant reluctant stagnant triumphant vagrant ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... her name painted in letters ten feet high along each side of her hull, flanked on both sides by the Norwegian flag, also painted. Her crew, leaning over the side, surveyed the quay curiously. So this was war—this petulant horse with its soldier rider, these ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... deposited in them. Even the tiny cow-bell, which once served to warn Dame Trippew of the advent of a customer, still hung from a bit of curved iron on the inner side of the street-door, and continued to give out a petulant, spasmodic jingle whenever that door was opened, however cautiously. If the good soul could have returned to the scene of her terrestrial commerce, she might have resumed business at the old stand ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... wrong, but I was young and petulant, and probably wrote down anything, little thinking that those observations would be betrayed to the author, whose abilities I have always respected, and whose works in general I have read oftener than perhaps those of any ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... and make the thing pay, and then buy a place in the Marquesas or Samoa in a few years, and die in comfort. During the night the mosquitoes worried him incessantly, until one of the coloured ladies, who slept on the ground in the next room, hearing his petulant exclamations, brought him a dirty piece of rag, soaked in kerosene, and told him to anoint his hair, face and hands with it. He did so, and then ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... crisis in her petulant obstinacy came, when she wouldn't sit still to have her hair combed, and it looked like a "hurrah's nest," her brother Bob said. All her naughtiness came right out then. She rolled one eye entirely up in her head, and left it there, and stared so wild with the other, that Sirena ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... preparation room, and Penny sighed, as much as to say: "What a pity little boys are so petulant and quarrelsome." But the victory was his, as it always was, and he could think of other things. There was a clock on the wall behind him, but, too comfortable to turn ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... be humane, generous, and candid is a very high degree of merit in any case, but those qualities deserve still greater praise when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... The next morning, the surgeon having reported that Schriften was apparently quite recovered, he was summoned into the cabin. His frame was wasted away to a skeleton, but his motions and his language were as sharp and petulant as ever. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sulkily, swinging his head in petulant irritation, "I must have meat, no matter where it comes from; I can't starve." There was a covert threat in the Dog-Wolf's voice, but Shag did not notice it—his mind was above ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death. You'd see me with my puffy petulant face, Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel, Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap," I'd say—"I used to know his father well; Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap." And when the war is done and youth stone dead, I'd toddle ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... he stood watching for the one which took him nearest to his door, that he made the slight reflection with which this story opens. "Could I make a horse-car the hero of my story?" he asked himself, with a petulant tone, as he thought how dismally dull he was. The jingling car came up, and he jumped upon the rear platform, wedged his way through the men and boys who crowded the steps and platform, and so pushed into the interior. He found half a dozen men in various attitudes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... There was Millicent, aged fourteen, upon whom sat a weight of care, for it was her task to look after and amuse the other three, viz., her two brothers Harry and Arthur, aged ten and eight respectively, and little Beatrice, aged five. The children seemed altogether out of sorts, they were cross, petulant, teasing, and would settle to nothing. At last Milly thought of the toys indoors, and said, "Now we will go and have a good ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... dropped on his breast, and the perfume of her hair in his nostrils drove him mad. Then the tense bulk of her body struck against him, and horror filled his soul. One second he held her, the next, Jimmy smothering under the hay, threw up an arm, and called like a petulant child, "Dannie! Make shun quit shinish ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... blind man. He has a cruel stepmother and a selfish, petulant younger brother. This boy, the pet of his parents, treated Shun with insolence; and the father and mother joined in persecuting the elder son. Shun, without showing resentment, cried aloud to Heaven and obtained [Page 74] patience to bear their harshness. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... thou with all this gold?" said Adam, in a petulant, reproachful tone. "Put it up! put it up! Never let the poor see gold; it tempts them, sir,—it tempts them." And so saying, the student abruptly turned away his eyes, and moved towards the garden. Marmaduke rose and put himself in Adam's way. "Honoured sir," said the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... man, I didn't mean it," Jack began contritely, referring perhaps to his petulant speech, rather than to his mode of making his presence known. "But—come over here in the shade, and let's have it out once for all. I know you aren't stuck up over being majordomo, but all the same you're ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... century suspended the intercourse, without reconciling the minds, of the two nations. But when the Norman sword restored the churches of Apulia to the jurisdiction of Rome, the departing flock was warned, by a petulant epistle of the Greek patriarch, to avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins. The rising majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by the pope's legates. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Ferdinand opportunely died (1516), and the Algerine Moors seized their chance. They stopped the tribute, and called in the aid of Salim, the neighbouring Arab sheykh, whose clansmen would make the city safe on the land side. "But what are they to do with the two hundred petulant and vexatious Spaniards in the fort, who incessantly pepper the town with their cannon, and make the houses too hot to hold them; especially when they are hungry? Little would the gallant Arab cavalry, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... brain clamored that there was more behind it all than mere witless repetition. John Anderson was smiling at her, too, smiling like a benevolent wraith. She saw that his pile of clay was still untouched, but there was no hint of petulant perplexity in his face, nothing of the terrified impotence which the inactivity of his fingers had always heralded before. He was just smiling—vaguely to be sure and a little uncertainly—but smiling in utter contentment and satisfaction, for ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... food they could afford, and rested every moment her duties permitted. The economy they were now compelled to practice amounted almost to daily privation. Belle and the children were often a little petulant over this change, Mrs. Jocelyn apathetic, but Mildred was inflexible. "We must not run in debt one penny," she would often remark ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... enveloped in a further reflected glory, due also to Jowett's kindness—a kindness which survived many outbursts of what I thought somewhat petulant disapproval. I received from him one day a curt invitation to dinner, and presented myself, wondering mildly to what this mark of favor could be due. But wonder turned to alarm when, on entering ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... I am your friend. How dare you call me names?" demanded Marion, taking the petulant girl in her arms. "Don't you think I care anything about you? There are people in this country that you have never seen who know you and love you almost as much as I do. Don't let any silly pride prevent your being sensible, dear." Dicksie burst ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... be that he should halt and hesitate so long!" he exclaimed in a nervous and almost a petulant tone, as he paced up and down the back parlor one evening, after having had a talk with the little mother. "I am sure if ever I had faith for any one in the ...
— Three People • Pansy
... and apology the boys felt themselves decidedly aggrieved that they were not at once ushered in to supper. Mr Ashford, however, being a mortal of only limited perception, required a good deal more information; and a painful and somewhat petulant cross-examination ensued, the result of which was that our heroes were informed they were not to be trusted, that both Mr and Mrs Ashford were disappointed in them, that they ought to be ashamed of themselves, and that they would hear more ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... embarrassment, and, if one looked in her face for any sign of the emotions she had experienced, or the scenes in which she had played no feeble part, one sought in vain. Gaiety covered the melancholy, almost sombre depths in her character. And it was the gaiety of her French mother—petulant, reckless, irresistible, giddy, uncertain. As a child, dressed up in ribbons and lace, with flowers in her hair, she had been the chief amusement and plaything of Madame Duboc—to be held on her lap, perched upon the piano, placed on high cushions in the carriage, and ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... rested in startled surprise on her lowered profile. The straight delicate features, slightly foreign, the fair hair rippling from the neck, were disconcertingly familiar. But when Nance saw her full face, with the petulant mouth and ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... padding—strength in the lean lithe figure; but it was always brute strength. There was no moral strength whatever in the restless fidgeting—the savage winding and unwinding of his left foot around the saber scabbard, or the attitude, leaning forward over the table, of petulant pugnacity. And the cruel voice was as weak as the hand was strong with which he rapped ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... was the most splendid creature I ever saw, and nothing could exceed the grace of his movements, the charm of his manner. He fascinated everybody who was worth fascinating, and a great many people who were not. He was often wilful and petulant, and I used to think him dreadfully insincere. It was due, I think, chiefly to his inordinate desire to please. Poor Cyril! I told him once that he was contented with very cheap triumphs, but he only laughed. He was horribly spoiled. All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... low over the hand to hide his dissatisfaction: he felt a bit old to be treated like a petulant, teasing child.... ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... her sentence. Sarah Bird brought in a letter, and with a petulant exclamation Margaret Brackett ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... household on the Knap became again serene under the composing influences of daily routine. A desultory, very desultory correspondence, dragged on between Sally Hall and Darton, who, not quite knowing how to take her petulant words on the night of her brother's death, had continued passive thus long. Helena and her children remained at the dairy-house, almost of necessity, and Darton therefore deemed it advisable ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... live there. What could he do against them? What under the sun could one tired-out old man accomplish in a situation that every American knows to be simply impossible?" She looked hard at her husband's thoughtful face and threw herself against him with a petulant gesture. "Now, Neale, don't go and justify him! Don't say you ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... consciousness manifested itself in a hazy and quite detached perception that I was being violently shaken by the shoulder; while a voice, pitched in aggrieved and petulant tones—which I presently recognised as those of the lad, Julius—exhorted me to "Wake up!" At first these exhortations produced no particular effect upon me. I was aware of them, but that was all; they had no definite meaning so far as I was concerned. I did ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... hundred games, in which he has held both bowers and the ace of trumps—or something equally victorious—I should say fourteen hundred times. Oh!" she cried, with an expression of loathing, "may I never, never, never see a card again as long as I live!" John laughed without restraint, and after a petulant little ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... "You are petulant to-day, Eustace," she said; "or you would not accuse me so wrongfully; nay, you have been very, I must say it, very disagreeable of late, and followed your own selfish amusements, leaving me to wander about alone like a forsaken ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... falling, screamed aloud, and by that exclamation brought Hatchway with a light into the chamber. Though she had received no injury by the fall, she was extremely discomposed and incensed at the accident, which she even openly ascribed to the obstinacy and whimsical oddity of the commodore, in such petulant terms as evidently declared that she thought her great aim accomplished, and her authority secured against all the shocks of fortune. Indeed her bedfellow seemed to be of the same opinion, by his tacit resignation; for he made no reply to ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... countenance, opened the brougham. An elderly lady, richly dressed, with diamonds sparkling in her gray hair, came rustling down the steps, bringing with her faint odours of patchouly and violet-powder. She was followed by a girl of doll-like prettiness, with a snub nose and petulant little mouth, who held up her satin-and-lace skirts with a sort of fastidious disdain, as though she scorned to set foot on earth that was not carpeted with the best velvet pile. As they approached their ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... Major Stanleigh and I were to discover, the fellow seemed to have developed a genuine affection for Lakalatcha, as the smoking cone was called by the natives of the adjoining islands. From long association he had come to know its whims and moods as one comes to know those of a petulant woman one lives with. It was a bizarre and preposterous intimacy, in which Leavitt seemed to find a wholly acceptable substitute for human society, and there was something repellant about the man's eccentricity. He had various names for the smoking cone that towered a mile or more above ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... petulant exclamation which was rising to her lips. She was conscious of a curious desire to win her queer young companion's goodwill ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... do listen to me, I am very very sorry to have offended you, and will not, if I can help it, laugh at you again," she said, much grieved at his petulant behaviour. ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... Yes: there is no use your tossing your head in that petulant manner. It is quite true. In the best days of art there were no art-critics. The sculptor hewed from the marble block the great white-limbed Hermes that slept within it. The waxers and gilders of images gave tone and texture to the statue, and the world, when it saw it, worshipped ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... anything I ever heard from "April's bird." I even doubted the author till I saw him. The thin and worn looking mother who had him in charge worked without ceasing, while the open-mouthed infant lifted up his voice and wept in a way so petulant and persistent as to completely disguise its sweet bluebird quality. Now this charming youngster, bearing heaven's color on his wings, with speckled bib and shoulder-cape, and honest, innocent eyes, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... argument that he could not go to Peekskill with her met with a petulant response. She made it plain to him that she realised his preference for the children and that she was no longer of any use to him as a companion or helpmate. For her own part, she'd like to see them all in Jericho—meaning the children, of course. ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... Louis was too frightened to face them. He was too shy to go downstairs to carry up water or coal for Marcella, and she had to do it herself; in the undermined state of his nerves it was torture to him to face people, and he became petulant if asked to do what he called "menial tasks." Marcella understood him: Mrs. King had no hesitation in saying ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... about five that night. Here was Miss Lydia, cool and negligent on the porch, like she'd never had a care in the world; fresh dressed in something white and blue, with her niftiest hammock stockings, and tinkling the ukulele in a bored and petulant manner. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... and now began the holiday of both governess and pupil. They loved one another so well that the prospect of six weeks' close companionship was irksome to neither; but Emilie had not a holiday of it altogether. Miss Edith was exacting and petulant at times, even with those she loved, and she loved none better than Emilie. Fred, the tormenting brother of whom Edith had spoken in her list of troubles in our first chapter, was undeniably troublesome; and the three maid-servants set themselves from the very first to resist the ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... all right," said Wait, with eagerness. "Been sick... better... turn-to now." He sighed.—"Howly Mother!" exclaimed Belfast with a heave of the shoulders, "stand up, Jimmy."—"Keep away from me then," said Wait, giving Belfast a petulant push, and reeling fetched against the doorpost. His cheekbones glistened as though they had been varnished. He snatched off his night-cap, wiped his perspiring face with it, flung it on the deck. "I am coming out," ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... they fail of giving a fair representation of the poet, serve at least to characterise the critic,) could have won upon her only by a seeming air of profundity, by their utter contempt of perspicuous language, and a petulant disregard of even that rhythm, or regulated harmony, which has been supposed to distinguish verse from prose. For very manifest reasons, however, these are not the occasions on which we prefer to test the critical powers of Mrs Margaret Fuller. It is more advisable to observe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... round, as if seeking some way of escape or some place to hide. Joe was in the doorway holding aside one of the curtains. There entered, in a beribboned and beflounced tea gown, a pretty, if rather ordinary, woman of forty, with a petulant baby face. She was trying to look reserved and severe. She hardly glanced at me before fastening sharp, suspicious eyes ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... mauve and gold, the conversation turned upon the gossip of the preceding days. Miss Verne had not sufficiently recruited from the dissipation attendant upon a large assemblage, given by a lady friend in honor of some relative who had arrived from Ottawa. She was inclined to be resentful and petulant, and found fault with everything, from the delicious hot coffee and tempting rolls to the generous sunbeam that danced in at the opposite window, and it increased her anger so that she could scarcely restrain herself in ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... were none but few goodlier than he) Shining in arms, 'Damsel, the quest is mine. Lead, and I follow.' She thereat, as one That smells a foul-fleshed agaric in the holt, And deems it carrion of some woodland thing, Or shrew, or weasel, nipt her slender nose With petulant thumb and finger, shrilling, 'Hence! Avoid, thou smellest all of kitchen-grease. And look who comes behind,' for there was Kay. 'Knowest thou not me? thy master? I am Kay. We ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... if it could be called a recovery, to a state of only tolerable physical health, and a condition of pitiable mental apathy and languor. She turned with a half-weary, half-petulant distaste from her former pursuits and pleasures, and abandoned her profession with a sort of terror,—feeling that its mockery of sorrows, such as had fallen so crushingly on her unchastened heart, would madden her utterly. But neither could she endure again the constraint ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... obedience, part as though she had been thrust there. What was this? Why was she rejected? Had she ceased to please? She stood here offering her wares, and he would none of them! And yet they were all his! His to take and keep, not his to refuse though! In her quick petulant nature, a moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted love and wounded vanity wrought. The schoolmaster that there is in all men, to the despair of all girls and most women, was now completely in possession of Archie. He had ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... secretary, and his letter is a fine example of the mode of humouring a great man. Be it remembered, as we read, that this letter was not addressed to one of the greatest names in literature, but to a petulant and often peevish scholar, living of necessity in great retirement, whose name is never once mentioned by Clarendon, and about whom the voluminous Thurloe, who must have seen him hundreds of times, has nothing to say except that he was "a blind man who wrote Latin letters." ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... direction of his own party with every step. Time and again had Devers, still fuming with nervous tension and mingled wrath and pain,—hungry and savage, too, it must be borne in mind,—given vent to some petulant expression because of the non-arrival of the young officer whom he saw fit to hold responsible for the loss of his men; and when at last Mr. Davies neared them, riding diagonally towards the troop ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... not answer; silently she sank into her chair as her mother appeared with the baby and took her usual place, after placing him in his high chair. Maizie gazed for a moment at the oatmeal in her own blue plate, then with a little petulant gesture, ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... proposals emanate from Simla as regards some artificial future for the Eurasian. One Ten-thousand-pounder asks Creation in a petulant tone of surprise why Creation does not make the Eurasian a carpenter; another looks round the windy hills and wonders why somebody does not make the Eurasian a high farmer. The shovel hats are surprised that the Eurasian ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... a clamorous multitude the timidity of recluse speculation, and has never hardened his front in publick life, or accustomed his passions to the vicissitudes and accidents, the triumphs and defeats of mixed conversation, will blush at the stare of petulant incredulity, and suffer himself to be driven by a burst of laughter, from the fortresses of demonstration. The mechanist will be afraid to assert before hardy contradiction, the possibility of tearing down bulwarks ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the heart of Adele, and her tongue is loosened to a little petulant, fiery roulade against the severities of the life around her, which it would have greatly pained poor Rose to listen to in any speech of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... me, for a moment, but his mind, I could see, was intent on the page along which Whinnie's stubbled finger was crawling like a plowshare beside each furrow of text. He was in the South Pacific, a thousand miles away from me. In my own house Struthers was putting a petulant-voiced Poppsy to bed, and Gershom, up in his room, was making extraordinary smells at his chemistry experiments. Susie I found curled comfortably up in front of the fire, idling over my first volume of ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... still petulant, blaming him for Layson's unexpected lack of warmth. "Yes, but you needn't ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... red wagon with a real seat that she had seen in a thick catalogue sent her mother by a store in a distant city. So she never moved till late in the afternoon, when the gentle breeze strengthened to a sharp wind that, with a petulant gust, whirled her sailor across the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... the sailing moon, in the tangled net, with the leopards beside him, Snared like a wild young red-lipped merman, wilful, petulant, flushed he lay; While Silver and Hook in their big sea-boots and their boat-cloaks guarded and gleefully eyed him, Thinking what Bacchus might do for a seaman, like standing him drinks, as ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Pont l'Eveque, a pleasant village not far from Honfleur, in that rich pastoral part of Lower Normandy called the Pays d'Auge. Annette was the pride and delight of her parents, and was brought up with the fondest indulgence. She was gay, tender, petulant, and susceptible. All her feelings were quick and ardent; and having never experienced contradiction or restraint, she was little practised in self-control: nothing but the native goodness of her heart kept her from running ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... no stones but the dry flints he found close to the wall would strike sparks; but, careless, improvident, petulant child of nature that he was, he exhausted the supply, and one day, too indolent to search his hunting-tracts to regain the necessary two, he endeavored to draw fire from a pair that he dug from the moist earth, and failing, threw them with all his strength at the rocky wall. One of ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... and ever-varying whims of the peevish convalescent, whose powers of self-control have been prostrated by long bodily exhaustion. Nothing is more trying than to find anxious exertions for their comfort and amusement, either entirely unnoticed and useless, or met with petulant contradiction and ungrateful irritation. Those who have themselves experienced the helplessness caused by disease well know how bitterly the trial is shared by the invalid herself. How deeply she often mourns ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... petulant note in her voice which told Harold that it would be useless to question her. He smoked his pipe and listened, and, in her low musical and so well-modulated voice, she continued her tale about herself, M. Delacour, La Voix du Peuple, and M. Darres. Her conversation was full of names and ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... to Miss Marjoribanks, the old physician's daughter. Nettie was not moved by these demonstrations, which showed her sway still undiminished over the doctor's angry and jealous heart. She did not regard the petulant shows of pretended indifference by which a more experienced young woman might have consoled herself. She had enough to do, now that the unsuspected stimulus of her life was withdrawn for the moment, to go on steadily without making any outward show of it. She had come to the first real ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... screech owl in a voice not unlike his. It always seems to me that the night hunters of pasture and woodland bewail the passing of such a night as much as I do. The whippoor-will began to voice his petulant wistfulness again. He had been silent for hours, feasting I dare say on myriad moths and unable to call with his mouth full. The whippoor-will chants matins as querulously as he does vespers. Far in the east the stars that had been gleaming ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... piece of meat, either raw or cooked). Then there is the very natural expression for pain or sickness—ah-ah. Many words seem to indicate the meaning by imitating the action or sound to be described, as the motion of the kittewake when it swoops down toward you with its petulant cry, is well described by the word e-sow'-ook-suck'-too and the vibratory motion of a ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... river's brink for the night, the frost and dew and wind will kill me; and if I climb this hill to yonder thicket, I fear a savage beast will eat me while I slumber." It is well to be careful, O Ulysses, in these wild solitudes; now let the petulant outburst just given, be preparatory to an act of will which will settle the problem. "He rose and went to the wood near by; he crept under two bushes that grew from the same place, one the wild and the other the tame olive." There in a heap of leaves—man's ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... an answer, unable to speak, not now from pity, but from shame of my own petulant ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... sudden ebullitions, Flashes of fun, and little bursts of song; Petulant, pains, and fleeting pale contritions, Mute little moods of misery and wrong. Only a girl of Nature's rarest making, Wistful and sweet—and ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... had asked him several times why he didn't go, and had finally grown so petulant that Peter had started, wondering how much he'd have to pay and what excuse he was to make for wanting it himself. His instructions were not to lie, but get it somehow without using the Colonel's name. Finding Ruby Ann alone, he began, "I say, do you make any sales before ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... for?' said the young lady, with again a lift of her eyes which expressed a little disdain and a little impatience. But she saw Pitt's face with a thoughtful earnestness upon it; he was not watching her eyes, as he ought to have been. Her somewhat petulant words ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... To spiritual lessons pointed home, And as through dreams in watches of the night, So through all creatures in their form and ways Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant, Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense Inviting to new knowledge, one with old. Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler? Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye. Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird, Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light, Thirsting in that ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... His rather petulant speech caused her to withdraw her hands, her wide eyes sending a glance of wounded pride up into his. That look of reproach haunted him the whole night long. Even in the next moment he sought to withdraw the unintentional sting from his words by the gentle reminder that he would come ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... promised to be of so great service to his country would, in the approaching struggle, be exerted in behalf of its entirety and honor. Southern 'chivalry' in him was exhibited in a nobler and more amiable light than in his more petulant and less generous colleagues. A certain graceful dignity was united with the most attractive felicity of manner, and one could not help regarding him, when viewed in private society, as a perfect model of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was joking. This was some odd prank. He had borrowed the tin trunk and was giving me a travesty on Tip Pulsifer fleeing over the mountain from his petulant spouse: for last night Tim and I had had a little tiff. For the first time I had forgotten the post-prandial pipe, and undismayed by the horrors of the famine in India or the tribulations of Sister Flora Martin, journeyed up the road ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... does not recognize and therefore isolates the pudic and hidden side of life, together with the poetry it contains. He has a multitude of rapid remarks about old maids and old women, ugly girls, sickly women, sacrificed and devoted mistresses, old bachelors, misers. One wonders where, with his petulant imagination, he can have picked it all up. It is true that Monsieur de Balzac does not proceed with sureness, and that in his numerous productions, some of which appear to us almost admirable, at any rate touching and delicious or piquant and finely comic in observation, there is a dreadful ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Himself, and in essence are, in various fashions, the repetition of this prayer of my text: 'Be ... for Thou art,' that we can expect to have them answered. Much else may call itself prayer, but it is often but petulant and self-willed endeavour to force our wishes upon Him, and no answer will come to that. We are to pray about everything; but we are to pray about nothing, except within the lines which are marked out for us by what God has told ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the realities which had been unrighteously overturned. Thorpe's dry-eyed, burning, almost mad insistence on the importance of the day's task had not its ordinary force. They looked upon him from a standpoint apart, calmly, dispassionately, as one looks on a petulant child. The grim call of tragedy had lifted them above ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... himself an importance greater even than that of the Grand Master. His house immediately became the rallying place of all the young French chevaliers. They informed him of all the slights they had experienced or imagined, and indulged their petulant and satirical vein at the expense of the honorate and their admirers. The chevaliers of other nations soon found the topics and tone of conversation at the commander's irksome and offensive, and gradually ceased to visit ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Summoning all my resolution, I repaired without my uncle's knowledge to the poet's house at an early hour, and after much difficulty was admitted to his room. He was still in bed. Every body has heard of Byron's peevishness, when disturbed or intruded on. He demanded my business in a petulant and offensive tone. I replied, respectfully, that on the preceding day I loaned him a silver pencil,—strongly emphasizing and repeating the word silver,—which, I was grieved to say, he forgot to return. Byron reflected a moment, and then declared ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... me," replied Harry, flattered but still petulant. "You are like an iceberg, when ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Nay, he will suffer from what has been said of him, when it is forgotten by those who said or heard it. For this Reason I could never bear one of those officious Friends, that would be telling every malicious Report, every idle Censure that [passed [4]] upon me. The Tongue of Man is so petulant, and his Thoughts so variable, that one should not lay too great a Stress upon any present Speeches and Opinions. Praise and Obloquy proceed very frequently out of the same Mouth upon the same Person, and upon the same Occasion. A generous Enemy will sometimes bestow ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the boy write them? He neither knew nor cared to know anything of the world, and, we fear, cannot he credited with a philanthropic desire to reform it. The answer is given partly by himself, that he was full of petulant spleen, [10]—an honest confession,—partly is to be found in the custom then becoming general for those who wished to live well to write essays on serious subjects for private circulation among their friends, pointing out the dangers that lay around, and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the curse of dumbness, was laughing wild, and when she came near, it put out its arms and gave the cry of the young of birds. She lifted the "leanav" in her arms and stared into its eyes, but there was no longer the weary blankness, and the little one yearned with the petulant laughing and idle whimpering of the children of other mothers. And that mother there gave a cry of joy, and with a singing ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... culminated at length, in no fair forms of humanity nor beneficent institutions, but in the foremost sugar-plantation of the world, whose cane-rows were planted and nourished by the first of crimes, whose juice was expressed by over-hasty avarice and petulant ambition that could not be satisfied unless the crime preserved features as colossal as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... obey me, I shall punish you, says a third. If you don't do that, I shall tell mother, says a young brother or sister. If you do not do it, father will give you no sugar toys, when he comes home, the child is again told. If you don't mind me, the bears will come and eat you up, says the petulant nurse or maid-servant. Thus, in one way or another, and at one time or another, every motive—love, fear, selfishness, pleasure, &c.—is appealed to in the education of the young, except that which should be chiefly appealed to—viz., self-approbation, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... character is Miss Charlotte Grandison, the sister of Sir Charles, and later (after many vicissitudes) the wife of Lord G. Miss Grandison's conduct falls infinitely beneath the high standard attained to by the rest of Sir Charles's chosen friends. She is petulant and loves to tease; is uncertain of what she wants; she is lively and sarcastic, and, worse than all, abandons the rounded periods of her brother and Miss Byron for free, not to say slang, expressions. "Hang ceremony!" ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... her frown the errant earth in winter seems Prostrate to lie, and petulant of mood; Restrained in icy fetters all the babbling streams, Like naughty babes who're learning to ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... attains farther than to comprehend some of the cries of anxiety and fear around him, often so unlike the accustomed carol of the bird,—as the mew of the Cat-Bird, the lamb-like bleating of the Veery and his impatient yeoick, the chaip of the Meadow-Lark, the towyee of the Chewink, the petulant psit and tsee of the Red-Winged Blackbird, and the hoarse cooing of the Bobolink. And with some of our most familiar birds the variety of notes is so great as really to promise difficulties in the American department of the bird-lexicon. I have watched two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... sweet and clear, a little petulant perhaps, but still very sweet. She is quite small—a little girl—and clad in deep mourning. There is something pathetic about the dense black surrounding such a radiant face, and such a childish figure. ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... could not understand the position. Could not Mrs. Howard do something in his interest? Could not the friends of Pope do aught to secure that little post? Or Lord Burlington, or Lord Bathurst, or William Pulteney, or some one of the rest? He became petulant, and it is a tribute to his charm that not one of these persons was ever disgusted with him, but continued to feed him, keep him, and pet him, and made their friends and their friends' friends do likewise. In fact, this delightful, whimsical, ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... of the same house, interrupted the preacher, and told him that he was one of the lying prophets, who sought to establish by adultery the succession of the crown; but that he himself would justify all that Peyto had said. Henry silenced the petulant friar; but showed no other mark of resentment than ordering Peyto and him to be summoned before the council, and to be rebuked for their offence.[**] He even here bore patiently some new instances of their obstinacy and arrogance: when the earl of Essex, a privy councillor, told ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Thus he termed the wife of Charles de Chambes, Count of Montsoreau, on whom the Duke had conferred that title a short time before, at the recommendation of Bussy. This letter the King had kept, and as he had long been annoyed by Bussy's insolent arrogance and his petulant temper, he availed himself of this opportunity of avenging the old insults he had received from him. Even while he was at Court, he had been guilty of every sort of insult to nobles and Court ladies, trusting to his prowess as a swordsman, by which he made himself a terror ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... could not last—barely saw its round of eight and twenty days. Lionella was a lady born, as it were, in the purple. Command sat lightly on her; she had never been disobeyed. She now grew querulous, exacting, suspicious, moody, sometimes petulant, sometimes beseeching. It gave Angioletto the deuce's own time now and then; but he might yet have weathered the rocks—for his tact was only equalled by his good temper—if the Countess had not precipitated matters. There came ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... conveyance, commend us to a Maltese caleche! Many a time, assaulted by the blue devils, have we taken refuge in its solacing interior—have pulled down its silken blinds, and unseeing and unseen, the motion, like that of the rocking-cradle to the petulant child of less mature growth, has restored complacency, and lulled us to good humour. The caleche, the real caleche, is, we believe, peculiar to Malta. It is the carriage of the rich and poor—Lady Woodford may be seen employing it, to visit her gardens at St. Antonio; and in ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... pleasant country house near the Windsor Forest. He was so badly deformed that his life was "one long disease;" he was remarkably precocious, and had a most intelligent face, with great, flaming, tender eyes. In disposition Pope was the reverse of admirable. He was extremely sensitive, petulant, and supercilious; fierce and even coarse in his attacks on opponents; boastful of his self-acquired wealth and of his intimacy with the nobility. The great redeeming feature of his character was his tender devotion ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... His enemies have never denied that he had a fearless and manly spirit; and his friends, we are afraid, must acknowledge that his estimate of himself was extravagantly high, that his temper was irritable, that his deportment was often rude and petulant, and that his hatred was of intense ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... their heads, the eldest of them closed the dead man's eyes. As they were all going out together, the assistant surgeon said to them, in a petulant ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the earth. These sacred anticipations may not be disappointed without a fearful accountability somewhere. And, sir, suffer me to say that this whole people have a strong regard for each other, notwithstanding the petulant differences which have arisen between us. Kindred blood flows in our veins, and that of our fathers mingles on the same field; and even now, in the day of our country's peril, our affections meet at the hallowed grounds of Mt. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... there had insulted him. In this connection I may give an anecdote to the point. Soon after my return from America in 1851 I dined with my neighbour at Albury, Henry Drummond, the humoursome M.P., always not a little good-naturedly mischievous. He knew that I had not approved of Lord Elgin's petulant removal of his viceroyal establishment from Montreal to Toronto, and cunningly resolved to draw me out before witnesses on the matter. Now I had taken in to dinner an elderly Scotch lady unknown to me, and sat next to her of course. Soon my lively host somewhat unfairly asked me ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper |
