"Wrangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the border. Others carried to London earnest entreaties that His Majesty would instantly send every soldier that could be spared, nay, that he would come himself to save his northern kingdom. The factions of the Parliament House, awestruck by the common danger, forgot to wrangle. Courtiers and malecontents with one voice implored the Lord High Commissioner to close the session, and to dismiss them from a place where their deliberations might soon be interrupted by the mountaineers. It was seriously considered whether it might not ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he opened the front door, confessed to an irreverent gentleman in blue and yellow that "Ole Flat-Feet" was at home, and, after conducting them to the first floor, ushered "The Honourable Mrs. George Wrangle, Miss Wrangle, Miss Sarah Wrangle" into the presence itself. With a contempt for tradition, the Marchioness not only extended to each of the ladies her large right hand, but withheld no ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... over, for it sorter give 'er a stick to poke 'im with. She used to say nice things about me to egg him on, and he often went with her for no other reason than to keep me away. Well, you can see how it was. She wanted to beat the other gals, and he wanted to outdo me, and, in the wrangle, they got married one day all ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... parallels are respectable. The greatest things have a way of coming "all so still" into the world. We wrangle—that is, those of us who are not content simply not to know—about the composition of Homer, the purpose of the Divina Commedia, the probable plan of the Canterbury Tales, the Ur-Hamlet. Nobody put preliminary advertisements ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... affirm, that it is the work of our day and generation; that it is the problem in our modern society which is most difficult of solution; that it is the ground upon which earnest and zealous men unhappily too often, and in too many countries meet, not to co-operate but to wrangle; while the poor and the ignorant multitudes around them are starving and perishing for lack of knowledge. Well, then, how has Upper Canada addressed herself to the execution of this great work? How has she sought to solve this problem—to overcome this difficulty? Sir, I understand ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... occasion. The quarrel originated in the superstition of the Sicilians; who, like all the vulgar Italians, when they address the Turks, rudely tell them, that they are not Christians, but beasts. The Turks, after getting on board their ships, continued to wrangle among themselves; and were, at length, in such a state of mutiny, that Cadir Bey, their commander in chief, became greatly terrified. Lord Nelson, however, being made acquainted with the affair, and having a great friendship ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... worn away, as though by a crown, that was not of gold. There are hollows there, near the ears, on each side, since that week when love was done to death before my eyes and died—intestate—leaving his substance to be divided amongst indifferent heirs. They wrangle for what he has left, but he himself is gone, beyond hearing or caring, and, thank God, beyond suffering. But ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... cloak-room door from the inside, and looked through the glazed upper half. His stealthy movements and his strange appearance passed unnoticed. There was a noisy emigrant party in the cloak-room, taking out luggage deposited the night before; they were absorbed in their own affairs, and in some wrangle with the officials which involved a good deal of lost temper on ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when he was a child in arms, he was such a peevish and noisy little brat, that his mamma could not find a woman who would undertake the trouble of nursing him; and as soon as he was able to speak and run alone, he began to wrangle with his brothers and sisters, upon the most trifling occasions, and seldom forgot to support his argument by exerting his little hands and heels with the most malicious activity; so that to mortify his pride, and give a check to his ill ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... whatever may be right about religion, to quarrel over it must be wrong. "Let others wrangle," said ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... may give them a smart shower of stones, if the fancy takes you, or confiscate their property. The informer's tongue has no terrors for you; no burglar will scale or undermine your walls in search of gold; you are not troubled with book-keeping or debt-collecting; you have no rascally steward to wrangle with; none of the thousand worries of the rich distract you. No, you patch your shoe, and you take your tenpence; and at dusk up you jump from your bench, get a bath if you are in the humour for it, buy yourself a haddock or some sprats ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... the agile intelligence of Mr. Gibney, the vitriolic tongue of Captain Scraggs, and the elephantine wit and grizzly bear courage of Mr. McGuffey. At any rate, he delighted in hearing them snarl and wrangle. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... makes a family when all the sisters and brothers stand together, and what an awful wreck when they disintegrate, quarreling about a father's will and making the surrogate's office horrible with their wrangle. Better when you were little children in the nursery that with your playhouse mallets you had accidentally killed each other fighting across your cradle, than that, having come to the age of maturity, and having in your veins and arteries the blood of the same father and mother, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... near him. But cowardice is altogether lodged with him, and she has found a host who will honour her and serve her so faithfully that he is willing to resign his own fair name for hers." Thus they wrangle all night, vying with each other in slander. But often one man maligns another, and yet is much worse himself than the object of his blame and scorn. Thus, every one said what he pleased about him. And when the next day dawned, all the people prepared and came again to the jousting place. ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... throne, each one curious to hear the stranger as he had been to see him; and they were quick to point his last sentence; for most of them had been with the Emperor in the voyage to Therapia, which was still a theme of wager and wrangle scarcely less interesting than in its first hour. By one impulse they ventured a glance at the royal face, seeking a revelation; but the countenance ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... were called Praesciti. It must be admitted that some Infralapsarians and others speak sometimes of predestination to damnation, following the example of Fulgentius and of St. Augustine himself: but that signifies the same as destination to them, and it avails nothing to wrangle about words. That pretext, notwithstanding, was in time past used for maltreating that Godescalc who caused a stir about the middle of the ninth century, and who took the name of Fulgentius to indicate that he followed ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... also,' is as eloquent as a treatise on the nebular theory. If you were learned in geology and astronomy and so on, you would load it down with an avalanche of scientific hypotheses, about which you would really know nothing, except by deduction, and over which future scientists would wrangle, part of them making you a god, and the rest proving you a fool. Be content to 'climb where Moses ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... as quickly as it began. The Sauk triumphed, as, judging from the size of the two, he was likely to do in such a wrangle. The hand of Deerfoot became nerveless and dropped to his side. He stood silent and sullen, as though he had no ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... time: Mr. Schulmeyer agreeing with Grist, and Mr. Cullop holding with Peck that Beasley had surely become insane; while the "Journal" man, returning, was certain that he had not been seen. Argument became a wrangle; excitement over the remarkable scene we had witnessed, and, perhaps, a certain sharpness partially engendered by the risk of freezing, led to some bitterness. High words were flung upon the wind. Eventually, Simeon Peck got the floor to ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... to your prayers, dinna wrangle about your joes, bairns,' cried Madame de Ste. Petronelle. ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... He knew that to defend himself would be to court a wrangle, reproaches, tears perhaps, all unseemly before the children; and, moreover, what his wife said was ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... invitation to contribute to the "free aids" demanded by the royal officers, but the suspension of their markets or trading privileges brought them in the end to submission. Each of these "free aids" however had to be extorted after a long wrangle between the borough and the officers of the Exchequer; and if the towns were driven to comply with what they considered an extortion they could generally force the Crown by evasions and delays to a compromise and abatement ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... to pilfer a horse from a dooryard. He planned to load his knap-sack upon it. He was escaping with his prize when a young girl rushed from the house and grabbed the animal's mane. There followed a wrangle. The young girl, with pink cheeks and shining eyes, stood ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... us except my cousin—whose love of the marvellous induced him to believe it. On the night before the assault on Seringapatam, he was absurdly angry with me, and with others, for treating the whole thing as a fable. A foolish wrangle followed; and Herncastle's unlucky temper got the better of him. He declared, in his boastful way, that we should see the Diamond on his finger, if the English army took Seringapatam. The sally was saluted by a roar of laughter, and ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... mighty difference between A father and a master. He who knows not How to do this, let him confess he knows not How to rule children.—But is this the man Whom I was speaking of? Yes, yes, 'tis he. He seems uneasy too, I know not why, And I suppose, as usual, comes to wrangle. ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... the best, Where all must full or not coherent be, And all that rises, rise in due degree; Then, in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain, There must be, somewhere, such a rank as Man: And all the question (wrangle e'er so long) Is only this, if God has placed him ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... find at last an empty bench, and surround ourselves with a semicircle of wooden pails, collected from all around the room. Sometimes two women in search of pails lay hold of the same pail at the same moment, and a wrangle ensues, in the course of which each disputant reminds the other of all her failings, nicknames, and undesirable connections, living, dead, and unborn; until an attendant interferes, with more muscle than argument, punctuating the sentence of justice with newly ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... conversation well endued, She calls it witty to be rude; And, placing raillery in railing, Will tell aloud your greatest failing; Nor make a scruple to expose Your bandy leg, or crooked nose; Can at her morning tea run o'er The scandal of the day before; Improving hourly in her skill, To cheat and wrangle at quadrille. In choosing lace, a critic nice, Knows to a groat the lowest price; Can in her female clubs dispute, What linen best the silk will suit, What colours each complexion match, And where with ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... daughter was forty-five; the daughter said: "Not a day over thirty-five," and intimated that she surely might be supposed to know her own age! The mother, however, murmured provokingly: "Moi, je sais mieux que ca"; and so the wrangle went on, until I made a diversion by taking leave of my hostess and promising to be present at the lecture the "following afternoon," which, by the way, had become "this afternoon" by the time I ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... dregs of such a race would have been lawyers spending their span of life on this mysterious earth studying the long dusty records of dead and gone quarrels. We simians naturally admire a profession full of wrangle and chatter. But that is a monkeyish way of ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... said with difficulty, torn out of her by the shock of her father's statement. The Squire stared at her threateningly a little, then quieted down. He did not want a wrangle with Pamela, to whom in general he was not unkind, while keeping ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wrangle with little round head rogue's eye Ghezzi. This time about Bruno the Nolan. Began in Italian and ended in pidgin English. He said Bruno was a terrible heretic. I said he was terribly burned. He agreed to this with some sorrow. Then gave me recipe for what he calls RISOTTO ALLA BERGAMASCA. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... teeth, seemed to spring as men full-armed from the very ground? Moreover, this was no skirmishing with sharpshooters over a vast extent of country, six thousand miles away from home, as it had been in South Africa. This was home itself. There was no right or wrong here, nothing for politicians to wrangle about for party purposes. Here, in a little corner of little England, two mighty hosts were at death-grips day and night, the one fighting for all that is dearest and most sacred to the heart of man; and ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... lightly upstairs to his room, leaving the others, most of whom had been drinking somewhat freely, to wrangle about his proceedings. It ended in two of ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... retired, or, I should say, retreated. He wandered aimlessly about the palace, waiting for news and making wretched all those with whom he came in contact. The duchess was not feeling well; a wrangle with her was out of the question; besides, he would make himself hoarse. So he waited and waited, and re-read the princess' letter. At dinner he ate nothing; his replies were curt and surly. The Honorable Betty also ate nothing. She sat, wondering ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... at town land till all have gone to wrack, The very straws may wrangle till they've thrown down the stack; The very door-posts bicker till they've pulled in the door, The very ale-jars jostle till the ale is on the floor, But ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... matter what the regime, the traditions of mediocrity and wretchedness long since adopted by my family. The law pleased me but little. I thought that the Code had been purposely maldirected in order to furnish certain people with an opportunity to wrangle, to the utmost limit, over the smallest words; even today it seems to me that a phrase clearly worded can not ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... We are not swimmers in this dangerous life. It cannot beat upon our limbs with surf Of water clencht against us, nor can waves Now wrangle with our breath. Out of it we Are lifted; and henceforward now we are Sailors travelling in a lovely ship, The shining sails of it holding a wind Immortally pleasant, and the malicious sea Smoothed by a keel that cannot ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... could do in order to preserve, if not his reason, at any rate his moral equilibrium in the position which he had contrived for himself. To tell him this had been my object in seeking the interview, and the blessed opportunity only came after an hour's hard wrangle—in current metaphor after an hour's artillery preparation for attack. He looked so battered, poor old Anthony, that I felt almost ashamed of the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... rationalists, nor into Tories and Radicals, nor into any other of our familiar party divisions. The true division is into great men and small, lovers of truth and sophists, honest men and thieves. Thieves and sophists wrangle, but the great and true "join hands through the centuries," and between ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... in a continual wrangle. Madam Imbert could hardly get away from Mrs. Maroney long enough to eat her meals. Mrs. Maroney and Josh. dealt exclusively in brandy. Toward evening Josh. proclaimed his intention of "raising" the money, and starting with it that night for the West. He would hide himself until ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... The term 'Gnoll' (from Dungeons & Dragons) is also reported. 2. A curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing environment. The combination 'ITS troglodyte' was flung around some during the Usenet and email wringle-wrangle attending the 2.x.x revision of the Jargon File; at least one of the people it was intended to ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Bova Korolevich told them that he was of the poor class, and that his mother got her living by washing linen for strangers. When the sailors heard this they wondered that he should look so handsome, and bethought them how they might keep him with them. They began to wrangle as to who should be his master, but as soon as Bova perceived their intention, he told them not to quarrel for his sake, for that he would serve ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... have been of no real significance even in their day. We read on with a good-natured pity, akin to the feeling which the gods of Epicurus might be supposed to experience when they looked down upon foolish mortals,—and when we shut the book, go out into our own world to fret, fume, and wrangle over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... had been a Mormon; but the Mormon clergyman was gone with the rest to wrangle over boundaries in the adjacent isle, and a layman took his office. Standing at the head of the open grave, in a white coat and blue pariu, his Tahitian Bible in his hand and one eye bound with a red handkerchief, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of singing the more he concerns himself with the mechanism; and it is also true that the more one is filled with the spirit of song the less he concerns himself with the construction of the vocal instrument. People with little or no musicianship have been known to wrangle ceaselessly on whether or not the thyroid cartilage should tip forward on high tones. It is such crude mechanics masquerading under the name of science that has brought voice training into general disrepute. The voice teacher is primarily concerned with learning to play upon the ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... jails and the like would go also. Crime is due almost wholly to poverty. In a reign of plenty for all, it would practically disappear.... People would no longer have to wrangle over property rights. The industries now in the hands of national, state and municipal governments would be given over completely into the care of the workers engaged in them.... With war, crime, class antagonisms and property squabbles obliterated, and the management of industry taken from its ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... train, but the doors of their compartments are not locked. It has been found by experience that English travellers object to being imprisoned without trial, and quote regulations of the Board of Trade forbidding the locking of both doors of a railway carriage. There is nothing to be gained by a public wrangle with an angry Englishman. He cannot be got to understand that laws, those of the Board of Trade or any other, are not binding on Irish officials. There is only one way of treating him without loss of dignity, and that is ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... voice very well; we have heard it many times, calm and regal, above the wrangle of councils and the roar of battle; often it prayed for victory or for the people's weal, but it never yet called on earth or heaven to help Agamemnon. The Chorus hear it too; but they linger and palter, while each gives his grave sentence deliberately ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... to the guillotine, but she will never understand her own times. She has dignity; we have not a scrap; we have forgotten what it was like; we go into a passion at the amount of our bills; we play and never pay; we smoke and we wrangle; we laugh loud, much too loud; we inspire nothing unless, now and then, a bad war or a disastrous speculation; we live ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... no worse off than those in your land who had played ill providence to themselves. In the second, no maid would covet him whom fate had given to another, it were too fatiguing, or if such a thing DID happen, then one of them would waive his claims, for no man or woman ever born was worth a wrangle, and it is allowed us to barter and change ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... answer already—Your own love blinds you! Ha! I am a good man!—I don't drink, I don't swear, I am respectable, I don't blaspheme like Bletchley! Oh yes, and I am a scholar: I can cackle in Greek: I can wrangle about God's name: I know Latin and Hebrew and all the cursed little pedantries of my trade! But do you know what I am? Do you know what your husband is in the sight of ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... heat. If he does not distribute the same quantity as before he at least distributes whatever is necessary; the tenants can, at last, breathe comfortably, see clearly and not shiver; after ten years of suffocation, darkness and cold they are too well satisfied to wrangle with the proprietor, discuss his ways, and dispute over the monopoly by which he has constituted himself the arbitrator of their wants.—The same thing is done in the material order of things, in relation to the highways, dikes, canals, and structures ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the law of nations itself. When that result was announced, we expressed our entire disapprobation; and yet trusting to the representations of the government that matters were concluded satisfactorily, we had to decide whether it were wise, if the great result was obtained, to wrangle upon points however important, such as those to which ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... gave order for this waste-paper; how do you think I could ever fill it, or with what? I am not always in the humour to wrangle and dispute. For example now, I had rather agree to what you say, than tell you that Dr. Taylor (whose devote you must know I am) says there is a great advantage to be gained in resigning up one's will to the command of another, because the same action which in itself is ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... passed about the quotation, saying I was willing to take Stuart for it if he had given me the page, but as for "Points of Controversy," I could take nothing on its authority, for I repudiated the book and its author as authority in anything. This provoked a personal wrangle with Miller, who was close to me, after the debate—for the day was over. The excitement was intense as we passed and repassed our compliments. Finally the house refused to hear Mr. M. Even his own brethren rose ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... they will; you have got the kernel, the thing that it was meant to bring you. Many an erudite scholar, who has studied the Bible all his life, has missed the purpose for which it was given; and many a poor old woman in her garret has found it. It is not meant to wrangle over, it is not meant to be read as an interesting product of the religious consciousness, it is not to be admired as all that remains of the literature of a nation that had a genius for religion; but it is to be taken as being God's great ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... ii. 13; his lying assurances, ii. 15, 16; he declares himself, on oath, guiltless of the death of any man for religion's sake, ii. 16; he returns to France from the Council of Trent, and unsuccessfully seeks the approval of the decrees, ii. 154; his wrangle at Melun, Feb, 1564, with Chancellor L'Hospital, ii. 154, 155; his encounter with Marshal Montmorency in Paris, ii. 166; forbidden by Catharine to hold communication with Granvelle and Chantonnay, ii. 181; he disregards the prohibition, ib.; his altercation with L'Hospital at Moulins, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... organization a wrangle at once began as to the form of the trial. We held very strongly that we should continue our usual custom of open meeting; but Morton insisted with equal vehemence that the prisoners should have jury trial. The discussion ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... only to say the word!" And so they would wrangle, she glorying in her power over the man who had so long triumphed over her, and he consoling himself with the hope that the day was not far distant which should bring him at once freedom and fortune. One day the chance came to him. His wife ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... a curious story under the year 1213. O'Donnell More sent his steward to Connaught to collect his tribute. On his way he visited the poet Murray O'Daly, and began to wrangle with him, "although his lord had given him no instructions to do so." The poet's ire was excited. He killed him on the spot with a sharp axe—an unpleasant exhibition of literary justice—and then ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... to sell her produce; no loud talk, laughter, and singing, as in the Italian towns. Sometimes, under the shade of a tree on the public promenade, a dozen armed peasants will play at cards or watch each other play; they never shout or wrangle; if they get hot over the game, pistol shots ring out, and this always before the utterance of any threat. The Corsican is grave and silent by nature. In the evening, a few persons come out to ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... Convention; and if we want to consult them, let us adjourn sine die. If we are loyal to our highest convictions, we need not care how far it may lead. For truth, like water, will find its own level. No, friends, in the name of consistency let us not wrangle here simply because we associate the name of woman with human justice and human rights. Although I always like to see opposition on any subject, for it elicits truth much better than any speech, still I think it will be exceedingly inconsistent if, because some women out in the West are opposed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... going on for three years, now." "Well," chimes in the unknown, "let it go a bit longer. When'll your Governor have settled those pleadings?" "When your people settle about the five guineas, and not before," replies the Impressive Clerk in his best Parliamentary debating style. Then follows a long wrangle, not on law, but on finance, which never—as far as I can judge—ends in the Clerk getting his way, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... stride; like most Maryland-bred horses, he had wonderfully clean, flat legs: after the hardest day's work, I never saw a puff on them; he was not sulky or savage, but had a temper and will of his own; both of these, however, yielded, after a sharp wrangle or two, to the combined influence of coaxing and a pair of sharp English rowels: in the latter days of our acquaintance we never had a difference of opinion. Considering the scarcity of staunch horse-flesh, the price asked was very moderate, and I closed the bargain on the spot. I was assured ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... the point about this young feller that's going to be hung," said Bob, tapping the newspaper that lay upon the bench. "I don't know what would lie between two young women in a wrangle of that sort; some would get over it quick, but some would never sleep soundly any more not for a minute of their mortal lives. Edie must have been one of that sort. There's people living there now as could tell a lot if they'd a mind to it. Some knowed ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... of a plot—an hour's arrangement and wrangle—whereby, through far-sighted activity, perjury, malpractice and infinite ingenuity, the ringleader would gain a pice and the follower a pie (a farthing and a ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... to insist and she resented the deception he had practised in securing this loan without telling her, but the danger was so great that she could not afford to let her feelings blind her, nor to put the thing in a bad light by seeming to wrangle about it. She looked at him steadily, so steadily, in fact, that John was disconcerted. The work in hand gave excuse for withdrawing his eyes and Elizabeth watched him arrange the knot of the rope so that they could lower the pipe back into the well. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... practiced the ceremonies of their fathers, devoutly frequented the temples of the gods, and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of an atheist under the sacerdotal robe. Reasoners of such a temper were scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes of faith or of worship. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume, and they approached with the same inward contempt and the same external reverence ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... Governor Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, who entered into a long wrangle with the administration on the constitutional points involved. He denied the right of Congress to pass such an act, and of the Executive to carry it out within the limits of a sovereign state; averred—with much circumlocution and turgid ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... in reiterating them and so the wrangle went on till suddenly she fell from her chair on the floor in a fit, the spasmodic movements of which were so strange and varied that it would be almost impossible to describe them. At one moment the patient was extended at full length with her body arched forward in a state of opisthotonos. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... England on the 'grand tour,' gets into a wrangle with an old woman in the market-place; an old woman of nearly eighty years, with a cap as old and ideas as primitive as her dress, but with a sense of humour and natural combativeness that enables her to hold her own in lively sallies and smart repartees against her youthful ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... tenderness of soul to have any authority with his wife; and she too little sense to give him authority for that reason. His kind wife observed this temper in him, and made proper use of it. But knowing it was below a gentlewoman to wrangle, she resolved upon an expedient to save decorum, and wear her dear to her point at the same time. She therefore took upon her to govern him, by falling into fits whenever she was repulsed in a request, or contradicted in a discourse. It was a fish-day, when ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Sea-eagle, "we will not wrangle about it. But hearken. Hard by in a pleasant nook of the meadows have I set up my tent; and although it be not as big as the King's pavilion, yet is it fair enough. Wilt thou not come thither with me and rest thee to-night; and to-morrow ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... fourth guard to wrangle the remuda, I sent Levering up the creek with my brother's horses and to recover our loaned saddle stock; even Bob Quirk was just thoughtless enough to construe a neighborly act into a horse trade. About two miles out from the creek and an equal distance from ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... house of convocation still continued to wrangle with their superiors; and though they joined the upper house in a congratulatory address to the queen on the success of her arms, they resolved to make application to the commons against the union. The queen being ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... in the parlor, but they repudiated many of those habits of respect and courtesy which belonged to their former condition, and asserted their own will and way in the round, unvarnished phrase which they supposed to be their right as republican citizens. Life became a sort of domestic wrangle and struggle between the employers, who secretly confessed their weakness, but endeavored openly to assume the air and bearing of authority, and the employed, who knew their power and insisted on their privileges. From this cause domestic service in America has had less of mutual kindliness than ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... are not only imminent but actual. The whole effort to support a Christian education in the public schools is sometimes called a "bootless wrangle." One section is thrown over towards secularism, pure and simple, in recoiling from Church-education exclusive and reactionary. The leading of the little child, the favorite indication of the millennium's arrival, is frustrated amid the clamor of the ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... Obviously there was a rich reward waiting for him in Vienna the day that he brought Louis XVII safely into Austrian territory; that reward he would miss if a meddlesome Englishman interfered in this affair. Whether in this wrangle he risked the life of the child-King or not mattered to him not at all. It was de Batz who was to get the reward, and whose welfare and prosperity mattered more than the most precious ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... autumn. When it comes in winter the air glitters with incredible brilliancy. The snow of the country dazzles and flames in the eyes; deep blue shadows everywhere stream like stains of ink. Sleigh bells wrangle from early morning till late at night, and every step is quick and alert. In the city, smoke dims its clarity, but ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... earth that remain; he catches some genuine strength from the magnanimous presence of the hero-god. He renders duty to the dead; is quieted; and enters more and more into the sternness of his solitary wayfaring. In dealing with the ignoble wrangle with old Pheres the critic is hard set; but Balaustion, speaking as interpreter for Browning, explains that for a little the king lapses back from the firmer foothold which he had attained. Perhaps it would have been wiser to admit that Euripides has marred his own work by this grim tragic-comic ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... It happened, also, that our candidate (I am a Republican, and so is Mr. Strongitharm) was rather favorably inclined to the woman's cause. It happened, thirdly—and this is the seemingly insignificant pivot upon which we whirled into triumph—that he, Mr. Wrangle, and the opposing candidate, Mr. Tumbrill, had arranged to hold a joint meeting at Burroak. This meeting took place on a magnificent day, just after the oats-harvest; and everybody, for twenty miles ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... motto; and often you have to wait for hours together, sticking to your position (like one of an Indian file of merchants' clerks getting letters out of the post-office), ere you have a chance to occupy the pedestal of the match-tub. Often the crowd of quarrelsome candidates wrangle and fight for precedency, while at all times the interval is employed by the garrulous in every variety ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... whatsoe'er it chanc'd to prove, Nor force of argument cou'd move; Nor law, nor cavalcade of Holborn, 435 Could render half a grain less stubborn. For he at any time would hang For th' opportunity t' harangue; And rather on a gibbet dangle, Than miss his dear delight, to wrangle; 440 In which his parts were so accomplisht, That, right or wrong, he ne'er was non-plusht; But still his tongue ran on, the less Of weight it bore, with greater ease; And with its everlasting clack 445 Set all men's ears upon the rack. No sooner ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... not wrangle with him, and for a little while he ate in silence, watching the sparkling throng and listening to such scraps of conversation as floated to him from merry tables. Down in Union Street it had been the fashion to decry idleness and the crimes of the rich—the ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... another, Bid the straight lines a journeying go. C. A. C. B. those lines will show. To the points, which by A. B. are reckon'd, 25 And postulate the second For Authority ye know. A. B. C. Triumphant shall be An Equilateral Triangle, 30 Not Peter Pindar carp, nor Zoilus can wrangle. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... haughtily o'erleap Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry? Fires from beneath and meteors from above, Portentous, unexampled, unexplained, Have kindled beacons in the skies, and the old And crazy earth has had her shaking fits More frequent, and foregone her usual rest. Is it a time to wrangle, when the props And pillars of our planet seem to fail, And nature with a dim and sickly eye To wait the close of all? But grant her end More distant, and that prophecy demands A longer respite, unaccomplished yet; Still they are frowning signals, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... those goguenardises which 1830 itself had loved, but it is not a good specimen. Two men who have determined on suicide—one by shooting, one by hanging—meet at the same tree in the Bois de Boulogne and wrangle about possession of the spot, till the aspirant to suspension per coll. recounts his history from the branch on which he is perched. After which an unlucky thirdsman, interfering, gets shot, and buried as one ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... I saw your face I resolved to honour and renown ye; If now I be disdained I wish my heart had never known ye. What? I that loved and you that liked, shall we begin to wrangle? No, no, no, my heart is fast, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the king at Kaze, who had shown himself friendly on a previous expedition, I underwent some trying experiences in trying to mediate between two rival rulers, Snay and Manua Sera, between whom there was continual wrangle and conflict. On one occasion Musa, who was suffering from a sharp illness, to prove to me that he was bent on leaving Kaze the same time as myself, began eating what he called his training pills—small dried buds of roses with alternate bits of sugar candy. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... are the bones of conversation, opinions are certainly its sinews; and we might add, that whisky toddy is its nervous fluid. These youths, though unwilling to acquire solid information, could wrangle even to quarrelling; but such were their affinities, that they adhered again in a short time, and were as firm friends as ever. They had raised a subject—no other than the question whether highwaymen are necessarily or generally possessed of true courage. Very absurd, no doubt, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... pass to the group who abstained, the great mass of the Peerage, too proud to wrangle where they could not win, too wise to knock their heads uselessly against a wall, too loyal not to do their utmost to spare their King. More than three hundred followed Lord Lansdowne's lead, taking for their motto, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... of a panderer do not wrangle so many times, or gladiators in charge of a trainer do not fight so many times for a prize as these do under their teacher of philosophy. The populace, not self-restrained and serious, but fickle, barbarous, pugnacious, is wonderfully ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... appearance of sober indifference, and muttering that he would not have allowed himself to be betrayed into giving up such a prize so cheaply had it not been that he had an especial regard for the imperator Sergius Vanno, and that the house of Porthenus had never nourished mere traders to wrangle and chaffer ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... my quarters," Felix Brush hastened to say, and there would have been a general wrangle for the privilege of accommodating the little one, had not her father, seeing how matters were going, smilingly raised his ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... people, like these Netherlanders, engaged in mortal combat with the most powerful monarch in the world, and with the first general of the age, within a league of their borders—thus to be deprived of all organized government at a most critical moment, and to be left to wrangle with their allies and among themselves, as to the form of polity to be adopted, while waiting the pleasure of a capricious and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... white as the white herons that fish among them. The ripest spray of goldenrod is not so highly coloured as the burnished gold on the breast of the oriole that rocks on it. The jays are bluer than the calamus bed they wrangle above with throaty chatter. The finches are a finer purple than the ironwort. For every clump of foxfire flaming in the Limberlost, there is a cardinal glowing redder on a bush above it. These may not be more numerous than other birds, but their brilliant colouring and the fearless disposition ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... "Pastores" are the two shepherd plays in the Towneley cycle.{16} The first begins with racy talk, leading to a wrangle between two of the shepherds about some imaginary sheep; then a third arrives and makes fun of them both; a feast follows, with much homely detail; they go to sleep and are awakened by the angelic message; after much debate over its meaning and over the foretellings of the prophets—one ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... is something in that, Laelius, but by no means all. For instance, the story is told of the answer of Themistocles in a wrangle with a certain Seriphian, who asserted that he owed his brilliant position to the reputation of his country, not to his own. "If I had been a Seriphian," said he, "even I should never have been famous, nor would you if ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... then, after such illustrations, for those who still deny the authenticity of Ossian to declare whether they have ever studied him; and for those who still wrangle about the style of Macpherson's so-called Gaelic to decide whether they will continue such petty warfare among vowels and consonants, and ill-spelt mediaeval legends, when the science, the history, the navigation, the atmospheric phenomena, and the ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... their masters have a right to their service or labor. This idea is recognized in the Constitution, and this right is secured. We ask no more. As Mr. Madison, and the whole South, had the thing, he did not care to wrangle about the name. We are told, again and again, that the word slave does not appear in the Constitution. Be it so. We care not, since our slaves are there recognized as "persons held to service" by those ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the chance of living with one of the finest women I ever knew," he said, stiffly, and paused for their usual wrangle about Mrs. Maitland. As they rose to go indoors, he looked at his guest, and shook his head. "Oh, Helena, how ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... new scale of prices and plenty of work, we might probably come out a little ahead the next six months; but it wouldn't pay for the trouble and the capital invested. Then when trade slackened, we should be running at a loss, and there'd be another wrangle over a reduction. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Catherine,' he said; without any anger in his voice, but with much sorrowful despondency. 'I shall not stay. I am neither come to wrangle nor be reconciled; but I wish just to learn whether, after this evening's events, you intend to continue ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... was much above being bought, and though, no doubt, he made money by his races, he would have thought little of shooting any one who was bold enough to offer to pay him for riding. When in his cap, jacket, boots, and breeches, he would, if he thought occasion required or his interests demanded it, wrangle like a devil. Though its back were turned to him, he could see a horse go on the wrong side of a post; and woe betide the man who came to the scales as a winner an ounce below the weight. Bob, from long practice, knew all these dodges, and he made the most of them. But ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... reflects these conditions. The Social Democrats, divided into many small parties, and the Agrarians and Ultramontanes, divided as well, give the press no single point of leverage. These political parties wrangle among themselves over the dish of votes, but what is put into the dish comes from a master over whom they have no control. If they upset the dish they are turned out as they were in 1878, 1887, 1893, and 1907, and when they return they are ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier |
