"Curmudgeon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better still to cool his dudgeon Where week by week our nobler sons Have proved Britannia's no curmudgeon By salvoes of applauding guns; To save him toil without his landing, To meet him with more warm advance, And help to share that "understanding" He has with Russia ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... he informs the goody that he came from Paradise Place— which was the name of his own farm—and she asks him if he knew her second husband in paradise. (She had been married twice before she took her present husband, who was an old curmudgeon, and she liked her second husband best—she was sure he had gone to heaven.) He replies that he knew him very intimately, but, poor man, he was far from well off, having to go about begging from house to house. The goody gives him a cart-load of clothes ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... week You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes, And clipped her wings, and tied her beak, Would it cause you any great surprise If, when you decided to give her an airing, You found she needed a little preparing?— I say, should you be such a curmudgeon, If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon? Yet when the Duke to his lady signified, {280} Just a day before, as he judged most dignified, In what a pleasure she was to participate,— ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... while compiling his dictionary, sent a note to the Gentleman's Magazine, to inquire the etymology of the word CURMUDGEON. Having obtained the desired information, he thus recorded in his work his obligation to an anonymous writer: "CURMUDGEON, s. a vicious way of pronouncing coeur mechant. An unknown correspondent." Ash copied the word into his dictionary, in ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... Justine to herself, "monsieur wants to send me away, does he? Wait and see the deuce of a life I'll lead you, you old curmudgeon!" ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... too nice-looking; I imagine the other Mr. Lester is an awful old curmudgeon. He has got his property unjustly, I consider—the eldest son ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... received your book last night as I lay abed with a pleurisy, the result, I fear, of overwork, gradual decline of appetite, etc. You know what a wooden-hearted curmudgeon I am about contemporary verse. I like none of it, except some of my own. (I look back on that sentence with pleasure; it comes from an honest heart.) Hence you will be kind enough to take this from me in a kindly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pleading hand away. "I can't tell how long it will be!" she returned impatiently. "We are simply helpless until your father's affairs are settled. I thought I had told you that, Eloise. He worshipped you, child, and no matter what that old curmudgeon says, Lawrence would wish us to remain under his protection until we see ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... never cease,' thought Alan, amazed. 'Is that old curmudgeon in the business, too? He's the last man I should have imagined would mix himself up ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... when it was desirable to have it full. Whenever an honest, good-humored, and free-hearted guest took a draught from this pitcher, he invariably found it the sweetest and most invigorating fluid that ever ran down his throat. But, if a cross and disagreeable curmudgeon happened to sip, he was pretty certain to twist his visage into a hard knot, and pronounce it a pitcher ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... catch me imitating any old fogy like that. As far as I know anything about him, he was a mean, stingy old curmudgeon!" ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... crossed. For the first time in his life Mr. Tymperley perceived that the crossing of a cheque may occasion its recipient a great deal of trouble. How was he to get it changed? He knew his landlord for a suspicious curmudgeon, and refusal of the favour, with such a look as Mr. Suggs knew how to give, would be a sore humiliation; besides, it was very doubtful whether Mr. Suggs could make any use of the cheque himself. To whom else could he apply? Literally, to no one ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... rights to interfere; No strange Abram, ruffler crack, [5] Hooker of another pack, Rogue or rascal, frater, maunderer, [6] Irish toyle, or other wanderer; [7] No dimber, dambler, angler, dancer, Prig of cackler, prig of prancer; No swigman, swaddler, clapper-dudgeon; Cadge-gloak, curtal, or curmudgeon; No whip-jack, palliard, patrico; No jarkman, be he high or low; No dummerar, or romany; No member of the family; No ballad-basket, bouncing buffer, Nor any other, will I suffer; But stall-off now and for ever All outtiers whatsoever; ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... farmer, who had the reputation of considerable wealth, but who was not very well looked on in the neighbourhood as being somewhat of a curmudgeon and a miser. His wife was dead;—he had quarrelled with his only son, whose wife was also dead, and had banished him from his home;—his daughters were married and away; and the only member of his family who lived with him was ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Silet the bean-seller and Akresheh the grocer and Hemid the scavenger and Said the camel-driver and Suweyd the porter and Abou Mukarish the bathman[FN96] and Cassim the watchman and Kerim the groom. There is not among them all one curmudgeon or make-bate or meddler or spoil-sport; each has his own dance that he dances and his own couplets that he repeats, and the best of them is that they are like thy servant, knowing not abundance of talk nor meddlesomeness. The bath-keeper sings enchantingly ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... was clearing again—she didn't realize it,—but it was. April skies always make alternate lights and darks. The old curmudgeon had gone, but the garden gate ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... am sorry to say that I never met with so avaricious and so wicked an old curmudgeon; he allowed me almost daily to die of hunger, without troubling himself about my necessities; and, to say the truth, if I had not helped myself by means of a ready wit I should have closed my account from ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... Morlaix, in Brittany, among my mother's kin; my grandfather refusing to see or speak with him, for wedding a poor woman without his consent. And in France was I born and bred, and came to England two years agone; and this last July the old curmudgeon died. So that my father, who was an only son, is even now in England returning to his estates: and with him my only sister Delia. I shall meet them on the way. To think of it!" (and I declare the tears sprang to his eyes): "Delia will be a woman ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... his money according to his judgment." As she said this the poor woman thought of those other five who in process of time might become claimants. But here the whole family attacked her, and almost drove her to confess that her brother was a stingy old curmudgeon. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... course you don't, you ignorant curmudgeon, if noospapers is all you've read. Now, Pat, I got this book, not for myself but a purpus ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne |
