"Curmudgeon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I should have thought he would have given you all the news seeing how long you have been away, and knowing how anxious you would be to have the latest tidings. Did he say at all how the old curmudgeon was? Is Mrs. Eustace still dancing attendance on him, and making herself a public martyr to cover up the tracks of her ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... 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 Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... 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 with ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... as the hills! Where on earth has the old curmudgeon kept them all this time?" exclaimed Helen. "Do you think he bought, or ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... gainstand: Now as soon as the crier had called her, there bid * A wicked old fellow, a fiery brand: So I raged with a rage that I could not restrain, * And snatched her from out of his hireling's hand; When the angry curmudgeon made ready for blows, * And the fire of a fight kindled he and his band, I smote him in fury with right and with left, * And his hide, till well satisfied, curried and tanned: Then in fear I fled forth and lay hid in my house, * To escape from the snares which my foeman had spanned: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Patrick! I'm with you, Harry! Let's die, rather than yield ourselves prisoners to such a queer old curmudgeon!" ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... hat—"and settled in that country, near 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 grown, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... was a gratified flush on the young fellow's lean, dark cheek. What was it the General had heard about Langrishe? Oh, yes, that he had had rough luck—that his old uncle. Sir Peter—the General remembered him for a curmudgeon—had married and had a son, after rearing the young fellow as his heir. No wonder the lad looked careworn. The regiment was an expensive one; not too expensive for Sir Peter Langrishe's heir, but much too ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... "You old fool, you curmudgeon, you coward of an old blatherskite!" cried the boy, "I wouldn't drop it for all the world, not if you went on your bended knees. Bobo, yell for the police! Don't you touch my wrist! Look out ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... broke in another officer, whose rather rubicund face told of credit somewhere, and the product of credit,—good wine and good dinners generally. "That is true, Monredin! The old curmudgeon of a broker at the corner of the Cul de Sac had the impudence to ask me fifty per cent. discount upon my drafts on Bourdeaux! I agree with Des Meloises there: business may be a good thing for those who handle it, but devil touch their dirty fingers ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and tell the master of it that there was a crew of poor shipwrecked mariners, not far off, who had eaten nothing for a day or two, save a few clams and oysters, and would therefore be thankful for a little food. And the prince or nobleman must be a very stingy curmudgeon, to be sure, if, at least, when his own dinner was over, he would not bid them welcome to the ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... will be dreadful. It is bad enough to conspire to steal away the wife of a respectable curmudgeon, madame, but to draw one's sword on the king's police!—ma foi, madame, that is another affair. If his majesty's clemency be enlisted, notwithstanding, in their behoof, they may chance to get off with the galleys. It will be a dreadful sight to see that solemn De Secqville and that ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... about him is that he's a cross-grained, old curmudgeon, living about a mile out of Farnham, who scrapes money together by lending small sums upon notes-of-hand at short dates, and at a thundering interest. Flint Jackson folk ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... he is vexed, old curmudgeon that he is!" cried Blucher. "He must always have something to grumble at, and has often enough said very hard things about me. Let him do so again, for aught I care! I shall, nevertheless, not go to the ball. What should I do there? Merry I cannot be, for my indignation almost ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... a blurred protest. "You have already broken my heart," I said, with some severity, "and now it would appear you contemplate swindling the remainder of my anatomy out of its deserts. You are a curmudgeon." And I ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... sulphurous pessimist. 'If old Colney had listened to me, when India gave proof of the metal and South Africa began heaving, he'd have been a fairly wealthy man by now . . . ha! it would have genialized him. A man may be a curmudgeon with money: the rule is for him to cuddle himself and take a side, instead of dashing at his countrymen all round and getting hated. Well, Colney popular, can't be imagined; but entertaining guests would have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... might have ransacked his cupboards and been none the richer for it. He had refused to sell anything to the first soldiers who came along; no one knew, he might be able to do better later on; and the patient, sly old curmudgeon indulged himself with vague ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... John!" said the cook, loud enough for John to hear. "He's an old curmudgeon as can't sleep o' nights for quarrellin' inside him. I'll go to mis'ess, and you go and sit down in the kitchen till I come ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... 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!" ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... equal to the numerus. Tartaglia's reply to this complaint seems reasonable enough (it must be borne in mind that he is his own reporter), and certainly helps to absolve him from the charge sometimes made against him that he was nothing more than a selfish curmudgeon who had resolved to let his knowledge die with him, rather than share it with other mathematicians of whom he was jealous. He told Cardan plainly that he kept his rules a secret because, for the present, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... should know that he was engaged to be married to L20,000 a year! But the man did refuse. The man wrote back to say that he did not understand this kind of thing at all, and that he wanted his money at once. George Hotspur sent the man his money, not without many curses on the illiberality of such a curmudgeon. Was it not cruel that a fellow would not give him so trifling an assistance when he wanted it so badly? All the world seemed to conspire to hurt him just at this most critical moment of his life! In many of his hardest emergencies for ready money he had gone to ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... was 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 ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... vineyard—well, it was in a pretty mess, to be sure, and serve him right, for Mrs. Noah had frequently offered him two of her (second) best milch mammoths for it; yet he had held on to his nasty sour grapes, like the mean old curmudgeon that he was. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... later meetings with him I was struck more and more by his gentleness. I believe that men are apt to grow gentler as they grow older, unless they are of the curmudgeon type, which rusts and crusts with age, but with Doctor Holmes the gentleness was peculiarly marked. He seemed to shrink from all things that could provoke controversy, or even difference; he waived what might be a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the old curmudgeon wait! (Voice behind the scenes, John!—John Ostler, I say!) Coming, sir; yes, sir. Sir, indeed—an old brute; but now, Susan, what do'st thee say? wilt thee have me for a husband? (Takes ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the wall. And partly, I reckon, 'tis on the chance to get speech with the Lord Proprietor and persuade 'em to let you bide on Saaron. But that you'll never do. Mind, I'm not sayin' a word against th' old curmudgeon. He's my employer, to start with, besides being what God made 'em. But, reason? You might as well try reason on the hind leg of a jackass. Go thy ways home, Tregarthen: go thy ways home an' teach yourself that all this world and the kingdoms thereof be ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Zadig, "what does all this mean? You seem to me to resemble other men in nothing. You steal a golden basin set with jewels from a signor who receives you with magnificence, and you give it to a curmudgeon who treats ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... Zentout the bath-keeper and Selya the corn-chandler and 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 to the tambourine and dances and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... 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; And as I keep to the foregone, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Mehetabel, he said—"My pretty little hostess, if ever I begrudged a man in my life, I begrudge Jonas Kink—his wife. Come and tell me when you find him intolerable, and see if I cannot professionally help you to be rid of such a curmudgeon. Who knows?—the time may come! My ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... you don't, you ignorant curmudgeon, if noospapers is all you've read. Now, Pat, I got this book, not for myself ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... a plan to rob Mr. Salmon, through the means of the secret passage. He went further, for he had no lack of imagination, and proceeded to conjecture, that it was through the manoeuvreing of these very vagrants, that the old curmudgeon had been brought to Dymock's Tower, and following the connexion, he began to put together the appearance of the young blacksmith, the gipsy who had left Tamar at Shanty's, her second appearance and rapid disappearance, the coming of Mr. ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... mine to increase the obstacles already in my path." Then his tone changed. He leaned across the table. "Come, now, Peter. What is at the root of all this matter? Can we not compose such differences as you conceive exist? Out with them. 'Tis no matter for Sir John. He's a curmudgeon who signifies not a finger's snap. But you, 'tis different. You are her brother. Out with your plaints, then. Let us be frank ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... and week by 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,— And, instead ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... was as crusty an old curmudgeon as one could find in a county. His wife (the lovely Evelyn Wormgate, a daughter of the Duke of Bognor and Wormgate) had died while the radiant Moll was but a puling infant. Thus it was that, knowing no hand of motherly authority, the child perforce ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... hacker who never leaves his cubicle. 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 ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... daughters' husbands. Ye'd rackrint ye'er tinants an' lie about ye'er taxes. Ye'd go back to Ireland on a visit, an' put on airs with ye'er cousin Mike. Ye'd be a mane, close-fisted, onscrupulous ol' curmudgeon; an', whin ye'd die, it'd take half ye'er fortune f'r rayqueems to put ye r-right. I don't want ye iver to speak to me whin ye get ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... "Well, it was Greek meeting Greek. You both fired regular broadsiders. Cool off, Cousin Hugh. Don't you see that all things are working for the best? Your rupture with old Houghton will only secure you greater favor with our people, and Ella be cured all the sooner of any weakness toward that old curmudgeon's son." ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... my Sister Ward? Why, her Guardian is mine, we are Fellow Sufferers: Ah! he is a covetous, cheating, sanctify'd Curmudgeon; that Sir Francis Gripe ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... it's true. He is curmudgeon-y. He's tried for years to get a tenant for this property, and not even the mill folks would touch it. He took advantage of us and made us think we were getting ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... You must know the town of Bagdad is divided into quarters, in each of which there is a mosque with an imaum to perform service at certain hours, at the head of the quarter which assembles there. The imaum of the division I live in is a surly curmudgeon, of an austere countenance, and the greatest hypocrite in the world. Four old men of this neighbourhood, who are people of the same stamp, meet regularly every day at this imaum's house. There they vent their slander, calumny, and malice against ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... time, the united forces of the Camusot and Popinot families gained an easy victory in the world, for nobody undertook to defend the unfortunate Pons, that parasite, that curmudgeon, that skinflint, that smooth-faced humbug, on whom everybody heaped scorn; he was a viper cherished in the bosom of the family, he had not his match for spite, he was a dangerous mountebank ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... strike me, slave, curmudgeon! Now thy bones aches, thy joints cramps, and convulsions ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... him—he turned round, and I drew back for a mighty kick; but to my disgrace, the mishued curmudgeon knew how to frustrate my effort; the heel of my boot came in all too slight touch with the hostile posterior, I was hurled about by the momentum of my shot that missed its mark, and suddenly stood facing in the opposite ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... of the worry, proving him only too likely a graceless jealous middle-age curmudgeon, a senile sentimentalist, thus did he upbraidingly mock himself—were there not signs of Damaris developing into a rather thorough paced coquette? She accepted the homage offered her with avidity, with many small airs and graces—a ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... . . . seventeen . . . twenty-one,. . 'm'm . . . it takes a heap for a majority. Wouldn't Dilworthy open his eyes if he knew some of the things Balloon did say to me. There. . . . Hopperson's influence ought to count twenty . . . the sanctimonious old curmudgeon. Son-in-law. . . . sinecure in the negro institution . . . .That about gauges him . . . The three committeemen . . . . sons-in-law. Nothing like a son-in-law here in Washington or a brother- in-law . . . And everybody has 'em ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from the thirty-sou table d'hote, and would have been content to pay three francs a head for a dinner a part, but his worst passions were roused when he was asked to pay not three, but four. Now Smollett himself was acutely conscious of the false position. He was by nature anything but a curmudgeon. On the contrary, he was, if I interpret him at all aright, a high-minded, open-hearted, generous type of man. Like a majority, perhaps, of the really open-handed he shared one trait with the closefisted and even with the very mean rich. ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... my uncle; "a more surly curmudgeon does not exist in these parts, or a harder master to his slaves. He is a man people wish to stand well with, not because they love him, but because they fear his vengeance should they offend him. I make a point of keeping out of his way, for fear ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... dear Mrs. Bunter got a letter from a legal firm in the City, advising her that her uncle was dead—her old curmudgeon of an uncle—a retired stockbroker, a heartless, petrified antiquity that had lasted on and on. He was nearly ninety, I believe; and if I were to meet his venerable ghost this minute, I would try to take him by the throat ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... any old fogy like that. As far as I know anything about him, he was a mean, stingy old curmudgeon!" exclaimed Clapp ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... was nothing to them;" and his daughters had sufficient experience of his temper to know there was no use in asking more questions after such an answer. He only added, she would be "well off that should get him." Now, their father being such a curmudgeon, it is no wonder the girls were willing to take the chance of a good-humoured husband instead of an iron-handed father; so they set to work to make themselves as smart as possible for the approaching trial of their charms, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... curmudgeon! A lawyer afford to feel compassion gratis! Either thou art a very deep knave, or the greenest of all greenhorns. Well, I suppose, I must let thee off for one guinea, and the clerk's fee. A bad business, a ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... so carefully hide it, That, since I was born, I hardly have spied it. Then it must be allow'd, that, whenever I shine, I forward the grass, and I ripen the vine; To me the good fellows apply for relief, Without whom they could get neither claret nor beef: Yet their wine and their victuals, those curmudgeon lubbards Lock up from my sight in cellars and cupboards. That I have an ill eye, they wickedly think, And taint all their meat, and sour all their drink. But, thirdly and lastly, it must be allow'd, I alone can inspire the poetical ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... takes charge of her, is rather uneasy about these gipsies, who placed her with him. If he could get back his money, which they have made him wait for too long, I am quite sure he would be delighted to sell her; for he always lived like the veriest curmudgeon; he would allow himself to be whipped for the smallest coin of the realm. Money is the God he worships above everything, but the worst of it ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... "'s an old curmudgeon; yes, a thing whose heart is flint; When I ask a friendly greeting, all I get's an angry glint. Let me do it every good turn that I can—my very best, Still it strikes me, trips, maligns me, and denies ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... 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
... 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 ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry |
