"Cussedness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to use their own expressive parlance, were always "a trifle wary" in dealing with Maud, for what that young lady thought she promptly said, and said without reserve, choosing, as it seemed, out of pure "cussedness" the very moment of all others when they would ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... walked up and down, Tony talked between tears and anger—tears for himself and George, anger at the cussedness of things. He looked straight before him, to where the row of lamps divided the lesser from the greater darkness, the town noises from the chafing surf; it is the only time I have ever seen a fisherman walk along shore without a constant eye ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... world of ya; an' yet in your black heart you were all the time plottin' to get my money, usin' my little girl as a burglar would use a bar to open a safe with. Even then you couldn't wait in patience; your inborn cussedness forced you to steal an' cheat—and yet, boy, I could almost forgive you for deceivin' me, but I can't never forgive you for deceivin' my little girl. You stand there with a gun in your hand an' I stand here with none; you brag 'at no man can't doubt your ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... always needed repairing whenever Andre Loustalot's flock wandered over from the San Carpojo. In this state, one cannot recover for trespass unless one keeps one's fences in repair—and Loustalot used to trespass on our range quite frequently and then blame his cussedness on our fences. Of course, he broke our fences to let his sheep in to water at our waterholes, which was very annoying to us, because sheep befoul a range and destroy it; they eat down to the very grass-roots, and cattle will not drink at a water-hole patronized by sheep. Well, our patience ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... All the cussedness of the bovine race is centred in the cow. In Australia the most opprobious epithet one can apply to a man or other object is "cow". In the whole range of a bullock-driver's vocabulary there is no word that expresses his blistering scorn so well as "cow". To an exaggerated feminine ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... say it is due to carelessness and a slip-shod mind, because they do not know that the muscles sometimes grow faster than the bones, making accurate co-ordination a physical impossibility; in a word, to general, all round cussedness they charge behavior that should be referred to high blood pressure, aching bones, the knitting together by fiber growth of the various brain centers, and finally, to youthful enthusiasm, all of which are perfectly normal signs of developing youth. They do it because ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... heaven you had, my dear," Eustace spoke with a grim hint of humour. "It would have saved us both a good deal of unnecessary trouble and humiliation. However, Scott was too big a fool to tell you. There is a martyrlike sort of cussedness about him that is several degrees worse than any pride. So he let things be, still cheating himself into the belief that the arrangement was for your happiness, till, as you are aware, it turned out so manifestly otherwise ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... an' peaked an' thin, an' narry a no account horse,— Least that's the way you'd describe him in case that the beast had been lost; But, for single and double cussedness an' for double fired sin, The horse never came out o' Texas that was half-way knee-high ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... raws and galls, that are urged forward at a gallop by the remorseless stick, or even by the goad, for the Neapolitan donkey-boy is absolutely callous to the feelings of his animal. Not that he is cruel out of sheer cussedness, for cruelty's sake, for he can be really kind to his dog or his cat; but the beast of burden, the helpless uncomplaining servant of man, suffers terribly at his hands. It is useless to remonstrate or argue with the young ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... pleasure, and I often thought that the atonement would have to be very broad in its provisions to cover the case of a man that would I write such a book for boys. Then I would look to see how the sun was getting on, and sometimes I thought it had stuck from pure cussedness. Then I would go back and try Jenkyn's again. Well, but it had to go down, and when the last rim of light sank below the horizon, off would go our hats and we would give three cheers for ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the next proceeding. I knew there was to be some more of it, and there was. Hunt's brother offered back half the money; offered it! why, he tried to force it on the fellow, and couldn't. His master wouldn't let him buy himself and his wife,—I suspect, out of sheer cussedness,—and he hadn't any other use for money, he said. Besides, he didn't want to take, and wouldn't take, anything that looked like pay for doing aught for a 'Linkum sojer,' ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... as I expected they would, went up a side valley instead of going on by the caravan route. The fellow had riz my dander, and after sitting for a bit I made up my mind I would go after 'em. I had no particular motive, it wur just out of cussedness. I was not going to be bluffed from going whar I chose. This air a free country, and I had as much right to go up ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... no stopping our cussedness. We rigged up a mast, piled on the canvas (blankets), and travelled short hours while the Army worked over-time to keep us in sight. Then General Kelly had recourse to diplomacy. No boat could touch us in the ...
— The Road • Jack London
... and making preserves, it is those who spend their lives pioneering and state-building in countries like Africa. Men who continually have to contend with disease, bad food, rains, insect pests, dangerous wild beasts and native cussedness may well claim that they have troubles enough, without going far into campaigns to preserve wild animals in countries where animals are plentiful and cheap. It is for this reason that the people of Alaska can not be relied upon to preserve ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... 'explanation' is entirely too belligerent in tone for so grave a matter. There is a heap of 'cussedness' mixed up with your usual amiability, and you are at times too fond of a fight. If I were you, I would simply state the facts as they were. I would give the statement as you have here, without the pepper and salt. Let me try my hand ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... hot, black breath of the burnin' boat Jim Bludso's voice was heard, And they all had trust in his cussedness, And knowed he would keep his word. And, sure's you're born, they all got off Afore the smokestacks fell, - And Bludso's ghost went up alone In the ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... mistake, he had gone away in a rage and seen her face no more. Of course he had set it down to female infidelity; he had served her turn, she had made a fool of him, and that was all she wanted. Now he might enjoy his humiliation. It did not occur to him that it might be simple "cussedness," to borrow an energetic American term, or that she had not really changed, but was angry with him for some reason which she did not choose to show. It is difficult to weigh the motives of women in the scales of male experience, and many other men besides Geoffrey ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... it made him catch his breath to see the apparent chances they took; but after a little he perceived that seeming luck was in reality a coolness of judgment and a long experience in the peculiar ways of that most erratic of inanimate cussedness—the pine log. The banks grew daily. Everybody was safe ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... "is where I've scored. I knew that Viola is obstinate, and that if she starts by turning you down she'll keep it up out of sheer cussedness. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... phase of this destruction of nature and wealth and art and life is the German defense of it. War is always hell and most of the awful things in this war have had their counterparts in other conflicts, though the Teutonic element has brought some peculiar refinements of cussedness and has given a thoroughness and "pep" and "kick" ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... through all these years of privation and struggle? And her money is all in dollars. Pah! I smell the oil. Struck ile! Of all things in the world, her brother should just go and strike ile!" A great shudder traversed his form. "Everything seems to have been arranged out of pure cussedness, just to spite me. She would have been happier without the money, poor child—without the money, but with me. What will she do with all her riches? She will only ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... of the external world around us as a nasty tiresome old thing of which all we can say for certain is that it works by a "law of cussedness"—so that, whichever way we want to go, that way seems always barred, and we only bump against blind walls without making any progress. But that uncomfortable state of affairs arises from ourselves. Once we have passed ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter |
