"Exasperating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about all this, which, to a gentleman of an excitable temperament, had, under the circumstances, rather an exasperating tendency. Mr. Pickwick restrained his wrath by gigantic efforts; but when Perker wrote a cheque for the whole amount, and Fogg deposited it in a small pocket-book, with a triumphant smile playing over his pimply features, which communicated itself likewise to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... latter, imagining, perhaps, that we didn't actually know our own plans, had followed his instructions. I must say that I never before received such an astonishing mark of kindness. The ill-concealed satisfaction of the people at our mishap made it all the more exasperating. The end of it was that two or three marks were taken off the account, which we then paid, and in an hour afterwards shipped ourselves and carrioles on board a steamer for Lillehammer. The Norwegian who had caused all this ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... represents one of the lady disputants as saying to her adversary, "You go home, and, when you are quite sober, mend your stockings"; and he adds that these allusions, not only to her intemperate habits but to the state of her wardrobe, were so exasperating to the accused party that she proceeded to comply, not with the suggestion of her accuser, but with the request of the bystanders, and to "pitch in" with considerable alacrity. Assuming that her hose was as reported, let us hope that she had the worst of the combat, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... um all 'long right way; put um on Jimmy's back!" cried my black companion; and this seeming to be no bad way of carrying the wounded man in such a time of emergency, Jimmy stooped down, exasperating me the while by grinning, as if it was good fun, till the sufferer from our mistake was placed upon his back, ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... Always there is moisture drifting across them, drifting into the Colleges. It, one suspects, must have had much to do with the evocation of what is called the Oxford spirit—that gentlest spirit, so lingering and searching, so dear to them who as youths were brought into ken of it, so exasperating to them who were not. Yes, certainly, it is this mild, miasmal air, not less than the grey beauty and gravity of the buildings, that has helped Oxford to produce, and foster eternally, her peculiar race of artist-scholars, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... built, armored, and armed, the Tennessee must have been a very exasperating vessel to her commander. She had two grave defects; the first, perhaps unavoidable from the slender resources of the Confederacy, was lack of speed. Her engines were not built for her, but taken from a high-pressure river steamboat, and though on her trial trip she realized about ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... hat and passed a hand over his forehead. She noticed, as she had a hundred times, how fine his hair was at the roots, and was angry again because he would not, with his exasperating ways, let any woman love him as she might. He seemed to have nothing to say, but she knew the picture of lone 'Delia sitting on the steps was far from moving him. It did cause him an honest trouble, for he was kind; but not for that would he ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... It was most exasperating, the incongruity of the boy's appearance assorted with his double role of persecutor of distressed damsels and ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... "It is exasperating," said Stane, with a little laugh. "But we must climb the beastly thing. If we try to go round it, we shall probably only encounter others. I'll go first and have a look at the ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... unintentional—illuminating testimony to the difference between the Irish and the British temperament. And this testimony supports the point I am trying to make—that the "typical" logicless, inconsequential Irish mind, so winsome and so exasperating, is not the kind of brain ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... not hampered in their work by the necessity of doing it under cover, as they are here. It is a question which method is preferable. I believe some of our prisoners would vote for the open way of killing and torturing. It is exasperating to be "done up" in secret, in the dark, stifled and gagged, with no chance to die fighting. I have no comparative statistics as between us and Russia, but it would not be surprising if our record of men ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... link, the gentle delicious complacency of the first period, the chill airs that soon ruffled it, the glowing hopes, the misgivings that dashed them; then the diminution of confidence, more complexing and exasperating than its utter loss; the alternations of joy and doubt, the fever and the ague of the wounded spirit; then the gusts of hatred followed by deeper love; later still, the periodical irritation at hopes long deferred, and still gleams of bliss between the paroxysms, so that now, as the vulgar say ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... marry a Ward Must come to me for my accord: So in my court I sit all day, Giving agreeable girls away, With one for him - and one for he - And one for you - and one for ye - And one for thou - and one for thee - But never, oh never a one for me! Which is exasperating, for ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... doubtless well-known story of a marriage which was almost ideally perfect in all respects but one—that the girl "couldna bide her man." He can do many things, but he cannot or will not tell a story, save in such fragments and flashes as those noted above. His longueurs are exasperating and sometimes nearly maddening, though perhaps many readers would save themselves by simply discontinuing perusal. The first Diabolique has metal attractive enough of its kind. A young officer boards with a provincial family, where the beautiful but at first silent, abstracted, and, as ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... all the satisfaction Celestina would get from her feeble complaints; it was all she ever got. Yet in spite of the exasperating response she adored Willie who had been to her the soul of kindliness and courtesy ever since she had come to the bluff to live. He might forget to come to his meals,—forget, in fact, whether he had ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... like a baby yet in many ways? Oh, what a horrible danger she had escaped! If she had escaped. Perhaps the boy did not know. Oh, if they would but come! It seemed hours since they had left. The midnight train was just pulling into the station! How exasperating that the telephone did not respond! Something must be out of order with it. Hark! Was that the car? ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... President's views. Some of the members were openly hostile to the President, even in a personal way, particularly one representative from the South, and some of the questions addressed to the President were ungracious to the verge of open insult. It was an exasperating experience, but Mr. Wilson stood the test with patience, betraying no resentment to impertinent questions, replying to every query with Chesterfieldian grace and affability, parrying every blow with courtesy and gentleness, gallantly ignoring the unfriendly tone and manifest unfairness ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... interesting you can't help liking them, and you'll find yourself crying for more before you know it. I am going to bring them over to you. You shall have something better to do than fill up all your mornings with promoting stockings of exasperating colors, and listening to tales of Sabbath-breakers. Just wait and see. I am going to ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... men, all expert laborers, to view the buildings again and estimate the cost of the improvements. They expressed the opinion in writing that Burbage had expended at least L240 in developing the property.[75] Still Alleyn refused to sign an extension of the lease. His conduct must have been very exasperating to the owner of the Theatre. Cuthbert Burbage tells us that his father "did often in gentle manner solicit and require the said Gyles Alleyn for making a new lease of the said premises according to the purporte and effect ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... Drake's hacking cough ceased, and the Indian could not make out where he lay. Either his malady was departing or he had fallen into a temporary slumber! That the latter was the case became apparent from his suddenly recommencing the cough. This, however, had the effect of exasperating one of the sentinels. ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the benefit, Lucy was in a most exasperating mood, Christie in a very indignant one, and as they entered their dressing-room they looked as if they might have played the Rival Queens with great effect. Lucy offered no help and Christie asked none, but putting her vexation ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... their proffered hands with an air of condescension which was most exasperating. He puffed out his chest, and at once began talking of some of his alleged exploits in the secret service ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... the anxious hope for relief. There was not even a lull in the exasperating withdrawals of gold. On the contrary, they grew larger and more persistent than ever. Between the 4th day of December, 1894, and early in February, 1895, a period of scarcely more than two months after the second reenforcement of our gold reserve ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... about that, bub," he said, after an exasperating silence, "for you won't be the one to go, don't you know—not the Boy Scout ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a tragedy at the close of the next Sabbath. The day had been dreary, painful and exasperating beyond all endurance, and he felt that he could never stand the strain of another. And so, having detained his mother in the sitting room after the rest of the family had retired, he paced the floor for a few moments, and after several unsuccessful attempts to introduce the subject ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... other vices, to render the heart thoroughly corrupt.' True; and, once admitted and fostered, it eats like a canker, and with difficulty can ever be brought to let go its hold again, but for ever tightens it. Hardness and insolence come in its train; an insolence which grows till it ends by exasperating and alienating everybody; a hardness which grows until the man can at last scarcely take pleasure in anything, outside the service of his goddess, except cupidity and greed, and cannot be touched with emotion by any language except Fustian. Such ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... people accorded it to him. It irritated me to see how his wife had subdued her personality to his, she who was of so tender and delicate a fibre, and who more than anyone wanted cherishing, instead of being ridden down, in that debonair, rough-shod way of his, that, although often exasperating, still had something attractive about it. She and I used to discuss it sometimes, in the evenings, when he was kept out late at his job—it's an uncertain business, reporting—we used to discuss it with the tolerance of fond people, and smile over his weaknesses, ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... woman who is a scold there is but one more exasperating shape of a woman and that is the woman who, not content with being the most contradictory, the most paradoxical, the most adorable of the Almighty's creations—to wit, a womanly woman—tries, among men, to be ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... to keep you, mon cher Bracondale," Mrs. McBride said, presently, suddenly opening the adjoining door a few inches, "but it is a quite exasperating hat which has delayed me. I can't get the thing on at the ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... down the "Bible Defense of Slavery" and was going upstairs three steps at a stride, when I came upon Camille and Estelle. My aim was to get Harry's revolver to him before he should have the exasperating surprise of finding Gholson armed, and to contrive a pretext for so doing; and happily a word from the two sisters gave me my cue. With the fire-arms of both officers I came downstairs and out upon the veranda ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... power to bring them to a thorough recognition of their errors, and to produce a confidence in his Majesty's clemency, in order that they might concede what was needful for the interests of the Catholic religion and the security of the city. They heard all I had to say without exasperating themselves, and without interposing any strong objections, except in the matter of religion, and, still more, in the matter of the citadel and the garrison. Aldegonde took much pains to persuade me that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tenants. But he is only just and fair, which, in the ethics of Irish agrarianism, is equivalent to being a rack-renter and a tyrant. He refuses to let his own land at whatever the tenants think well to pay for it. He persists, with exasperating obstinacy, in refusing to sacrifice the interests of the landlords for whom he acts. In short, Mr. Hussey is one of the most determined and formidable obstacles to the success of the Land League. While such men have the courage to face the agrarian conspiracy, that grand ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... her and saw the boy. In the early heat of her Tennyson- worship Mrs. Amyot had christened him Lancelot, and he looked it. Perhaps, however, it was his black velvet dress and the exasperating length of his yellow curls, together with the fact of his having been taught to recite Browning to visitors, that raised to fever-heat the itching of my palms in his Infant-Samuel-like presence. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... pityingly, and looked down with a most exasperating kind of condescension at the visitor,—in a way, in fact, that stamped him mentally as a brother in spirit, if not in flesh, of Maria, ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... way interestedly in and out of sleeping forms, investigate with deliberate intent the contents of your pack, or perchance make a tentative nibble at an odd toe or so. If anything digestible is found in an overcoat pocket the exasperating rodents do not enter by the obvious pocket-flap, but CHEW their way in from ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... all the more you ought to have considered her helplessness. It ought to have made her the more sacred"—Jeff gave an exasperating shrug—"to you, and you ought to have kept away from her for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mine to fulfil the destiny of my sex and at the same time become the wife of the man she had long wished me to marry. The power of money was dear to her. She understood it well, and my failure to appreciate it properly was peculiarly exasperating to her. Discussion was useless. It never got farther than where it started. If I said that which I wanted much to say, it would merely mean hearing again what I did not want to hear. Concerning the pursuit of a happy livelihood we were not apt ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... "Oh, you're simply exasperating. You've been reading Nietzsche till you haven't got any sense of moral proportion left. May I ask if you are governed by ...
— Reginald • Saki
... exasperating to a hostess than to have her guests come to her home too early. It is bad enough to wait a meal for a belated guest, but to have some critical woman casually stroll in before one is dressed, or has put the final touches—so dear ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... having one's private belongings gone through by black men in uniform was made more exasperating still by the fact that Coutlass and the other Greek and the Goanese were spectators, amusing themselves with comments that came nearer to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... helpless captives, and to resist to the utmost all attempts for their emancipation or even improvement. All this was natural, though it was all, under the circumstances, of no avail, except to rouse the spirit of the mother country, and to endanger the result of the experiment of emancipation, by exasperating the feelings of the slaves. Precisely similar has been the result of the efforts of the American abolitionists as regards the slaveholders of America. They have produced a state of alarming exasperation at the South, injurious to the slave and dangerous to the country, while they ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Exasperating, maddening creature! He thought: "I fancied I knew her, and I don't know her. I'm only just beginning to know her." He stared steadily at her soft, serious, worried, enchanting face, and tried to see through it into the arcana of her queer little brain. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... Lanyard smiled an exasperating smile, lounged low in his chair, and looked at the deck beams—taking occasion to note that the tell-tale had swung to true northwest. Ca ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the gentleness of her manner and bearing when engaged in pacifying dispute or difficulty among the children, and particularly in dealing with the half-deformed spoilt infant of which I have spoken. This evening that little brat was more than usually exasperating, and having exhausted the patience or repelled the company of all the rest, found itself alone, and set up a fretful, continuous scream, disagreeable even to me, and torturing to Martial ears, which, adapted to hear in that thin air, are painfully alive to strident, harsh, or even ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... so exquisite, so skilled in the nuances of life, so swift and elusive in conversation, so well fitted for the finest forms of enjoyment, her renunciation of liberty would not have proved so exasperating to Kate. A youthful enthusiasm for religion might have made her step understandable. But enthusiasm and she seemed far apart. Intelligent as she unquestionably was, she nevertheless seemed to have given herself over supinely to a current of emotions which was sweeping her ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... and all tight clothes should be removed, stockings and underwear kept on. The hair should be arranged simply, but not allowed to hang in a loose braid, unless you are very sure you will not see any but the patient, and even then it may be unwise, as a braid of hair has an exasperating way of slipping from its proper place (hanging down the back) and dipping into whatever you are stooping over. Dressed thus, with night shoes to protect the feet, one can lie down on a lounge and sleep very comfortably, being freed from ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... Indians had not been at mass on either the eve or day of the nativity, the prior meeting one of them afterward who was most esteemed for his bravery, chid him for his fault, although with demonstrations of paternal charity. He had no intentions of exasperating him, for he knew quite well that the Indian was inducing his countrymen to swell the number of the insurgents by persuasion and threat. But the Indian would not suffer the mild rebuke for that sin, which in other circumstances ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... have written you sooner, save that the developments here have given me so little that is pleasant to write about. My experience with Grierson's agent has been too exasperating for description, and I should have given up and have got out at once had it not been for the Missouri in me, and had I not got a feeling of ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... this time, with an exasperating smoothness and precision that spoke eloquently of its financial possibilities. There were a few workers in the other parts of the shop who, realising that some unusual event was on, began to gather around Walter and Bauer and ask questions. Among ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... for four days—four days of concentrated horror. During the first twenty-four hours the fear of Ascham's alienist dogged him; and as that subsided, it was replaced by the exasperating sense that his avowal had made no impression on the District Attorney. Evidently, if he had been going to look into the case, Allonby would have been heard from before now.... And that mocking invitation to supper showed clearly enough how little ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... and was as nothing compared with the enormity of his judges. He had come out of his trial with a determination to be revenged on the persons from whose tongues he had suffered most severely in the senatorial debates. Of these Cato had been the most savage; but Cicero had been the most exasperating, from his sarcasms, his airs of patronage, and perhaps his intimacy with his sister. The noble youth had exhausted the common forms of pleasure. He wanted a new excitement, and politics and vengeance ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... to the moment when she too should be a bewitching and captivating wife like Vera, in short, a woman of the world, worshipped by grave, bearded men. And both the men were under the spell of Vera's incurable charm, capricious, surprising, exasperating, indefinable, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... boom" until the "turning out" process, on the last day of the drive, should release them and give them their chance of display, their brief moment of notoriety, their opportunity of interesting, amusing, exciting, and exasperating the onlookers ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Yes, Tommy was exasperating to him still as in the long ago, and Cathro said this maliciously, yet feeling that he did a risky thing, so convinced was he by old experience that you were getting in the way of a road-machine when you opposed ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... kicked convulsively, closed his eyes, and lay to all appearance dead. The town below, which had been watching progress, came running up. We removed the halter; the animal lay quiet. The pity of the by-standers was maddening; their remarks exasperating. "Poor little mule, he dies;" they pointed to his rubbed sides,—"Ah, poor creature! What a heavy load! How thin he is." It is certain that the best mule in the town was in far worse condition, and as for food, Chontal had eaten more ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... that is to say, to appoint to the see of Salisbury, now vacant, a man who would consent to the alienation of such rich Church lands as the manors of Sherborne and Yetminster. John Meeres, afterwards so determined and exasperating an enemy of Raleigh's, was now[5] appointed his bailiff, and Adrian Gilbert a sort of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... ten thousand of his people would have to be extricated from the province and carried to the coast. After many and exasperating discussions, Stanley refused to wait longer, and Emin, who had become nearly blind, brought away with him about five hundred persons. The expedition then, over a southeasterly route, made its ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Stephens replied, with exasperating composure; "but a brave and illustrious Indian chief. A nobler looking man I have never laid my eyes upon. You could walk ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... simply, "Show the stranger whar to stake out his mule, 'Dolphus," and disappeared in the "extension" without another word. I followed my little guide, who was perhaps more actively curious, but equally unresponsive. To my various questions he simply returned a smile of exasperating vacuity. But he never took his eager eyes from me, and I was satisfied that not a detail of my appearance escaped him. Leading the way behind the house to a little wood, whose only "clearing" had been effected by decay or storm, he stood silently apart while I picketed Chu Chu, neither ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a sudden consciousness of bitter disappointment, mingled with an exasperating conviction that she had been somehow duped. The tone was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the Black Bear, pressing forward from both banks in canoes and pounding at the panels with their arrows. It seemed only a question of time when they would board the craft and force the panels. Their shouts of victory were shrill and exasperating. ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... bonfire. She had had a sair sickenin' day, an amount of work too wearifu' for one person by her lane. She hoped that the bonfire wasna built o' Mrs. Sinkler's coals nor Mr. Macbrose's kindlings, nor soaked with Mr. Cameron's paraffine; and she finished with the customary but irrelative and exasperating allusion to the exceedingly nice family with whom ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... and Relaxation, of Shivering and Heat, of Agitation and Sinking; insomuch, that we were obliged constantly to endeavour at the expulsion of the noxious Ferments lodged in the primae Viae, or dispersed through the whole Mass of Blood, without exasperating them at the same time; or to correct and lessen their Action, without weakening the Patient. We ought, for Example, to vomit or purge without irritating or exhausting; to procure a free Perspiration or Sweating, without too much animating or inflaming; ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... countrymen responsible for this insanity. Too much talk about la revanche! The very idea of worrying for forty-four years over the two lost provinces when the nation was mistress of enormous and undeveloped lands in other countries! . . . Now they were going to pay the penalty for such exasperating and clamorous foolishness. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... an exasperating delay occurred, for 15 there were not sufficient vessels to transport the army over the water, and for a time the success of the whole expedition was threatened. But Washington was in no mood to be blocked by obstacles of this sort. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... one," he returned, shaking his head at me with a deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and most exasperating; "I'm glad you've grow'd up, a game one! But don't catch hold of me. You'd be sorry arterwards to have ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... "genteel boys," who had better clothes and better manners than the peasant lads, separated themselves from the rest, and conversed or played with each other. No one will wonder that such behavior was exasperating to the poorer boys. I am far from defending Viggo's behavior in this instance. He was here, as everywhere, the acknowledged leader; and therefore more cordially hated than the rest. It was the Roundhead hating the Cavalier; and the Cavalier making merry at the expense ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... his dark, thin face looked fierce with passion. His sister kept the curiously composed tone and manner with which she had said all her exasperating things. ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... confused thoughts the exasperating consciousness that it was nonsense to be frightened, or even disturbed; that, in truth, nothing whatever had happened. But he could not lay hold of it to any comforting purpose. Some perverse force within him insisted on raising new phantoms in his path, and directing his reluctant gaze ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... "because ye're both, so to speak, in a line o' idees and business that draws ye together,—to lean on each other and trust each other ez pardners. Not that YE are ezakly her ekal," he went on, with a return to his previous exasperating naivete, "though I've heerd promisin' things of ye, and ye're still young, but in matters o' this kind there is allers one ez hez to be looked up to by the other,—and gin'rally the wrong one. She looks up to you, Mr. Editor,—it's part of her po'try,—ez she looks down inter the brush and sees ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... deuce has that got to do with me?" Nana repeated. "It's a funny business. So the whole story about Fauchery's in it! Very well, so much the better; the woman has been exasperating me! We shall have ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... hour when Strong was making his disastrous attempt to relieve Esther of her scruples, Mr. Hazard was listening to these exasperating criticisms from his parish. It was his habit to come every day at noon to pass an hour with Esther, and as he entered the house to-day he met Strong leaving it, and asked him to spare the time for a talk the same evening. He wanted Strong's ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... The Ironworker's coolness was exasperating, but at the same time his calmly turning his back, confident that the senor of the tower was incapable of taking advantage of this situation to fire a treacherous shot, inspired a ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... this matter to her husband, only to find that she might better have tried to knock down a stone wall with her head than induce him to change his plans. He listened to her patiently—unless over-irritated, a perfectly exasperating patience was one of his gifts—then said in a cold voice that ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... said Pringle in his most complacent tones. "I want to talk about myself, always, Stella May Vorhis; we've come thirty miles and I've heard Christopher Foy, Foy, Foy, all the way! It's exasperating! ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... tempers—the Mosquito. At the Sandwich Islands and at two or three of the Society group, there are now thriving colonies of these insects, who promise ere long to supplant altogether the aboriginal sand-flies. They sting, buzz, and torment, from one end of the year to the other, and by incessantly exasperating the natives materially obstruct the benevolent ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Linacre (1460?-1524), Physician to Henry VIII, Tutor to the Princess Mary, founder and first president of the College of Physicians, a benefactor of both the ancient Universities and one of the earliest, ablest, most typical, and most exasperating of the English humanists, spent much energy on this work of translation for which his abilities peculiarly fitted him. He was responsible for no less than six important works of Galen, of which one, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the number of people and the noise they made, that led them to apprehend he was in danger - Nothing but the talk, that induc'd them to think he would fire: Others indeed saw snow balls, and other things thrown at him, after he presented his gun, and wav'd it in an exasperating manner, and threatened to fire: - One in particular, declared, that he saw balls of ice thrown, large & hard enough to hurt any man: It is strange, if he thought the centry in danger, that he should stand so near him, as by his own testimony it is evident ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Hamilcar. Where was he? Why had he forsaken them when peace was concluded? His differences with the Council were doubtless but a pretence in order to destroy them. Their unsatisfied hate recoiled upon him, and they cursed him, exasperating one another with their own anger. At this juncture they collected together beneath the plane-trees to see a slave who, with eyeballs fixed, neck contorted, and lips covered with foam, was rolling on the ground, and beating the soil with his limbs. Some one cried ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... just about right for a good picture of the front; Will hoped those drifting clouds would not come along in an exasperating way, as so often happens in the experience of every amateur photographer, and ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... every kind, and that there is a boundlessness in his nature at times trying to his patience. He looks at the map of the German Empire and painfully admits that the present frontiers and area are practically those bequeathed by the great William. To a divine-right monarch this is exasperating. The loftiest ambition of a sovereign is to have the national area expand under ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... mischievous freshmen above—the flippant fun-loving irresponsible six-year-old freshmen—they waited ready to meet the warden with an impudent burst of revelry, and thus to dash her official dignity from its exasperating estate. When they saw Robbie Belle's face they simply stared. They listened in silence to the few rapid words that stung and burned and smarted. They watched her depart, her head still held at its angle of wrathful justice. Then they looked ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... Browning have done, could he have emancipated himself from his involved and difficult style, and written in a manly and straightforward way of the world of men and women around him, instead of going off in his exasperating manner into the Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, to tell us of Prince Hohenstiel Tebwangan Saviour of Society. The pity of it is beyond expression, when so great a poet as Browning makes himself so needlessly unintelligible, and loses the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... smiled, in that cool way, so exasperating always to her, and lifting one hand, began to tell off the months ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and exasperating noises? Were they not the same voices that called Whittington to turn again? Was not the deep bay of St. Paul's heard when Nelson, the old sea-dog, died? Could the music of the bells be spared from the story of London more than ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... the Browns in the story is also exasperating. First you represent Mrs. Brown as taking her twins around to church to be christened. In the middle of the book you make Mrs. Brown lament that she never had any children, and you wind up the story by bringing in Mrs. Brown with her grandson in her arms just ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... and swarmed in futile activity. Within stood an easy chair or two and a small table which was presently spread with a linen cloth, set with porcelain dishes, and garnished with silverware. All the way down the Athabasca Thompson had found every meal beset with exasperating difficulties, fruitful of things that offended both his stomach and his sense of fitness. He had not been able to accommodate himself to the necessity of juggling a tin plate beside a campfire, of eating with one hand and fending off flies with the other. Also ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... they would have an argument. He would bring up each case and confront her with it; and how very unloving a procedure was that—and how exasperating was his manner as ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Unfortunately the immediate neighbourhood of the hole was under water. Thomas, the bounder, had a small heavy ball which he managed to sink in nine. My own, being lighter, refused to go into the tin at all, and floated above the hole in the most exasperating way. ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... the troops, of guns, ammunition, and stores for the lake navies, was one of the most difficult of the problems which the National Government was called upon to solve. It cannot be said that the solution was successfully reached, for the blunders in transportation were among the most costly, exasperating, and dangerous of the war. But the efforts to reach it provided the impulse which soon after resulted in the settlement of Western New York, the appearance of the germs of such flourishing cities as Buffalo, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... had a peculiarly exasperating effect upon men of a different type; and Willis became the butt of the more old-fashioned critics, who vied with each other in inventing opprobrious epithets to shower upon the head of this young puppy of journalism. However, Nathaniel was not a person who could easily be suppressed, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the gentle dignity with which he was constantly repulsed. In the midst of his perplexity, which would have been either pathetic or ridiculous if it had not been so artfully concealed, he managed for the first time to measure the depth of his love for this exasperating but charming creature whom he had been patronising. She was no longer amusing; and Woodward, with the savage inconsistency of a man moved by a genuine passion, felt a tragic desire ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... came, that my selfishness was even stronger than his—it was only a suffering selfishness instead of an enjoying one. But then, again, my exasperating insight into Alfred's self-complacent soul, his freedom from all the doubts and fears, the unsatisfied yearnings, the exquisite tortures of sensitiveness, that had made the web of my life, seemed to absolve me from all bonds towards ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... and not hers,—what is to become of her? She is thrown back upon her own individuality with a shock which is often more than flesh and blood can bear. In Mrs. Warrender's case this was not, as in some cases, a tragical discovery, but it had an exasperating and oppressive character which was almost more terrible. She had been able to breathe while they were children; but when they grew up they stifled her, each with the same "host of petty maxims" which had darkened the still air from ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the Rho dining-room when the gallant came in to dinner, late. With an exasperating readiness of conclusion, the crowd congratulated him upon his change of heart, they welcomed to their ranks, with much clinking of water glasses, another true lover, and Smith sang derisively ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... course," he went on sardonically, "you know that too. You know that I loathe and detest life—that I hate the morning because it begins a new day. Oh, I am bored to extinction, you know all that, you most exasperating woman. I hate"—he suddenly seemed to see that he was giving her pain, and the next words were muttered to himself—"no, I love the ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... first making the discovery; and it was turned to blinding horror when I learnt that I could not even send a telegram to the organisers of the meeting. To leave my entertainers in the lurch was sufficiently exasperating; to leave them without any intimation was simply low. I reasoned with the official. I said: "Do you really mean to say that if my brother were dying and my mother in this place, I could not communicate with her?" He was a man of literal and laborious mind; he asked me if my brother was dying. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... illustrates nearly everything that makes the adolescent so puzzling and so exasperating to ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... exasperating shoes, drying her feet on a woefully limp and dirty handkerchief. This time she lazily wound the lacings around her ankles until she could be sure the creek was safely behind her. Presently she heard the cackling ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... seven. Night comes. There are dreams and some uneasy sleep. Then a love scene.... The clock strikes seven in the morning. Everybody wakes up, and there is a merry discussion. We hear a double fugue in which the theme of the man and the theme of the woman contradict each other with exasperating and ludicrous obstinacy; and the man has the last word. Finally there is the apotheosis of ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... of the most exasperating and human things about a gasolene-engine. It is efficient, but not thoroughly dependable. The best of them are liable to break down at the most needed moment, due to a hundred causes outside of the control of a mechanic or pilot. Care and rigid inspection will reduce the possibilities, ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... Harper's Ferry and "old Brown" until one of the party "thinks he has a nibble" and begs for silence, which at once supervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in the balance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takes advantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating pun, after the manner of a newspaper man, and "Billy Ivins swears he will kill ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... enough, Hood quarrelled with our military officers, with results highly exasperating to our land forces.[263] These last did not shine during the siege. True, in the sortie of 29th November they captured a battery recently erected north of Malbosquet; but, their eagerness exceeding their discipline, they rushed on, despite orders ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... is often exasperating, but there is a superb calm, or shall we say obstinacy, about the Finnish character that absolutely refuses to be ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... against him, immediately followed by the man in your rear bumping up against yourself. Then would follow an indefinite wait until the column would again move on a short distance. The wearing suspense of the long waiting, while standing on our feet; the exasperating halts following those false starts, when everybody was almost frantic with impatience to go on; the excessive physical fatigue, combined with the intense mental strain when already haggard from much loss of sleep during the three days and nights ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... but high-pitched voices of people on the opposite bank are plainly heard across the smooth sounding-board; and in the quiet evening air comes to us the "chuck-chuck" of oars nearly a mile away. Following a torrid afternoon, with exasperating headwinds, this cool, fresh atmosphere, in the long twilight, is inspiring. Overhead is the slender streak of the moon's first quarter, its reflection shimmering in the broad and placid stream rushing ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... she was very sore and angry, and yet ashamed of herself because it was so. But things had gone so horribly wrong, and as for Dirk, he was the most exasperating person in the world. It was owing to his bad management and lack of readiness that her name was coupled with Montalvo's at every table in Leyden. And now what did she hear in a note from the Captain himself, sent to make ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... and disheartening as the work had been at first, Stevens had never slackened his pace, and after a time, as his facilities increased, the exasperating setbacks decreased in number and severity and his progress became faster and faster. Large as the "Forlorn Hope" was, space was soon at a premium, for their peculiarly-shaped craft became a veritable factory, housing a variety of machinery and ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... which had not fulfilled the obligation to establish a hearth and home (tenir feu et lieu) upon the lands. As a spur to the slothful this decree appears to have had a wholesome effect; although, in spite of all that could be done, the agricultural development of the colony proceeded with exasperating slowness. Each year the governor and intendant tried in their dispatches to put the colony's best foot forward; every autumn the ships took home expressions of achievement and hope; but between the lines the patient king must have read ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... other hand, the rebuffs which Democratic Congressmen received in the matter of pension legislation were, it must be admitted, peculiarly exasperating. Reviewing the work of the Forty-ninth Congress, "The Nation" mentioned three enactments which it characterized as great achievements that should be placed to the credit of Congress. Those were the act regulating the ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... struck it out either critically as too ludicrous, or politically as too exasperating. I care not which. It was their business. If an architect says, I will build five stories, and the man who employs him says, I will have only three, the employer is to decide.' 'Yes, Sir, (said I,) ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... his great map of the heavens. To tease him I enumerated a few of her qualities and habits, all to be thoroughly accounted for in my estimation, by her strange environment and bringing up; but far from exasperating him further, as I had supposed it would, this recital appeared to please him mightily. Shaking his finger reprovingly, he advised me no longer to mock myself of him, for unknown to myself I had exposed my own deceit: was I so utterly unversed in the heavenly politics as not to know that this person ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... genial flame, good for all, and in due season partakeable by all, they would hoard and make an idolatrous treasure of it, sacred to one class alone, and such as the diffusion of knowledge renders it alike useless and exasperating to endeavour to withhold. ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... of what, if anything, was the motive of the book. Eventually he is shown pairing off with his earlier love, Winnie; and I am bound to say that she too has my sympathy. I should sum up by saying that the analysis of introspective egotism, however subtly done, can make at best only an exasperating story. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... When the chief of Karauli was called upon to dislodge a gang within his territory, he expressed apprehension that the coercion of the Badhaks might cause a revolution in the State. He was not at all singular, says Colonel Sleeman, in his fear of exasperating this formidable tribe of robbers. It was common to all the smaller chiefs and the provincial governors of the larger ones. They everywhere protected and fostered the Badhaks, as did the landholders; and the highest of them associated with the leaders of gangs on terms of equality and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... touch of slinking humour which the peasants have, and there is in all he said that exasperating quality for which we have no name, which certainly is not accuracy, and which is quite the opposite of judgement, yet which catches the mind as brambles do our clothes, causing us continually to pause ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... annihilated, the old energy is to remain again for all time. It is the post-hypnotic after-effectiveness which gives to the hypnoid and to the hypnotic states their importance for the treatment of the most exasperating symptoms. To be sure, the treatment often must be a prolonged one. A man who for years has used thirty grains of morphine a day cannot be rid of the desire after two or three hypnotic sittings. In such a case the treatment may cover three or four months, if it is to be of lasting value ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... loosely about his neck; but the eyeglasses and the flashing eyes behind them, the pleasant smile and the hearty grasp of hand remained. There was the same eagerness to hear from the world of politics, and the same frank willingness to answer all questions propounded. The slow, exasperating drawl and the unique accent that the New Yorker feels he must use when visiting a less blessed portion of civilization have disappeared, and in their place is a nervous, energetic manner of talking with the flat accent of the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn |
