"Grumbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strange to us; stranger, I suspect, to my friends than to me; but Dick took the opportunity of both the host and his grand-daughter being out of the room to say to me, softly: "A grumbler: there are a few of them still. Once upon a time, I am told, they were quite ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... in the cause of France,' returned the Emperor. Then, turning to us, he took old Tremeau by the ear. 'Ah, old grumbler,' said he, 'you were one of my Egyptian grenadiers, were you not, and had your musket of honour at Marengo. I remember you very well, my good friend. So the old fires are not yet extinguished! They still burn up when you think that your Emperor is wronged. And you, Colonel ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and the party of emigrants he was leading made very good progress on their journey towards the settlement. The only grumbler was Mrs Clagget, as she trudged on with a long stick in her hand, sometimes by the side of the Diceys, and at others addressing her remarks to Mrs Jones. However, as it was so evident that she talked for the sake of keeping ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... addition to your being unsentimental, and all that, you are becoming a confirmed grumbler!" exclaimed Cyn, as she caught one of the boughs of the tree overhead and turned a ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... again, who staid all the time in Paris. He has come back a regular grumbler. If you would believe him, there is not a single thing worth having, from one end of the Union to the other. He is disgusted with everything, and only last night said that our climate wants fog! Now, I think it is much better to go ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... love with each other, you see, the Taube and the forty-two-centimetre shell, the "Brummer," or "Grumbler," as they call it in Germany—could anything be more piquant? You should hear them—the chaste, chic, nun-like Taube and the thick-chested old Brummer, singing that he is her dear old Grumbler and she ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... you old grumbler," laughed Frank. "Come on, I'll give you some action. We have several hours of good daylight left before dinnertime. I'll take you on at tennis. Della and I will play you and Jack, and we won't give you time to ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... along, you little grumbler!" Lady O'Gara said with her infectious gaiety. "Come for a good trot. I know what will happen to you: you'll get chilblains if you sit by the fire in cold weather. Your hands will be dreadful to look at, and your feet ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... general characteristics of the German peasant, it is easy to understand his relation to the revolutionary ideas and revolutionary movements of modern times. The peasant, in Germany as elsewhere, is a born grumbler. He has always plenty of grievances in his pocket, but he does not generalize those grievances; he does not complain of "government" or "society," probably because he has good reason to complain of the burgomaster. When a few sparks from the first French Revolution ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... empty just then, with the exception of North and the injured man. North aroused himself and looked around. Seeing no listeners near, he went up to the grumbler, and began to condole ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... with a middle-aged grumbler, who, after reading Mr. Palgrave's Memoir and Introduction, should exclaim, 'Why was there not such an edition of Scott when I was ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... favourites gorge themselves in luxurious plenty, while he nurses his hunger, but would a thousand times rather pay allegiance to those who save him from absolute starvation? And Zaphnath, in his nightly wanderings and his daily errands of espionage, thinkest thou he overhears a public grumbler who fails to curse him and his Pharaoh, and to extol the men from the Blue Star, and the unfortunate farmer, who, until now, has been able to give the people ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... estrangement end? * When shall my bygone joys again be kenned? Yesterday we were joined in same abode; * Conversing heedless of each envious friend:[FN192] Trickt us that traitor Time, disjoined our lot * And our waste home to desert fate condemned: Wouldst have me, Grumbler! from my dearling fly? * I find my vitals blame will not perpend: Cease thou to censure; leave me to repine; * My mind e'er findeth thoughts that pleasure lend. O Lords[FN193] of me who brake our troth and plight, * Deem not to lose your hold ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... struggle for democracy, and with an observation that was almost microscopic saw all its picturesque details of speech and character and incident. He was the eye of the mighty Victorian age, as Tennyson was its ear, and Browning its psychologist, and Carlyle its chronic grumbler. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... What kindness I've known has been from my own people; a poor bird will pull out its own feathers to cover another. But I can't complain; I have had bad days, but there are folks who have had worse. And the women have always been good to me. Bengta was a grumbler, but she meant it kindly; Karna sacrificed money and health to me—God be thanked that she didn't live after they took the farm from me. For I've been a landowner too; I had almost forgotten that in all my misery! Yes, and old ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... many imitations, as the Historian, here named; the Rhapsody, Observator, Moderator, Growler, Censor, Hermit, Surprize, Silent Monitor, Inquisitor, Pilgrim, Restorer, Instructor, Grumbler, &c. There was also in 1712 a Rambler, anticipating the name of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... exemplary death, confirmed the strong impression his merit had made upon the mind of Mr. Johnson. "It is so very difficult," said he, always, "for a sick man not to be a scoundrel. Oh! set the pillows soft, here is Mr. Grumbler a-coming. Ah! let no air in for the world, Mr. Grumbler ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... grumbler, for I have two ears, and while Sir Lionel's rather mournful notes entered first; your pretty nothings were blown in upon them so quickly, by some more mirthful sprite as to send his to my memory, while yours are in my ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... the most roughly nurtured of us who will rough it the most cheerfully. Willie Thomson, of harsh and meagre upbringing, was the grumbler of his billet. He found fault with the camp fare, accommodation and hours in particular, with the discipline in general. Yet, oddly enough, after a fortnight or so, he seemed to accept the physical drill at 7 a.m. with a sort of ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... Wolff, its editor, has had so much journalistic experience, outside of Germany, and is, moreover, a man of such marked ability, that he is striving to be something more than a sycophantic clerk of the Government. He is not a grumbler, not a dissatisfied extremist, not unpatriotic, but possesses a breadth of outlook patriotic in the highest sense. On the morning after the Liebknecht riots in the Potsdamer Platz, his paper did not appear. The reason given by the Commandant of the Mark of ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... of what was eaten. Yet our practical narrative cannot ignore the matter. Certain delicate subjects, however, are best treated dialectically, and perhaps we could not here do better than record a dialogue which we think we must have overheard between Grumbler and Cheerful, two dramatic characters not unknown to readers of the ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... returned, and drank and ate there in token of revenge. He pledged the young bride in a bumper, and drank perdition to her under his breath. He made responses of smothered maledictions as her father gave her away in the chapel, and my lord vowed to love, honour and cherish her. He was not the only grumbler respecting that marriage, as Mr. Warrington knew: he heard, then and afterwards, no end of abuse of my lady and her grandfather. The old gentleman's City friends, his legal adviser, the Dissenting clergyman at whose chapel they attended on their first arrival in England, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... praise, even under the guise of just recognition of work done. Words of complaint, whether heard or read, strike a discord to one who himself at the moment is satisfied with his surroundings. We all have an instinctive shrinking from the tones of a grumbler. Nelson's insistence upon his grievances has no exemption from this common experience; yet it must be remembered that these assertions of the importance of his own services, and dissatisfaction with the terms in which they had been mentioned, occur chiefly, if not solely, in letters ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... "No Sir Arthura tame grumbler I. I only claim the privilege of croaking in my own corner here, without uniting my throat to the grand chorus of the marshNi quito Rey, ni pongo ReyI neither make king nor mar king, as Sancho says, but pray heartily ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... you were always a grumbler!" said a merchant of cloth, whose commodity the ceremonial had put in great request. "Fie!—for my part, I think Senator a less new-fangled title than Tribune. I hope there will be feasting enow, at last. Rome has been long dull. A bad ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and a constitutional grumbler, it was with the greatest difficulty that Moodie could get him to do anything beyond bringing a few pails of water from the swamp for the use of the house, and he often passed me carrying water up from the lake without offering to relieve me of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... fo'c's'le patiently listenin' ter th' horrible language in which they reproached me because one o' 'em had managed t' break a front tooth in biting a bit o' th' salt pork they'd had for dinner, which was certainly no fault o' mine, when one of 'em, an English chap he was, an' the worst grumbler of all, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... speech and action, as well as dress, but she must have smiled over the fierceness with which weaker sisters were attacked, and perhaps have sought to change the attitude of this chronic fault- finder; "a sincere, witty and valiant grumbler," but always a grumbler, to whom the fashions of the time seemed an outrage on common sense. He devotes a separate section of his book to them, and the delinquencies of women in general because they were "deficients or redundants not to be brought under ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... him of a high moral standard, and be careful at this early age to avoid the common fault of giving a dog a bad name. If it is said on all sides that a child has an uncontrollable temper, is an inveterate grumbler, is lacking in all power of concentration, or has a tendency to deceit, it is likely that the child will act up to his reputation. He comes in time to regard this failing of his as part of himself just as much as is the colour of his ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... remarked to the owners when he saw that Joe was this voyage to form one of his crew: "The old fellow would be worth his pay if he never put his hand to work. He keeps a crew in good humour with his yarns and stories; and if there is a grumbler on board he always manages to turn the laugh against him, and to show him to the others in his true light as a skulker and a sneak. He looks after the boys and puts them up to their duty, and acts generally ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... air, which from the sea in cloudy buckets scoop up the water, ever wearied lifting and lifting, and then pour it again in the sea, a mournful, wearisome business. Over the sea, flat on his face, lies the monstrous, terrible North Wind, sighing and sinking his voice as in secret, like an old grumbler; for once in good humor, unto the ocean he talks, and he tells her ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... was far from being as nattle and querulous as the famous ill-natured grumbler so racily pictured by Benjamin Preston, of Bradford; but, like most of the dwellers upon earth, she was a little bit touched with the same complaint. When the rain was over, we came away. I cannot say that the weather ever "cleared ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... the world over into the hands of the cook. And into what better hands could you fall? To you, my fat, jolly, four-meals-a-day friend, Mr. Gourmand, but more especially to you, my somber, lean, dyspeptic, two-meals-a-day friend, Mr. Grumbler, the cook is indeed a valuable friend. The cook wields a scepter that is only second in power to that of love; and even love has become soured through the evil instrumentality of the good-looking or bad-cooking cook. This is no jest, it is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... not a pessimist, nor misanthrope, nor grumbler; I bear it all, the burden of Public Affairs, the immensity of Space, the brevity of Life, and the thought of the all-swallowing Grave—all this I put up with without impatience. I accept the common lot. And if now and then for a moment it seems too much; if I get my feet wet, or have to ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... grumbler? You shall stay here and guard the lady, if you are so much afraid of your beautiful self; and I will ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... ride, and a long fast enabled me to do good justice to. In the afternoon, malgre a cutting east wind, which was anything but agreeable after the hot weather I had been living in, I took a long walk about the town, accompanied by an old friend of mine and a constitutional grumbler, who yet joined with me in declaring that a first impression of Boston could hardly fail pleasing any man who could be pleased by a near view of a city, well and substantially built, as it ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... that his life during his tenure of it cannot have been a pleasant one. Every crank with an infallible recipe for catching sunbeams in cucumber-frames and turning them into potatoes, or whatever might be the fashionable food at the moment; every grumbler who imagined that every rise in prices must be entirely due to the malignity of men and not to the scarcity of the article; every politician with a grudge to satisfy or an axe to grind—all these pounced ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... By the great grumbler, answered he, but I'll bet you don't! immediately delivering me one pistol, and taking up and unlocking the other himself. Accordingly I placed the plate against the wall, fired, and was not far from ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... military profession. His face was ardent, his pantaloons were of white flannel, his expression of countenance was that of habitual discontent, but with a twinkle of geniality in the eye which redeemed the Grumbler from the usual tedium of his tribe. He ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... in this matter. We have not a particle of sympathy with the ordinary grumbler, by which we mean that class of persons whose noses are not only stuck up at any and every encroachment on their worn-out ideas of what is right and wrong, but, like crabbed terriers, snap at the heels of every man that passes. Nor do we wish you to think that we place our fathers on a higher ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... and de Tocqueville, as well as the London of Robert Peel, Macaulay, and John Stuart Mill, were but varieties of the same upper-class bourgeoisie that felt instinctive cousinship with the Boston of Ticknor, Prescott, and Motley. Even the typical grumbler Carlyle, who cast doubts on the real capacity of the middle class, and who at times thought himself eccentric, found friendship and alliances in Boston — still more in Concord. The system had proved so successful that even Germany wanted to try it, and Italy yearned for it. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... bright upright fearlessness—his shoulders were learning to bend, his head to slouch forward. One needed but to glance at him to see that Geoffrey Tudor was fast becoming that most disagreeable of social characters, a grumbler! And with grumbling unrepressed, and indulged in, come worse things, for it has its root in that true "root of all ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... The grumbler followed, but, no sooner was he alone with stout Woodes, than the captain sprang upon him with the agility of a leopard. He was thrown to the ground, held, and bound by two officers. Then he was stripped and whipped ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... and even Anglo-Saxon ice thaws rapidly upon the Nile. They were fortunate in being without the single disagreeable person who in these small boats is sufficient to mar the enjoyment of the whole party. On a vessel which is little more than a large steam launch, the bore, the cynic, or the grumbler holds the company at his mercy. But the Korosko was free from anything of the kind. Colonel Cochrane Cochrane was one of those officers whom the British Government, acting upon a large system of averages, ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... in the mutiny were and he drove those into the camp first. The others followed. In five minutes they were all at their places at table munching quietly. Another man, even with equal determination, might have not succeeded. But the greediest grumbler among them understood that this young man had first been as valiant to secure their rights as he was now ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... mortification; cold comfort; regret &c. 833; repining, taking on &c. v.; heart-burning, heart-grief; querulousness &c. (lamentation) 839; hypercriticism. inquietude, vexation of spirit, soreness; worry, concern, fear &c. 860. [person who is discontented] malcontent, grumbler, growler, croaker, dissident, dissenter, laudator temporis acti[Lat]; censurer, complainer, fault-finder, murmerer[obs3]. cave of Adullam[obs3], indignation meeting, "winter of our discontent" [Henry VI]; "with what I most ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... estate; but in winter he used to go by himself to Moscow, where he put up at a hotel, attended his club assiduously, aired his eloquence freely, explained his plans in society, and more than ever gave himself out as an Anglomaniac, a grumbler, and a statesman. But the year 1825 came and brought with it much trouble[A]. Ivan Petrovich's intimate friends and acquaintances underwent a heavy tribulation. He made haste to betake himself far away into the country, and there he shut himself up in his house. Another year passed and Ivan Petrovich ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... queer old fellow was on his way to Sofia. He seemed slightly deformed, his face was distinctly ugly, broad, clean-shaven, with a pair of black, piercing eyes that gave him a most striking appearance. His grey hair was long, his nose aquiline, his teeth protruding and yellow; and he was a grumbler of the most pronounced type. He growled at the food, at the service, at the draughts, at the light in the restaurant, at the staleness of the bread we had brought with us from Paris, and at the butter, which he declared to be ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... my part, I'd rather let the things remain where they are, than have to bring them all this way," exclaimed the worst grumbler of the party. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... nuisance bringing us up like this," chorused Mr Quadrant, a fellow-grumbler of the same kidney. "We might have carried on as we were standing, if those blessed Parlyvoos, had only let us alone; while now, when we do make a start again, the wind will most probably have headed us, and we'll then have to go about and bear away to the nor'ard ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... so admirably the weekly communication between England and South Africa, are so powerful, handsome, and commodious, their captains and crews are so attentive and obliging, their food and cabin accommodation so ample and luxurious, that it seems impossible for anyone, excepting a confirmed grumbler, to find any reasonable fault with any of their arrangements, where all are so good. Passengers will select the particular vessel by which they desire to travel, rather by the convenience of the date fixed for sailing, than from ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... publication of his well-known poem, "Natterin' Nan," which first appeared in a Bradford journal in 1856. This is a vigorous piece of dramatic realism, setting forth the character of a Yorkshire scold and grumbler with infinite zest and humour. But it is in pathos that the genius of Preston chiefly consists. In poems like "Owd Moxy," "T' Lancashire Famine," and "I niver can call her my wife," he gives us pictures ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... gad-fly unseemly, I am certain that we must have here Old Reason, the grumbler, extremely Annoyed by our joy and our cheer. He tells us in tones of monition Of the clouds and the tempests to come: Let us drive him away to perdition, That he bore us ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... character.[3233] Frequently no trouble is taken to find a suitable name, this being either Chrysale, Orgon, Damis, Dorante, or Valere. The name designates only a simple quality, that of a father, a youth, a valet, a grumbler, a gallant, and, like an ordinary cloak, fitting indifferently all forms alike, as it passes from the wardrobe of Moliere to that of Regnard, Destouche, Lesage or Marivaux.[3234] The character lacks the personal badge, the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of a vivacity the like of which never was seen. When you handle any matter in which he takes an interest, then his eyes, his lips, his hands, everything about him speaks. You would be quite wrong to picture in him an everlasting grumbler. Not at all; he laughs with those who laugh, he chats and jokes with children, he rallies his housekeeper."[139] He was not so civil to all the world, and occasionally turned upon his pursuers with a word of most sardonic roughness.[140] But he could ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Ridley too had heard a spiteful whisper or two, but it had seemed too preposterous for him to attend to it. "You are young, Hardcastle," he said, with a smile, "or you would know that there is nothing a grumbler will not say, nor how far men's tongues lie ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his horse along the ranks, his escort had followed him without his paying any attention to it: but when he set off at a gallop, he perceived, that his grenadiers were galloping after him, and stopped. "What do you do there?" said he to one of them: "Go about your business!" The old grumbler[92], who knew that apprehensions were entertained for the life of his general, appeared disposed not to obey. The Emperor then took hold of him by his hairy cap, and, giving it a hearty shake, repeated with a smile his order to him to retire: "Go all of you away: I am surrounded by none ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... don't like writing to the Bishop of London: it is making a fuss, and looks as if I regretted the part I had taken on Church Reform, which I certainly do not—but I should be much annoyed if the Bishop were to consider me as a perpetual grumbler against him and his measures—I really am not: I like the Bishop and like his conversation—the battle is ended, and I have no other quarrel with him and the Archbishop but that they neither of them ever ask ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... is complete without its curmudgeon or self-appointed grumbler, just as every village has its special imbecile. The curmudgeon originates in a class above the idiot; very often he is an ex-churchwarden, guardian, way-warden, or other official, who has resigned ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... was a huge, good-natured, flax-headed lubber; lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature; an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar, and yet not a successful one, for he had had no intelligent training, but was allowed to come up just any way. This life was serious enough to him, and seldom satisfactory. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and if people don't take lemon they can take tea as Li Hung Chang does. For a guest to have a preference and emphasize it, is downright rude. To be asked to a lady's house is glory enough for any one. The grumbler can go to a restaurant and take a cup and drink it up ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... and three young gentlemen, his pupils. He stood in the midst of them smiling blandly, an open volume in his hand, (probably a classic author,) between which, and his pupils, and the scenery, he divided his attention in about equal parts. There was a specimen of the English grumbler, big, burly, and as if in danger of choking from the tightness of his cravat. Every one knows him, his pleasant ways, and his constant flow of good humour and cheerfulness; that is he, sitting to the right. There were besides, numerous young gentlemen from the universities, ...
— The Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones and Robinson • Richard Doyle |
