"Irascible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Frenchman known as Captain Shunan. He had won his title by hard fighting, possessed a magnificent physique, was brave and skilled in the use of arms, and was the most quarrelsome individual in camp. It is impossible to picture a more irascible and disagreeable personage than Captain Shunan, who appeared to spend all his spare time in trying to provoke quarrels with those around him. Sometimes he succeeded, but more often his insolence was submitted to by men as brave as he, but who wished to ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... Antiscripturists," where was the security that these might not at least print and publish their blasphemies and errors? "Our minds are astonished, and our bowels are moved, &c.!"—There is a story of an irascible and fluent man who, after a torrent of abusive words addressed to a cool-tempered friend with whom he had a difference, was brought to a stop by the calm request of his friend that he would be so good as to repeat his observations. Something of the kind happened now. The reply ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... and would then tantalise his customer by offering him the opened oyster and hastily withdrawing it just as the impatient jaws were about to close on the desired morsel, and so on to the end, to the vast irritation of many an irascible little animal. ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... the minor triumphs of Mr. Webster's early Congressional life was his conquest of the heart of John Randolph. In the course of a debate on the sugar tax, in 1816, Mr. Webster had the very common fortune of offending the irascible member from Virginia, and Mr. Randolph, as his custom was, demanded an explanation of the offensive words. Explanation was refused by the member from Massachusetts; whereupon Mr. Randolph demanded "the satisfaction which his insulted feelings required." Mr. Webster's reply to this preposterous ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... example of good portrait-painters should be followed. They, while reproducing the distinctive form of the original, make a likeness which is true to life and yet more beautiful. So too the poet, in representing men who are irascible or indolent, or have other defects of character, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it. In this way Achilles is portrayed ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... Marie Louise so extravagantly to be hated by these irascible cherubs that her anger vanished in regret. She pleaded: "But, my darlings, you don't know what you are saying. The Lusitania was a ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... flourish for ever. I give my advice thus to a young plant - have a strong root, a weak stem, and an indigestible seed; so you will outlast the eternal city, and your progeny will clothe mountains, and the irascible planter will blaspheme in vain. The weak point of tuitui is that ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and large-boned men possess greater energy, a more masculine character, but often less persistence, and are usually devoid of the more delicate emotions. Fat people are good-tempered, but indolent; thin people, full of life, but irascible. ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... exactly carnivorous, he should find the tail in status quo. But it appeared that the sow not only would not stand being interfered with, but, moreover, was carnivorously inclined; for she was at that very moment routing the tail about with her nose, and received Vanslyperken's advance with a very irascible grunt, throwing her head up at him with a savage augh; and then again busied herself with the fragment of Snarleyyow. Vanslyperken, who had started back, perceived that the sow was engaged with the very article in question; and finding it was a service of more ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... him. His wife, for a wonder, was a slattern German, and she spoke English very imperfectly. With her several small children she lived in a chaotic way, keeping up a perpetual whining and fault-fnding, half under her breath from fear of her irascible husband, that was like a "continual dropping on a very rainy day." Every now and then, Mrs. Wheaton said, he would suddenly emerge from his abstraction and break out against her in a volley of harsh, guttural German oaths that were ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... as humans. Some are lazy, some alert, surly, or timid. Nearly all the females we saw showed that irritability and irascible disposition that go with the cares of maternity. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... every oath outside them, and it was to be seen on nearly every page of every book that was published. But all that is changed. To speak or print the name of God is reckoned "bad form." The word is almost tabooed in decent society. You hear it in the streets, however, when the irascible carman calls on God to damn your eyes for getting in his way. There is such a conspiracy of silence about the Great Ghost, except in churches and chapels, that the mention of his name in polite circles sounds like swearing. Eyebrows are lifted, and the speaker is looked ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... abandoned woman; perhaps originally only a passionate or irascible woman, compared ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... fevered desire for sympathy and to tell them all. But as they came nearer he saw that they were Gildersleeve, the scout, and Henry Benham, and that, far from sharing any delight in his deliverance, their faces only exhibited irascible impatience. Overcome by this new defeat, the boy stopped, again dumb ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... but they seldom succeeded. Twice he was invited to the house where I was visiting, but nothing could seduce him into a specimen lie. One day a planter named Bascom, an influential man, and a proud and sometimes irascible one, invited me to ride over with him and call on Eckert. As we jogged along, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The irascible old chief was willing only partially to listen to this advice. He delayed the conflict, but did not disguise his hostility. De Soto sent to him a very kindly message declaring that he came in peace, and wished only for an unmolested march through his country. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... officials, Archbishop Allan, his relative John Allan, afterwards Master of the Rolls, and Robert Cowley, the Chief Solicitor, Lord Ormond's confidential agent. The reiterated representations of these personages induced the suspicious and irascible King to order the Earl's attendance at London, authorizing him at the same time to appoint a substitute, for whose conduct he would be answerable. Kildare nominated his son, Lord Thomas, though not yet of man's age; after giving him many ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... make up your mind to it," returned her grandmother. She was sore over her own disappointment, and so was irascible towards Ann Mary's. "It's no worse for you than for the rest of us. I guess you can keep ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... displayed as much pomp and pretension as he had done under the Regency; and at the commencement of 1618 he had a serious misunderstanding with Du Vair, the Keeper of the Seals, upon a point of precedence. Irascible and haughty, he resented the fact of that magistrate taking his place on all occasions of public ceremonial immediately after the Chancellor Sillery, and consequently before the dukes and peers; and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... to admit that these undignified accents came from Mr. Staples' own lips, and were due to the sudden pressure of Mr. Medliker's arm around his throat. The teamster was irascible and prompt through much mule-driving, and his arm was, from the same reason, strong and sinewy. Mr. Staples felt himself garroted and dragged from the room, and only came to under the stars outside, with the hoarse voice of Mr. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... had become by turns watchful and suspicious, gloomy and abstracted; and his speech knew the same variations; now bitter and cynical, now sad and distant, and all the time his eyes seemed to grow darker and his face paler. But however moody and variable and irascible he might be with others, however unappeasable, with Madelinette he struggled to be gentle, and his petulance gave way under the intangible persuasiveness of her words and will, which had the effect of command. Under this influence ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... speak, I did not tell you, because, knowing the natural gentleness of your disposition, which I have so often admired, I was alarmed, lest the sudden shock should cause one of those irascible fits, which I have so often witnessed, and produce some of those shakes and buffets, which to my unspeakable astonishment, I have so ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... in 1838, admitted into the Naval School in 1854, and appointed cadet of the second class in 1856. He was expelled the Naval School for want of obedience and for his irascible character. When on board the Austerlitz he was noted for his quarrelsome disposition and his violent behaviour to his superiors as well as his equals, which led to his removal from the ship and to his detention for a month on board the Admiral's ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... yet am never the wiser; And what their errand may be I know not better than others. Yet am I not of those who imagine some evil intention Brings them here, for we are at peace; and why then molest us?" "God's name!" shouted the hasty and somewhat irascible blacksmith; "Must we in all things look for the how, and the why, and the wherefore? Daily injustice is done, and might is the right of the strongest!" But without heeding his warmth, continued the notary public,— "Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... arose before religion in the evolution of our race, and that man essayed to bend nature to his wishes by the sheer force of spells and enchantments before he strove to coax and mollify a coy, capricious, or irascible deity by the soft ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the middle of the room. She had in her veins the irascible blood of the common people. Then a sense of shame, a mother's modesty, mingled with a vague sentiment of fear and the exasperation of a passionate woman whose love is threatened, and she shuddered, ready to ask for pardon, or to yield ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... teacher, active and diligent herself, very fond of natural history and botany. She enjoyed long rambles, always calling our attention to what was interesting in the world around us. I hear that some of her pupils speak of her as irascible. I have no such remembrance. Fixed as fate we ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... was not, however, my lot. An irascible countryman of yours, a lieutenant of the royal navy, who was introduced to me at a party, suddenly seemed to scowl at me with the visage of the demon, as we were in the heat of an argument, and I struck him in the face. A duel was the consequence, and he disabled me in the right arm. That accident ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... master one day gave certain sailing directions which the mate, who was a sober, careful seaman, thought fit to disregard on the ground that the safety of the ship would be endangered if he followed them. The master, an irascible, drunken brute, at this flew into a passion and sought to ingraft his ideas of seamanship upon the mate through the medium of a handspike, with which he caught him a savage blow "just above the eye, cutting him about three inches in length." It was in mid-ocean that this ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... their hammocks, instead of being full of sleepers quietly dosing therein, that the watches were changed. Going above, he renewed in various quarters his offers of intimacy with the fresh men there assembled; but was successively repulsed as before. At length, just as day was breaking, an irascible fellow whose stubborn opposition our adventurer had long in vain sought to conciliate—this man suddenly perceiving, by the gray morning light, that Israel had somehow an alien sort of general look, very savagely pressed ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Rappahannock. Meade, however, acted persistently and conscientiously on his own judgment, formed in the light of the best knowledge he could obtain. He would not stand driving, and was something of a bulldozer himself, and sometimes—said to have been caused by fits of dyspepsia—was unreasonably irascible, and displayed a most violent temper towards superiors and inferiors. Notwithstanding this, he never lost his equipoise or acted upon impulse alone, and he never permitted mere appearances to move him. Nor could his superiors ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... with his amazement; and notwithstanding Coleridge's support of the application, the shoemaker was turned out of the place, and the would-be apprentice chosen, "against my will," he says, "as one of those destined for the university." The same irascible yet excellent master flogged the boy severely on hearing that he boasted of ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... irascible, feverish and excited by turns, ever since leaving Bridger had held secret conclaves with a few of his adherents, the nature of which he did not disclose. There was no great surprise and no extreme regret when, within safe reach of Fort Hall, he had announced ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... of the Del Riccio's letters. It is very probable that the irascible artist speedily recovered his usual tone, and returned to amity with his old friend. But Del Riccio departed this life toward the close ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... now come to a most extraordinary thing—the result of the young author's telling and most sarcastic portrait of the irascible little judge. It is curious that Forster, while enumerating various instances of Boz's severe treatment of living persons, as a sort of chastisement for their defects of manner or character, seems not to have thought of this treatment ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... for: 'twas the not having another chance at those damned British rascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliest recollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted, irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a perpetual and unfathomable mystery to her. Where the flesh leg left off and the wooden leg began, and if, when the wooden leg stumped so loud and hard on the floor, it did not hurt ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... talks loudly of his own wrongs; the envious of his adversary's injustice.—A passionate person, if his resentments are not complicated with malice, divides his time between sinning and sorrowing; and, as the irascible passions cannot constantly be at work, his heart may sometimes get a holiday.—Anger is a violent act, envy a constant habit—no one can be always angry, but he may be always envious:—an angry man's enmity (if he be generous) will subside when the object of his resentment ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... men talk to those who have lived a life of crime. Explanations they would never permit, though they made it abundantly clear to him that he was the rummiest burglar they had ever set eyes on. They said as much again and again. The fair man was of a taciturn disposition and irascible at play; but Mr. Bingham, now that the evident anxiety of his departure from England was assuaged, displayed a vein of genial philosophy. He enlarged upon the mystery of space and time, and quoted Kant and Hegel—or, at least, he said he did. Several times Mr. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... domain—but sometimes asked us to watch the office while he drank with a theatrical agent at the nearest bar. He was an inveterate gossip, and endowed with a damnable love of slipshod argument; the only oral censor upon our compositions, he hailed us with all the complaints made at his solicitation by irascible subscribers, and stood in awe of the cashier only, who frequently, to our delight and surprise, combed him over, and drove him to us ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... informs me that he usually introduced a circumstance which ought not to be omitted. 'At last, sir, Graham, having now got to about the pitch of looking at one man, and talking to another, said DOCTOR &c. 'What effect.' Dr Johnson used to add, 'this had on Goldsmith, who was as irascible as a hornet, may be easily conceived.'] 'DOCTOR, I should be happy to see you at Eaton.' 'I shall be glad to wait on you,' answered Goldsmith. 'No,' said Graham, ''tis not you I mean, Dr MINOR; 'tis Dr MAJOR, there.' Goldsmith was excessively ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... for the handsome young man of Lancia and for the friends who had known him in the palmy days of his beauty! But his mind kept as youthful as when he was eighteen. He was the same impassioned, affectionate creature, sweet one moment, irascible and terrible another, following the bent of his caprices and ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... of some savage music broke upon his ear, and roused him from his reverie. The wild scream and fitful burst of a highland pibroch is certainly not the most likely thing in nature to allay the irritable and ruffled feelings of an irascible person—unless, perhaps, the hearer eschew breeches. So thought the viscomte. He started hurriedly up, and straight before him, upon the gravel-walk, beheld the stalwart figure and bony frame of an old highlander, blowing, with all his lungs, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... brought to in very good style, I must confess that," answered the commodore, who, though inclined to be irascible, was quickly appeased. "When you send your boats on shore, let the officers in command keep an eye on the natives, and take care that none of the crew stray. The people about here are treacherous rascals, and would ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... ringing the door at length opened, and an irascible-looking, middle-aged gentleman appeared, ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... the man, becoming violently angry. "I am of a quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... hurriedly toward the open front door, where appeared, at that moment, Mr. Atwater in his most irascible state ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... a vivacious, irascible old gentleman, who persisted in treating the undeniable fact of his age on the footing of a scandalous false report set afloat by Time. He was superbly strapped and padded. His hair, his teeth, and ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Cochrane, the most dashing frigate captain in the Service. Even at Friar's Oak we had heard how, in the little Speedy, of fourteen small guns with fifty-four men, he had carried by boarding the Spanish frigate Gamo with her crew of three hundred. It was easy to see that he was a quick, irascible, high-blooded man, for he was talking hotly about his grievances with a flush of anger ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... want to know what plausible arguments you may have to justify yourself. The fact remains, sir, that Wharfside is in my parish. If you have anything to say against that, I will listen to you," said the irascible Rector. His Welsh blood was up; he even raised his voice a little, with a kind of half-feminine excitement, common to the Celtic race; and the consequence was that Mr Wentworth, who stood perfectly calm to receive the storm, had all the advantage in ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... he sat down. What then? He might be a gentleman of irascible, nasty temper, and in walking about my room, I might step on his feet. These irritable folk have such large feet, at least they are always in the way, and always being stepped on no matter how careful one tries ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... not many subjects upon which Mrs. Sutton was irascible, but she patted the floor with her foot now as if this was one of them—her discontent finding vent at length in what she regarded ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... served, he puts his scepticism aside—as the coquette puts her ribbons. Great arguments arise between them, and the doctor loses his field through his loss of temper, which, however, he regains before any harm is done. For the worthy man is irascible withal, and ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... said unto her, and what she also had cleverly said unto him. Hearing of this gross misbehaviour of Yavakri, the mind of the sage flamed up, and he waxed exceedingly wroth. And being thus seized with passion, the great sage of a highly irascible temper, tore off a matted lock of his hair, and with holy mantras, offered it as a sacrifice on the sacred fire. At this, there sprang out of it a female exactly resembling his daughter-in-law. And then he plucked another matted lock of his hair, and again offered it as a sacrifice into the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion, between means and ends, between causes and conditions; also the division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and unnecessary—these and other great forms of thought are all of them to be found in the Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato. The greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on philosophy are most ...
— The Republic • Plato
... glare. "Why pictures," he inquired, "when there are live people to look at? Pictures for places where they're all half dead. But here, where even the damnable dust in the street is alive, why should they paint, or write, or sculpt, or do anything but live?" His irascible brows shot the ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... middle of the bay of Biscay, when the wind once more deserted us, and we were so entirely becalmed, that we did not advance a mile in many hours. My fresh-water reader will perhaps conceive no unpleasant idea from this calm; but it affected us much more than a storm could have done; for, as the irascible passions of men are apt to swell with indignation long after the injury which first raised them is over, so fared it with the sea. It rose mountains high, and lifted our poor ship up and down, backwards and forwards, with so violent an emotion, that there was scarce a man in the ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... he was well aware that the sacerdotal character was not uniformly respected among the irascible Welshmen,) "By the oath of my order, mighty prince, I have read word for word, and ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the Guard! Post Number Two!" he shouted, presenting his musket at the same instant, and pointing it at the head of the irascible Captain Wright. ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... bulky and not always of the most peaceful character. This Diana, ambushed in her tower, needs a prey worthy of her prowess. The big Grasshopper, with the powerful jaws; the irascible Wasp; the Bee, the Bumble-bee and other wearers of poisoned daggers must fall into the ambuscade from time to time. The duel is nearly equal in point of weapons. To the venomous fangs of the Lycosa the Wasp opposes her venomous stiletto. Which of the two bandits shall have the best of it? The ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Neoptolemus so mirable] [W: Neoptolemus's sire irascible] After all this contention it is difficult to imagine that the critic believes mirable to have been changed to irascible. I ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill-luck would have it, the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was caught one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming him for life, on the brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of Lemnos. As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... manner of my uncle, at all times irksome and repelling, after the death of his good wife became almost insupportable; while the insolence and presumption of his artful son, goaded a free and irascible spirit like mine almost to madness. The moral force of his mother's character, though unappreciated by him, had been some restraint upon his unamiable, tyrannical temper. That restraint was now removed, and Theophilus considered ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... placed upon a table such food as her cupboard could supply. Palafox emerged, mollified in temper, but still irascible. In his hand he held the long leathern pocket-book containing the alleged evidence of Wilkinson's complicity with the Spanish government. It was creased and dripping, and before eating he opened it, carefully ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... rousing the Persians and Afghans by the hope of plunder, sweep the British from India. The scheme received from Bonaparte a courteous perusal; but he subjected it to several criticisms, which led to less patient rejoinders from the irascible potentate. Nevertheless, Paul began to march his troops towards the lower Volga, and several polks of Cossacks had crossed that river on the ice, when the news of his ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of Alis. Mahomet was a regular Cairo dragoman, a native of Dongola, almost black, but exceedingly tenacious regarding his shade of colour, which he declared to be light brown. He spoke very bad English, was excessively conceited, and irascible to a degree. No pasha was so bumptious or overbearing to his inferiors, but to me and to his mistress while in Cairo he had the gentleness of the dove, and I had engaged him at 5l. per month to accompany me to the White Nile. Men change with circumstances; climate affects the health ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... play at science. Here he lived in constant readiness to flee over the border if the king should move against him. For a time he lived in Germany as the protege of Frederick the Great, but he treated that irascible monarch with neither tact nor deference, and soon left Berlin to escape the king's ire. He visited Catherine the Great of Russia. He also lived at Geneva for a while, but even there he failed to keep peace with ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... rather a favorite with "old Davis," as of course he was called, and it's my private belief that he would have broken his word if the indignation of one irrepressible young lady had not found vent in a hiss. That hiss, faint as it was, irritated the irascible gentleman, and sealed the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... descend through the third circle where the sin of gluttony is punished; through the fourth, where they find the prodigal and avaricious; through the fifth where immersed in a filthy pool are the souls of the irascible. The sixth circle is the city of Dis, with walls of heated iron, filled within with open fiery tombs from which issue the groans of the heretics who are punished here. With two of these, Farinata degli Uberti[1] and ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... of old Dr. Bellamy, of Connecticut, the celebrated Hopkinsian divine, who was called into court to testify concerning one of his parishioners, against whom it was sought to be proved that he was a very irascible, violent, and profane man; and as this man was, in regard to religion, what was called in those days "a great opposer," it was expected that the Doctor's testimony would be very convincing and overwhelming. "Well," said Bellamy, "Mr. X is a rough, passionate, swearing man,—I am sorry to say it; ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... The irascible Giacomo conceived a quick resentment. To discharge his bile, he found nothing less than to publish in the course of the month of August, under the title of: 'Ne amori ne donne ovvero la Stalla d'Angia repulita', a libel in which Jean ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in misfortune, to render the unknown powers, to whom they believed nature was submitted, either favorable to their views, or to, induce them to cease those afflictions, which natural causes, for the wisest purposes, were continually heaping upon them; thus some irascible, at the same time placable being, was always chosen for the basis of the adopted superstition; it was upon these puerile tenets, upon these absurd notions, that the old men or the priests rested ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... from his eyes as he glanced at the man opposite him. With an oath he rose, walked to the door and closed it. Then ruthlessly laying aside the last vestige of his assumed courtliness, he picked up his stick from the table, leaned far over, shook it in Hugh's face, and became an irascible, ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... went every day across a beaten bush track, from their weather-board cottage home, past the big iron gates of Dene Hall, a house built of grey stone in the early days of the colony, where their irascible grandsire dwelt, up a red dusty road to the little school-house on ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... restless and dissipated life which he had been leading of late, as well as of the violent anger to which he had been roused in his quarrels with his father. There were several stories current in the town about it. It is true that he was irascible by nature, "of an unstable and unbalanced mind," as our justice of the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... dear. Coterie, clique, cabal, circle, set, faction, party. Critical, judicial, impartial, carping, caviling, captious, censorious. Crooked, awry, askew. Cross, fretful, peevish, petulant, pettish, irritable, irascible, angry. Crowd, throng, horde, host, mass, multitude, press, jam, concourse. Curious, inquisitive, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and prophetic, his plump hands clasped round the handle of his umbrella, his billycock hat a trifle askew, this irascible little man of the Voice, this impatient dreamer, this scolding Optimist, who has argued so rudely and dogmatically about economics and philosophy and decoration, and indeed about everything under the sun, who has been so ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... grew more fussy. He condemned the restaurant manager and got at loggerheads with the waiter. He must at least have a Mecklenburg salad as he came from Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The waiter did not know what it was and the irascible Teuton informed him bluntly that he was a Dummkopf. The card player would make it himself and all must do him the honor of eating it. He proclaimed in a loud voice that it was the superior of all salads. He had won at cards, the money stuck out ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... that I show it in my bearing. Suddenly, just as we reach the vessel, there is a shout behind us. It is Professor Challenger, who had promised to see us off. He runs after us, a puffing, red-faced, irascible figure. ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... indignation was so great that it suddenly stopped this trembling; he therefore prepared himself to enter with a calm and self- possessed air, promised himself to speak as little as possible, to be very carefully on the watch in order to check, above all things, his irascible disposition. In the midst of these reflections, he was introduced to Porphyrius Petrovitch. The latter was alone in his office, a room of medium dimensions, containing a large table, facing a sofa covered ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... far—in some instances many miles—before he took courage to turn to bay, and though formidable at such moments, destroying both dogs and men by his terrible bite, yet at other times was rather despised for his cowardice. The boar, on the other hand, was a much more irascible and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... calamity of pecuniary embarrassment, I inevitably contracted a few weeks arrears of rent to the rigid occupant of the house wherein I held my humble apartment, when, returned one night to my cheerless domicil, my irascible landlord, in the plenitude of ignorance and malevolence, gave me in charge of a sapient guardian of the night, who, without any enquiry into the nature of my offence, conducted me to the watch-house, where I was presently confronted with my creditor, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... distribute the soul into two parts, the rational and irrational. By a more accurate and strict account the soul is branched into three parts; they divide the unreasonable part into the concupiscible and the irascible. The Stoics say the soul is constituted of eight parts; five of which are the senses, hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, smelling, the sixth is the faculty of speaking, the seventh of generating, the eighth of commanding; this is the principal of all, by which all the other are ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... meanwhile, Construction Foreman Cassidy was spending an anxious time. He was red-haired and irascible, Canadian by adoption and Hibernian by descent, a man of no ideas beyond those connected with railroad building, which was, however, very much what one would have expected, for the chief attribute of the men who are building up the western Dominion is their power of concentration. Though there ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... emphatically, "if you are to accompany me any farther, it must be as a peace-loving abbe not as an irascible soldier. If you incense these people against us, your indiscreet zeal will cause me to be captured. I have no longing for death; I desire to live until my son, the mighty cardinal, has trampled under foot the least as well as the greatest of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... I came to know as Her Britannic Majesty's minister in Peking, was the soul of honour, as upright as any man who walked the earth. But with all his rectitude, he, like the Viceroy Yeh, was irascible and unyielding. When the viceroy refused his demand for the rendition of the Arrow and her crew, he menaced him with the weight of the lion's paw. Alarmed, but not cowed, the viceroy sent the prisoners in fetters ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... circumstances the process of courtship is necessarily to some extent a difficult and delicate one, fraught with no small danger to the adventurous swain who has the boldness to commend himself by personal approach to these very fickle and irascible fair ones. It was most curious and exciting, accordingly, to watch the details of the strange courtship, which we could only observe in the case of the cruel Eliza, the rather gentler Lucy having been already mated, apparently, before she took up her quarters in our climbing ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... When it feeds, it appears as if immovable though continually on the wing; and sometimes, from what motives I know not, it will tear and lacerate flowers into a hundred pieces: for, strange to tell, they are the most irascible of the feathered tribe. Where do passions find room in so diminutive a body? They often fight with the fury of lions, until one of the combatants falls a sacrifice and dies. When fatigued, it has often perched within a few feet of me, and on such favourable ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... ignoring the allusion to her devoted if irascible escort. "Dance music always makes one rather sad—don't you think so? It seems to ache with everything one wants and hasn't got; and the ache goes on.—I turned homesick for—for India, and for my green jade elephant I used to love so dreadfully ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... white towers and gables of the old German town. The Prince of Trente et Quarante has quite overcome the old serene sovereign of Noirbourg, whom one cannot help fancying a prince like a prince in a Christmas pantomime—a burlesque prince with twopence-halfpenny for a revenue, jolly and irascible, a prime-minister-kicking prince, fed upon fabulous plum-puddings and enormous pasteboard joints, by cooks and valets with large heads which never alter their grin. Not that this portrait is from the ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ideas failed in consecutiveness, and when I did succeed in hitching two intelligent thoughts together he invariably destroyed the sequence by compelling me to repeat myself, with the result that I became irascible. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the hatchet, irascible Red, For peace is a blessing," the White Man said. The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred, With imposing rites, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... more gloomy, malignant, and irascible than ever. In a year, if fortune did not change, he would embark for America or blow out his brains. Indeed, he appeared to be in such a rage against everything, and so uncompromising in his radicalism, that Frederick could not keep from ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... out, lads," quoth the irascible visage, struggling in his buckram prison, "and I soon show him whether ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... boon; accordingly his wife Anasuya gave birth to three sons, of whom the first was the Moon, an incarnation of Brahma, the second Dattatreya, an incarnation of Vishnu, and the third the holy but irascible saint Durvasas, representing Siva. Dattatreya dwelt in a hermitage in the Dekkan: he indulged in marriage and wine-drinking, which however were not detrimental to his miraculous sanctity and wisdom, and he became famous as a benefactor to humanity. ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... describes a child of three years and ten months, who had exhibited signs of epilepsy from birth and was of a jealous, irascible disposition. He was in the habit of scratching and biting his brothers and sisters, knocking over the furniture, hiding things, and tearing his clothes, and when unable to hurt or annoy others, would vent his rage upon himself. If punished, he would continue ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... who bore a striking resemblance to somebody who was not Napoleon, thus saving the Welsh regiment from annihilation and reproach. There is the dog of the Middlesex regiment, who always bit staff-officers and was fourteen times condemned to death by elderly and irascible colonels, and fourteen times rescued by his devoted comrades. There is the Canadians' tame chicken, who sat waiting for nine-inch shells to fall, and then scratched over the ground they had disturbed; and there is last, but not least, that ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... an impromptu history class on the subject of the last mentioned, we turn our attention to the other fortified points of which "the hasty and somewhat irascible" sledge-wielder spoke. ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... Grey in the same fashion; and as Mr. Grey was irritable, thin-skinned, and irascible, and as he would brood over things of which it was quite unnecessary that a lawyer should take any cognizance, he went back home an unhappy man. Indeed, the whole Scarborough affair had been from first to last a great ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Sakoontala, from absence of mind, must have offended some guest whom she was bound to treat with respect. [Looking behind the scenes.] Ah! yes; I see, and no less a person than the great sage Durvasas, who is known to be most irascible. He it is that has just cursed her, and is now retiring with hasty strides, trembling with passion, and looking as if nothing could turn him. His wrath is ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the nearest to Springfield, the house was in the parish of Enniskerry. Here a certain Father O'Dwyer was the incumbent. Father O'Dwyer was a very irascible man of powerful physique; he was as much feared by the ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... knights; and Ludwig, who had oft seen the Margrave cast a leg of mutton at an offending servitor, or empty a sauce-boat in the direction of the Margravine, thought this was but one of the usual outbreaks of his worthy though irascible friend, and wisely determined to change ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and intemperance, are all deadly enemies to human life, but they are none of them so bad as violent and ungoverned passion,—that men and women have frequently lived to an advanced age in spite of these, but that instances are very rare where people of irascible tempers live to extreme ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the narrow pathway, trying to invent some plausible excuse for presenting himself before the irascible old man who, he had heard, excluded all strangers from "Darrell's Folly," his steps were arrested by the sound of voices approaching from the opposite direction. In another moment he saw three men hurrying towards him, gesticulating ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... but—"a plague on both their Houses"—there was no question of stirring interest before either. I had hoped to see at least one Representative committed to the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms; but, on that day, the hardly-worked official had rest from his labors. Only a few hours later, an irascible Senator (from Delaware, I think) created a temporary excitement by defying first his political opponent, and then generally all powers that be, eventually displaying the revolver, which is the ratio ultima, of ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... away with a curt announcement that he would have to think the matter over. If I had not known the essential justice and common sense under his dry and irascible exterior, I might have been alarmed. The lobbyist's concern was almost comic. As soon as we were out of hearing of the Senator's apartment, shaking both fists frantically at me, he cried: "You've ruined everything! ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... windows one full bow of glass against the sunlight, and great single trees spotting the distant green slopes. From Queen Anne's Farm you could read the hour by the stretching of their shadows. Squire Blancove, who lived there, was an irascible, gouty man, out of humour with his time, and beginning, alas for him! to lose all true faith in his Port, though, to do him justice, he wrestled hard with this great heresy. His friends perceived the decay in his belief sooner than he did himself. He was sour in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and her neck too slender to uphold the heavy masses of her brown hair. Her hands were only less expressive of suffering than her face. The father was as bluff and portly and irascible as she was patient and gentle. He bullied the waiter because he did not know how ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... to believe that this irascible stranger was as providential as the croaking ravens that fed the prophet, and he promptly sought the gate and entered. An old man looked up in some surprise. He was short in stature and had the stoop of one who is bending under the weight of years and infirmities. His features were as withered ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... let us again pause for a moment, to remark how strangely these irascible, repulsive reptiles,—creatures lengthened out far beyond the proportions of the other members of their class by mere vegetative repetitions of the vertebrae,—condemned to derive, worm-like, their ability of progressive motion from ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... of the moment; and, like brute beasts, they are utterly ignorant of the distinction between right and wrong. They express themselves with great ambiguity and obscurity; have no respect for any religion or superstition whatever; are immoderately covetous of gold; and are so fickle and irascible that they very often, on the same day that they quarrel with their companions without any provocation, again become reconciled to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the sake of brevity a part of the first scene has been excised. It subsequently appears that Lady Teazle abandons the society of the scandal-mongers, and she and her fond but somewhat irascible husband become ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... person bears through life precisely the same dispositions, or is at all times equally under the same influences or governed by the same motives. The gentle and amiable by nature may come into circumstances which shall induce unwonted irritability and ill-humor; the irascible and passionate, surrounded in some favored time, by all that heart can wish, may seem as lovely as though no evil tempers had ever deformed them; and the children who may be the offspring of these episodes in life, may bear indeed a character differing wholly from ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... whether the magistrate's manners had possibly excited the susceptibilities of the Eschevins.[14] The answer is decidedly in the negative. Bailly showed in all the relations of life a degree of patience, a suavity, a deference to the opinions of others, that would have soothed the most irascible self-love. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago |
