"Meddlesome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appears to me almost a phenomenon in political history. No such forbearance has been shown during the political history of the last two centuries. It is the single case in which the English Government and public, generally so meddlesome, have displayed most prudent and commendable forbearance in spite of great temptations to the contrary.' Lord John had opinions, and the courage of them; but at the same time he showed himself fully alive to ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... "I am a meddlesome old woman!" said Mrs. Tree. "You wish I would leave you alone, James Stedman, and so I will. Old women ought to be strangled; there's some place where they do it, Cap'n Tree told me about it once; I suppose it's because they talk too much. She said she shouldn't be alone while I lived, hey? Where ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... temper, or you would wonder no more. I tried it when I came to Croydon, and we kept on until about two months ago, when we had to part. I don't want to say a word against my own sister, but she was always meddlesome and hard ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... will be no occasion for applying to a Court of Chancery. There ought to be none. There is but one child, Mrs Vincent, whom you have seen this evening in the drawing-room. The great essential is to keep prying and meddlesome attorneys from thrusting themselves into the business. You acted as confidential secretary as well as tutor, while you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... next, and taxing me for ivery snore a give. They've been after t' winders, and after t' vittle, and after t' very saut to 't; it's dearer by hauf an' more nor it were when a were a boy: they're a meddlesome set o' folks, law-makers is, an' a'll niver believe King George has ought t' do wi' 't. But mark my words; I were wed wi' brass buttons, and brass buttons a'll wear to my death, an' if they moither me about it, a'll wear brass buttons ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... children came, just as you say, and it's our duty to see 'em settled in good homes, but I shall take a few days more to think 'bout it, and I'll let her know by Saturday night what we've decided to do.—That's the most meddlesome, inteferin', gossipin' woman in this county," she added, as Mrs. Silas Tarbox closed the front gate, "and I wouldn't have her do another day's work at this house if I didn't have to. But it's worse for them that don't have her than for them ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... vile, which last were in a large majority. There were tipplers, and gamblers, and profane swearers, in abundance; and Uncle Nathan felt, at the bottom of his philanthropic heart, a desire to lead them from their sins. Not that he was officious and meddlesome, for he believed in "a time for everything." In his modest, inoffensive way, no doubt, he sowed the seeds of future ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... his amours, any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His notable little ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... deprecatory "you know," and apologetic "I am sure I thought I was acting for the best," gave, considering her agitation, a tolerably accurate account of the whole interview. Her interlocutor saw plainly that she had acted from a sincere conscientiousness, and not from a meddlesome, mischievous interference; so he only thanked her for her kind interest, and suggested that he had now arrived at an age when it would, perhaps, be well for him to conduct matters, particularly of so delicate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Elton, in Jane Austen's novel Emma, is the somewhat meddlesome wife of the village parson. Mr Knightley is a gentleman living at Donwell, in the neighbourhood. The rest of the people named are other neighbours and friends, one of them, Mr Woodhouse, being an old ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... senator was to be elected, and what was more natural than that this intelligent, respectable and popular citizen should be considered a worthy candidate. The legislature convened, his prospects of election were more than promising, and he would undoubtedly have been chosen had not some meddlesome fellow recognized him as the long lost La Croix. Of course, he ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the forecastle door thick clouds of black mist were rolling, exactly as if the hold of the ship were on fire. For a meddlesome pirate had found the leather bag of storm-wind and had opened it, mistaking it for a ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... Meddlesome Interference. In the natural state the little human, like the other animals, empties his bowel whenever the fecal mass enters the lower portion of the rectum. The presence of the mass in the rectum constitutes ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... been entirely too much of this sort of thing going on lately. Muckrakers, prying into the storied past, have destroyed one after another many of the pet characters in history. Thanks to their meddlesome activities we know that Paul Revere did not take any midnight ride. On the night in question he was laid up in bed with inflammatory rheumatism. What happened was that he told the news to Mrs. Revere as a secret, and she in strict confidence imparted it to ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... then entered the matrimonial state. Whatever other purpose it subserved, except to show to other communities the "latest novelty" from California, is the unfathomable conundrum. John Crowe was a noisy, blatant, meddlesome fellow, the keeper of a livery stable on Kearny street, and a fierce denouncer of the Committee. There was nothing else to his discredit, so far as I could learn at the time. Reub. Maloney was a compound ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... the captain; he is as meddlesome as an old woman!" cried Sylvia, who very much resented the commander's kindly meant endeavours to take care ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... course of his extended career Mr. Wintermuth had been called upon to face many serious and unexpected crises. Conflagrations; rate wars; eruptions of idiotic and ruinous legislation adopted by state senates and assemblies composed of meddlesome agriculturalists, saloon keepers, impractical young lawyers, and intensely practical old politicians;—all these he had lived through not once, but often, and had always piloted the Guardian's bark to port in safety. In fact, he had done this with such aplomb that long ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... on the priest's shoulder, and, his face assuming its wonted smile, said in his usual low tone, "Amigo, it seems that you have a penchant for spreading gossip. Think you I am ignorant of the fact that because of it Rome spewed you out for a meddlesome pest? Do you deceive yourself that Cartagena will open her ears to your garbled reports? The hag, Marcelena, lies! She has long hoped to gain some advantage from me, I have told you— But go now above and learn from His Grace, whom you ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... they. Besides, they brought up an ill report of your Lord, persuading others that He was a taskmaster. They also brought up an evil report of the good land, saying it was not half so good as some pretend it was. They also began to vilify His servants, and to count the very best of them meddlesome, troublesome, busybodies. Further, they could call the bread of God husks; the comforts of His children, fancies; the travel and labour of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... rather meddlesome, I am afraid," said Hatty, with charming frankness. "You would always be ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... was such a dignified cut to his hairy chops as they drooped over his teeth beneath his black, stubby nose. His ears rose and fell easily, without undue haste or excitement when the sound of horses' hoofs put him on his guard, or a goat wandered too near. Yet one could see that he was not a meddlesome dog, nor a snarler, no running out and giving tongue at each passing object, not that kind of a dog at all! He was just a plain, substantial, well-mannered, dignified, self-respecting St. Bernard dog, who knew his place and kept it, who knew his duty and did it, and who would no more ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... latter, after having twice preferred to him modest and meritorious Grecian citizens, at length reminds him that his vast wealth and power are of a tenure too precarious to serve as an evidence of happiness; that the gods are jealous and meddlesome, and often make the show of happiness a mere prelude to extreme disaster; and that no man's life can be called happy until the whole of it has been played out, so that it may be seen to be out of the reach of reverses. Croesus treats this opinion as absurd, but "a great judgment from God fell ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... rogues and vagabonds," Kosinski explained to me as we made our way towards a neighbouring coffee-shop for breakfast. "A pretty fix that would have been just now! We had scarcely settled down for a quiet sleep on the box when the meddlesome fool came up and asked our names and addresses, what we had there, what we were doing at that hour, and threatened to take us in charge unless we moved on. When I explained that we were simply waiting for our train he laughed, and said that was a ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... her with him. It didn't really matter, of course; he didn't suppose Mrs. Leadbatter could exercise any control over Mary Ann, but it was horrible to be discussed by her and Rosie; and then there was that meddlesome vicar, who might step in ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... "Beshrew your meddlesome temper!" cried the abbot. "You are always crossing me! But I have with me the Lord Chief Justice, and he will declare my legal right." Just at that moment the high cellarer of the abbey entered to congratulate the abbot on Sir Richard's ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... in an imposing army into puzzled rage at its inactivity has left a deeper impression on Northern memories than the shock of disappointment at Bull Run. Public men of weight had been pressing for an advance in November, and when the Joint Committee of Congress, an arbitrary and meddlesome, but able and perhaps on the whole useful body, was set up in December, it brought its full influence to bear on the President. Lincoln was already anxious enough; he wished to rouse McClellan himself to activity, while he screened ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... do here all alone?" she asked in French. She never used a word of Marquesan to me. I replied that I was trying to imagine myself there fifty years earlier, when the meddlesome white sang very low in the concert of the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... intended for those in this condition? Do not, members of the Boule, pass this vote. For why should I find you of such a disposition? 24. Because some one in a trial ever lost his property through me? But no one could prove that. Because I am meddlesome, and harsh and quarrelsome? But I do not chance to have such conditions of life for such actions. 25. But that I am violent and disorderly? But not even he would say that if he did not wish to lie about this as the other ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... "You little meddlesome dunce!" said Jacob, all in a blaze of anger, "I'll teach you to mind your own business, and let other people's quarrels alone." And, suiting his action to his words, he struck Mike in the face so hard that the blood ran from his nose ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... continuously, whistled, sang, was markedly erotic towards the physician, careless in exposing herself and often obscene in her talk. Most of her productions were determined by the environment. She was therefore quite distractible, very alert; sometimes she was meddlesome, again irritable, irascible. The following illustrates her productions: "Send for my husband, S.—He had one sister as big as that. She likes candy.... My father is underneath and my mother is on top because she is fat and he is skinny.... Wait till the sun shines, Nellie—we will be happy, ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... the magic of their industry, the beautiful village of New Harmony arose in one year, and where many of their sturdy buildings still remain a testimony to their honest craftsmanship. Unfortunately, however, two pests appeared which they had not foreseen. Harassed by malaria and meddlesome neighbors, Father Rapp a third time sought a new Canaan. In 1825 he sold the entire site to Robert Owen, the British philanthropic socialist, and the Harmonists moved back to Pennsylvania. They built their third and last home on the Ohio, about ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... the remarks of my cousin. She talked with me at least two hours. I was perfectly confounded by what she said. I began to hate her for the ridiculous advice she gave me. I put it down to a curious, meddlesome nature. I grew vexed, too, with Eudora, because my cousin said she did not love me. I did not reflect that I had done nothing to excite love. I had drawn perpetually on a heart overflowing and grateful,—selfish caitiff that I was! This, however, I did ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... that that's worrying me. I shan't breathe freely till they're gone. And such an inquisitive, meddlesome set they are, too! You'd scarcely believe the trouble they give me. Two of them took it into their heads one day to go wandering on the upper landing. I actually found them inside ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... the woodland] But whilst Sir Kay and his court thus rested themselves, Sir Dagonet must needs be gadding, for he was of a very restless, meddlesome disposition. So, being at that time clad only in half armor, he wandered hither and thither through the forest as his fancy led him. For somewhiles he would whistle and somewhiles he would gape, and otherwhiles he would cut a caper or two. So, as chance would have it, he came by and by to that ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... praising themselves, they vie with the praise of others, and pit their own deeds and actions against theirs, with the intent of outshining them, they add envy and malignity to their vanity. The proverb teaches us that to put our foot into another's dance is meddlesome and ridiculous; we ought equally to be on our guard against intruding our own panegyric into others' praises out of envy and spite, nor should we allow others either to praise us then, but we should make way for those that are being ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the disposition of the public lands were clearly exposed by one Robert Gourlay, a somewhat meddlesome Scotchman, who had addressed a circular, soon after his arrival in Canada, to a number of townships with regard to the causes which retarded improvement and the best means of developing the resources of the province. An answer ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... equal right to justice before the tribunals of the land. Yet, if I am not mistaken, there is a growing impression, supported by this same political power in the south, that the officers in this State are tyrannical, meddlesome, and disposed to thwart the faithful efforts of the noble white people to reorganize ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... to do things for other people. The word is now restricted to its bad sense of meddlesome. Cf. Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, v. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... again. Robert remembered his father and their days of privation, and he did not forget that all they had, they owed to that father. He witnessed his mother's smiles and blushes with some anxiety. One day, as he was going an errand to Neck of Land, he was accosted by a meddlesome fellow named William ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... that the man [Sidenote:1142a] who knows and busies himself about his own concerns merely is the man of Practical Wisdom, while they who extend their solicitude to society at large are considered meddlesome. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... Cymbeline, there quoted, had betrayed an amount of obtuseness in the commentators which would be discreditable in a third-form schoolboy. To substantiate that assertion, and rescue the disputed word "Britaine" henceforth for ever from the rash tampering of the meddlesome sciolist, I beg to advertise the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... Armadale. 'Rank or Profession of Father'—Gentleman. Every particular (except the year's difference in their two ages) which answers for the one answers for the other. But suppose, when I produce my copy of the certificate, that some meddlesome lawyer insists on looking at the original register? Midwinter's writing is as different as possible from the writing of his dead friend. The hand in which he has written 'Allan Armadale' in the book has not a chance of passing for the hand in which Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... of the moon afterward, with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The great poet has less a mark'd style, and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... I have commenced my tyranny. And instead of being able to grant favors to my new sister, I am reduced to the necessity of begging them at her hands. In a word, I want to come to Bellair. Not to be a meddlesome adviser; I am too firmly a convert to your method of procedure for that. Besides, I should have to declare war upon Miss Keith if I presumed thus far. But I do desire to further your plans, and to this end would make a suggestion ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... on to describe in detail how, governed and possessed by one idea, and by a theory, to oppose which was "moral depravity," he proceeded to establish his intolerable system of discipline, based on dogmatic grounds—meddlesome, inquisitorial, petty, cruel—over the interior of every household in Geneva. What is there fascinating, or even imposing, in such a character? It is the common case of political and religious bigots, whether Jacobin, or ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... laugh, "if you really want to know, I understand that every eighth of a mile is marked with a single small white rag; each quarter has a blue one; while the mile shows a plain red one. I hope some meddlesome fellow doesn't go to changing the signals on Brad, and make him think he's doing a record stunt. But I believe he's got some other secret sign of his own to depend ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... straight from the shoulder, and I've got to give you one back. I agree with you. There's no hope for you. She's enormously fond of you, but it's not that kind. And Nan's old-fashioned enough to insist on that or nothing. I was so meddlesome as to bring it up with her before you went away. She put me in my place, told me practically it was nobody's business but hers—and yours—and that she'd already talked it out with you and that you're a 'dear' and you 'saw.' So, old man, as you say, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Hetty's were gloomy. They said, he was marrying her for her money; that Hetty was too old, and too independent in all her ways, to be married at all; that they would be sure to fall out quickly; and a hundred other things equally meddlesome and silly. But nobody so disapproved of the match that he stayed away from the wedding, which was the largest and the gayest wedding Welbury had ever seen. It went sorely against the grain with Hetty to invite Mrs. Deacon Little, but Sally entreated for ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... mind, every morning, that before night you will meet with some meddlesome, ungrateful and abusive fellow, with some envious or unsociable churl. Remember that their perversity proceeds from ignorance of good and evil; and that since it has fallen to my share to understand ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... greatly changed in looks. The cutting away of his curls did not make such a difference in him as Mother had supposed. He was as charming to her; he was as much her own little boy as though no meddlesome hands had even been laid upon him. In size he was quite the same, and, as Mother stood peering in at him, she presently heard a small, far-away voice. In it was the whispered awe of a child who feels the bigness of the night ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... good, frank boy," said Aunt Madge, kissing his forehead. "And he won't toss his head,—just this way,—like a young lord of creation, when meddlesome aunties ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... shore Thor was still filled with rage at the meddlesome giant, because he had lost him the serpent, but he quietly picked up the boat and carried it home, Hymer taking the whales. Once more under his own roof, the giant's courage returned, and he challenged Thor to show his ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... can be tamed, but is as mischievous as a young monkey,—meddlesome, full of curiosity, and so jealous, that it will drive any other pet bird out of the house. It dislikes to be caged, preferring the freedom of the room, so that it may look in the looking-glass, take pins off from the cushion, or perch on the plants ...
— The Nursery, March 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... whole transaction with him, representing the dreadful consequences of meddling with people's private papers under trust. Here was poor Lucy taken away from home, and papa made very angry with Ulick, because Maurice had been meddlesome and mischievous; and though he had not been beaten for it, he would find it a worse punishment not to be trusted another time, nor allowed to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be a majesty, solemn, awful, unerring: just, as man hopes that God is just; and from its throne it should stretch out a mighty hand to seize and grasp the guilty, and the guilty only. But when the law is only a petty, meddlesome, cruel, greedy spy, mingling in every household act and peering in at every window pane, then the poor who are guiltless would be justified if they spat in its face, and called it by its right name, a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... or two hence, Brandenburg became again the theatre of business; Austrian Gallas advancing thither again (1644), with intent "to shut up Torstenson and his Swedes in Jutland," where they had been chastising old Christian IV., now meddlesome again, for the last time, and never a good neighbor to Sweden. Gallas could by no means do what he intended: on the contrary, he had to run from Torstenson, what feet could do; was hunted, he and his MERODE-BRUDER (beautiful inventors of the "Marauding" Art), "till they pretty much all died (CREPERTIN)," ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... there was the question of the theologic controversy. What right had Brenton, or the nurse, or the meddlesome old doctor with his hair on end and without his cuffs, to come inside her house and overset her religion? To elevate their own, instead? It was her religion, just as it was her house, her child. And her religion was good. Else, she never would have adopted ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... man is born in a day. A baby is always six months old before he is twenty-one. Our fathers, who first reasoned that God made all men equal, said: "You sha'n't hang a man until you have asked him if he consents to the law." Some meddlesome fanatic, engaged in setting up type, conceived the idea, that he need not pay his tax till he was represented before the law: then why should woman do so? Now, I ask, what possible reason is there that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the veritable product of the mighty sculptor's genius. That Michelangelo meant well to his illustrious ancestor is certain. That he took the greatest pains in executing his ungrateful and disastrous task is no less clear.[8] But the net result of his meddlesome benevolence has been that now for two centuries and a half the greatest genius of the Italian Renaissance has worn the ill-fitting disguise prepared for him by a literary 'breeches-maker.' In fact, Michael Angelo the poet suffered no less from his grandnephew than Michael Angelo the fresco painter ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... during which the Mayor's eyes rested on the culprit. Fiddles returned the look, head up, a smile on his lips that would have fooled the devil himself. Then his Honor turned to me and said: 'My memory is not always very good, but this time the cobbler's—who is a meddlesome person—is even more defective. Yes, I think it quite possible I was hunting on last Wednesday. I can sympathize with the young man as to the size of the rabbit. They are running very small this year. My decision, therefore, is that you can let ...
— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... nose strongly while the empty nostril is compressed. Unless this removes it a physician should be called. Meddlesome ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... different from any thing I had recently experienced. The roughness of the trail, the absence of cultivated fields, the entire exemption from the restraints of civilization, were perfectly delightful after a dreary residence of nearly a year in Germany. Here, at least, there were no passport bureaus, no meddlesome police, no conceited and disagreeable habitues of public places with fierce dogs running at their heels, no Verbotener Wegs staring one in the face at every turn. Here all ways possible to be traveled were open ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... him—that is, Holmes—to notice anything beyond the limits of his work, or to recognize in any way his employer's secret intentions. But fortunately for us, this man Holmes is just one of those singularly meddlesome people whose curiosity grows with every attempt at repression; and when, coincident with that disastrous happening at the museum, all these loverlike attentions ceased and no calls were made and no presents sent, and gloom instead of cheer marked his employer's manner, he made up his ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... was 21 Hen. VIII, c. 8, which forbade for three years the killing of calves between January 1 and May 1, under a penalty of 6s. 8d., because so many had been killed by 'covetous persons' that the cattle of the country were dwindling in number. Others, however, were merely meddlesome, and directed against that unpopular man the dealer. For instance, owners refusing to sell cattle at assessed prices were to answer first in the Star Chamber (25 Hen. VIII, c. 1); and by 3 and 4 Edw. VI, c. 19, no cattle were to be bought but in open fair or ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... assume. All had fallen out as I expected—I had just arranged to carry them both off to Clairdelune, and leave these usurpers in possession for as long as the Country would endure them—when you blunder in, like the meddlesome idiot you ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... my more humble experience, but I am sure there are women enough who would add theirs thereto, to make the sum equal in weight to that of Mr. Hamerton's artist friend. Among the women whom I have known in life, the most highly intellectual have been the least meddlesome; for the very good reason that they have been too busy with the work of their own brains to meddle with what concerned other people. Nor have such women been less the helps, fitted, if need be, to act as "breakwaters" to protect ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... inability to keep quiet; their activity may be without purpose, or out of all proportion to the purpose contemplated. The officious are undesirably active in the affairs of others. Compare ALERT; ALIVE; MEDDLESOME. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... worse than American slaves. If she is really philanthropic, why refuse to do any thing for her own suffering poor throughout her vast dominions? This is proof positive, that John Bull is an old villain; a rotten, two-faced, bigoted, meddlesome old hypocrite. If abolitionists in the United States are really philanthropic, why have they not made some effort to relieve the suffering poor in their own midst; whose conditions in general, are far worse than Southern ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... worthless. Neither Emile nor Sophie is made in the least a live person; the catastrophe of their at first ideal union might be shown, by an advocate of very moderate skill, to be largely if not wholly due to the meddlesome, muddle-headed, and almost inevitably mischievous advice given to them just after their marriage by their foolish Mentor; and one neither finds nor foresees any real novel interest whatever. Anilities in the very ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... in bewilderment. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I hope Austin is grateful to her now—an' that he'll say so. At first he didn't like her at all, an' he's never taken to her same as the rest of us have—seems to feel she's bossy an' meddlesome. Howard an' I have spoken of it a thousand times. He began by resenting everything she did, an' then got so he didn't ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... as ever you look at her. I had n't observed you for two minutes by the clock, when I knew your secret as well as if you 'd chosen me for your confessor. But what's holding you back? You can't expect her to do the proposing. Now curse me for a meddlesome Irishwoman, if you will—but why don't you throw yourself at her feet, and ask ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... sung everything, and a plenty of it, too. Milly Amos used to say he was worse'n a flea. He'd start out on the bass, and first thing you knew he'd be singin' tenor with Sam Crawford; and by the time Sam was good and mad, he'd be off onto the alto or the soprano. He was one o' these meddlesome old creeturs that thinks the world never moved till they got into it, and they've got to help everybody out with whatever they happen to be doin'. You've heard o' children bein' born kickin'. Well, Uncle Jim must 'a' been born singin'. I've seen ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... or French party, who sought to embroil us in a foreign quarrel. These two functions of the Federalist party were quite in accord; they involved the organizing and domestic instinct against the disorganizing and meddlesome; the strengthening against the enfeebling process; practical thinking against fanciful theories. Fortunately the able men had been generally of the sound persuasion, and by powerful exertions had carried the day and accomplished their allotted ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Certainly. One has to hide everything when one has little meddlesome good-for-nothings like you.... But come, out with it, confess that you took it.... I would rather it was that.... I sha'n't tell daddy.... I sha'n't ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... believe a word of it!" Dolly stood up and angrily grasped the bell-handle. "It's not true. It's a meddlesome lie. They are jealous. People are always like that—it makes them furious to see another person prosper. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... were sitting in the back parlour—that she had had an interview with Morris Townsend; and on receiving this news the girl started with a sense of pain. She felt angry for the moment; it was almost the first time she had ever felt angry. It seemed to her that her aunt was meddlesome; and from this came a vague apprehension that she ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... he found a caddis, and wanted it to peep out of its house: but its house-door was shut. He had never seen a caddis with a house-door before: so what must he do, the meddlesome little fellow, but pull it open, to see what the poor lady was doing inside. What a shame! How should you like to have any one breaking your bedroom-door in, to see how you looked when you were in bed? So Tom broke to pieces the door, which was the prettiest ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... "It is well for you that the 'heir of the saw-mills' hath not heard your insolence. Firm is a steady lad; but he knoweth well which foot to kick with. No fear of losing the way to Sylvester's ranch with Firm behind you. But, meddlesome as you be, and a bitter weed to my experience, it shall not be said that Sampson Gundry sent forth a fellow to be frozen. Drink a glass of hot whiskey before you get to saddle. Not in friendship, mind you, Sir, but in common ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... habit of a mischievous class of dwellers on the planes of spirit life to falsely impersonate other spirits as such seances. As all investigators of the subject know very well, it is not an infrequent thing for such mischievous and meddlesome spirits to endeavor to pass themselves off as the relative or friends of those in the circle, or even to falsely impersonate some great historical personages. In such cases the sitters should insist upon the spirit positively identifying himself, just as they would in case of doubt regarding ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... his mouth only half empty of muffin, 'you had a row in Shepperton Church last Sunday. I was at Jim Hood's, the bassoon-man's, this morning, attending his wife, and he swears he'll be revenged on the parson—a confounded, methodistical, meddlesome chap, who must be putting his finger in every pie. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the fields, bird-nesting and botanizing, and had like to have been taken up as a poacher in Hilly Wood, by a meddlesome, conceited gamekeeper belonging to Sir John Trollope. He swore that he had seen me in the act, more than once, of shooting game, when I never shot even so much as a sparrow in my life. What terrifying rascals these woodkeepers ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... certain meddlesome spirit, which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from such pernicious ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... of Gettysburg, going out in his high, high hat and his long, long coat to fight with the boys would never, could never be the heroic figure which he is in the American imagination; he would have been a meddlesome malefactor deserving of immediate death. For 1778 write it 1914, and Molly Pitcher serving at the guns would have been in no better case before a German court-martial. I doubt whether a Prussian Stonewall Jackson would give orders to kill ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... by this symptom of Constance's secret mind, "I do hope you won't think I'm meddlesome, but truly it was too much for me. The words were out of my ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... it seems, since you had not the sense to box that child's ears for a meddlesome tell-tale. Did the scene equal ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gun. "Because the partridge lying dead over there is my partridge. Because the land you are standing on is my land. Because my own land was only taken from me by a crime, and a worse crime than poaching. This has been a single estate for hundreds and hundreds of years, and if you or any meddlesome mountebank comes here and talks of cutting it up like a cake, if I ever hear a word more of ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... felt sorry for Miss Emily. She was Mr. Leith's old-maid sister and she was not of much importance in the household. But, though we felt sorry for her, we couldn't like her. She really was fussy and meddlesome; she liked to poke a finger into every one's pie, and she was not at all tactful. Then, too, she had a sarcastic tongue, and seemed to feel bitter towards all the young folks and their love affairs. Diana and I thought this was because she had ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... delicacy and magnificence of taste which would have made the houses and manners of modern stock-jobbers intolerable to them. Renaissance millionaires could be vulgar and brutal, but they were great gentlemen. They were neither illiterate cads nor meddlesome puritans, nor even saviours of society. Yet, if we are to understand the amazing popularity of Titian's and of Veronese's women, we must take note of their niceness to kiss and obvious willingness to be kissed. That beauty for which can be substituted the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Horror! She speaks to him quite eagerly. She puts a question. He replies. She bends her head near to him. They walk slowly out of the room, talking, talking. All is up with Lys d'Angely! The next thing that Meddlesome Matty of a duchess will do, is to wire Cousin Catherine Milvaine. Crash! thunder—lightning—hail!—Monsieur Charretier ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... duty, to settle all other strikes, so after the peace of Portsmouth there were other persons—not only Americans, by the way,—who thought it my duty forthwith to make myself a kind of international Meddlesome Mattie and interfere for peace and justice promiscuously over the world. Others, with a delightful non-sequitur, jumped to the conclusion that inasmuch as I had helped to bring about a beneficent and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Blondet!" cried Bixiou, "thou hast set thy finger on the weak spot. Meddlesome taxation has lost us more victories here in France than the vexatious chances of war. I once spent seven years in the hulks of a government department, chained with bourgeois to my bench. There was a clerk in the office, ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... me if I seem to you impertinent, meddlesome. I know quite well that this is no business of mine, but—but I know Mrs. Carstairs, and I know she has been made bitterly unhappy by this wretched misunderstanding. And I am sure, as sure as I am that you ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... many good men, prosperous and contented, looked around and saw naught but good, while millions of their fellowmen were bartered and sold like cattle! No doubt, there were comfortable optimists who thought Wilberforce a meddlesome fanatic when he was working with might and main to free the slaves. I distrust the rash optimism in this country that cries, "Hurrah, we're all right! This is the greatest nation on earth," when there are grievances that call loudly for redress. That is false optimism. Optimism ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... had been peculiarly meddlesome, putting chairs straight, moving vases, altering the lie of table-cloths and the angle of sofas, opening windows because it was 'so stuffy,' and closing them a minute later with complaints about the draught, forcing occupants ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... older than you and I am a friend—of many years—of your mother. There's nothing I like less than to be meddlesome, but I think these things give me a certain right—a sort of privilege. For the rest, my inquiry ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Isabel's agitation over the affairs of the Congdons led him close to the point of mentioning her name to note its effect upon Mrs. Congdon, but to do this might be an act of betrayal that would only confirm Isabel's opinion of him as a stupid, meddlesome person. Nothing was to be gained by attempting to hasten the culmination of the fate that flung him about like a chip on a turbulent stream. Fiends and angels might be battling for his soul, and Lucifer ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... former history, which was involved in much obscurity, what wonder that she made herself his champion, and assured her father that he (the Chevalier) was everything that the most fastidious could desire. And the good old man, never very inquisitive or meddlesome in what he considered the affairs of others, and satisfied that his daughter's views of her lover must be correct, forbore to pain her further by any insinuations derogatory to the Chevalier's character, and made no objections to ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... deposited, oftentimes a grayish lump, in spite of carefully washed hands (for little hands will somehow get dirty, try sedulously though you and their owner may to prevent it), in the small tin, and it is placed in the oven with the other pies. It serves admirably at a doll's tea-party, and the meddlesome fingers have been kept busy, the restless mind contented, while the housewife's work ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... never left, if these meddlesome abolitionists hadn't put it in their heads; but, darling, don't bother your brain about such matters. See what I have bought you this morning," said he, handing her a necklace of the purest pearls; "here, darling, ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... fancied slight to his honour or disregard of his affections and suddenly "amok"? The wise adviser would be the first victim, no doubt, and death would be his reward. And underlying the horror of this situation there was the danger of those meddlesome fools, the white men. A vision of comfortless exile in far-off Madura rose up before Babalatchi. Wouldn't that be worse than death itself? And there was that half-white woman with threatening eyes. How could he tell what an incomprehensible creature of that sort would or would not do? She ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... It was an era of High Church reaction, which was fast becoming a shameful persecution. The two moderate prelates, Abbot and Williams, had for years been in disgrace, and the Church was ruled by the well-meaning, but sour, despotic, meddlesome bigot whom wise King James long refused to make a bishop because "he could not see when matters were well." But if Laud was infatuated as a statesman, he was astute as a manager; he had the Church completely under his control, he was fast filling it with his partisans and creatures, he was ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... hear about it," said Mr. Blackthorne, "but I don't see that anything can be done. You see, one does not like to interfere in these sort of things. It seems officious rather, and meddlesome." ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... till your father comes home, and he may do what he pleases with 'em. If I had my way, I'd tie 'em up to the grating, and give 'em a dozen apiece. 'Twould sarve 'em right, the meddlesome rascals! I like good boys, but such boys as ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... power in the land. Thus, the man or the law that stands defiantly against public opinion is beaten the moment you make that man or that law look like a joke; and Dickens made a huge joke of the parish beadle (as Mr. Bumble) and of many another meddlesome British institution. Moreover, he was master of this paradox: that to cure misery you must meet it with a merry heart,—this is on the principle that what the poor need is not charity but comradeship. By showing that humble folk might be as poor as the Cratchits and yet have the medicine ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... work to be done among those unhappy men that may be my purgation. The authorities shall hear me yet—though inquiry was stifled at Port Arthur. By the way, a Pharaoh had arisen who knows not Joseph. It is evident that the meddlesome parson, who complained of men being flogged to death, is forgotten, as the men are! How many ghosts must haunt the dismal loneliness of that prison shore! Poor Burgess is gone the way of all flesh. I wonder ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... courting, while he was a junior partner. When he became a person of substance he stopped that sort of nonsense. His wife, too, was a sensible person, the daughter of an old Pittsburgh family as solid and well-rooted as the McKanns. She would never have bothered him about this concert had not the meddlesome Mrs. Post arrived to pay her a visit. Mrs. Post was an old school friend of Mrs. McKann, and because she lived in Cincinnati she was always keeping up with the world and talking about things in which no one else was interested, music among them. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... was my fault," Jack said, contritely. "I should not have tempted you to go on that unlucky trip last Tuesday. So you were seen near Richmond station by some meddlesome individual—probably when you got out of the trap! But it may turn out for the best; your father could not have been kept in ignorance much longer. ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... I say. Flora saw you with it yesterday, whipping that hobby-horse. I told you to keep your hands off of it, didn't I? If you don't go and find it quick, I'll box you soundly, you meddlesome little brat!" ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... her charge went down to the ship the next morning with Chilian Leverett. Elizabeth inspected the rooms. She was not meddlesome, nor over-curious generally, but with a feeling of possessorship and responsibility in the house, she wanted to know how far she could trust the newcomers. The beds were well made, but closets and drawers were rather awry. She did begrudge the best chamber, and wondered ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... know? Because Chaldea was hiding under the studio window this afternoon and overheard all that passed between you and Garvington and that meddlesome Lambert. She knew that I was in danger and came at once to London to tell me since I had given her my address. I lost no time, but motored down here and dropped her at the camp. Now I've come to get ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... to the blessings a grateful nation would shower on us, if our visit had such a result; but I did not expect these things. I expected to be smeared from head to foot with Copperhead slime, to be called a knight-errant, a seeker after notoriety, an abortive negotiator, and a meddlesome volunteer diplomatist; but I expected also, if a good Providence spared our lives, and my pen did not forget the English language, to be able to tell the North the truth; and I knew that the Truth would stay the Peace epidemic, and kill the Peace party. And by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... the other fellows at the club may chaff me all you choose. I'm going to marry her and that's all there is to it. I'm my own master, do you understand? I have no family—no inquisitive, meddlesome relatives, thank God! If this marriage is going to cost me what friends I have—all right—let them keep away! Such friends are not worth having, anyway. My mind is made up and you know me. Once I make up my mind, nothing can alter it." Determinedly ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... to believe in an unnatural god who apparently must be ever ready to answer anybody's prayerful cry and act as a general servant to humanity by distributing good things to those who beg for them; a sort of meddlesome god who enters into all the petty quarrels of hunan beings and generally settles them in ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... conviction of its entire sincerity and spontaneity. It was probably written just after the final cause of quarrel in 1545, and its main object seems to be to set the author right in the sight of the world, and to exhibit Cardan as a meddlesome fellow not to be trusted, and one ignorant of the very elements of the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... faculties—a prey to all the disembodied forces of the subjective plane, and also to every floating thought on the physical plane; they are obsessed by ideas from within and without and their actions bear witness to this statement. Some very meddlesome women, and those who are the terror of a quiet community, are nearly always those who are in the control of the slower psychic forces and unable to conciously direct their own ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... "All right, Miss Meddlesome. But you won't let your ideas of fair play run away with you and betray me to the enemy? You're ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Loki, and Hoenir started on a journey. They had often traveled together before on all sorts of errands, for they had a great many things to look after, and more than once they had fallen into trouble through the prying, meddlesome, malicious spirit of Loki, who was never so happy as when he was doing wrong. When the gods went on a journey they traveled fast and hard, for they were strong, active spirits who loved nothing so much as hard work, hard blows, storm, peril, and struggle. There were no roads through the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... pottering; busy, busy as hen with one chicken. working, at work, on duty, in harness; up in arms; on one's legs, at call; up and doing, up and stirring. busy, occupied; hard at work, hard at it; up to one's ears in, full of business, busy as a bee, busy as a one-armed paperhanger. meddling &c v.; meddlesome, pushing, officious, overofficious^, intrigant^. astir, stirring; agoing^, afoot; on foot; in full swing; eventful; on the alert, &c (vigilant) 459. Adv. actively &c adj.; with life and spirit, with might and main &c 686, with haste &c 684, with wings; full tilt, in mediis rebus [Lat.]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... approve of her going out or of her having company. The Larches was too far away, and as for Mr. and Mrs. Talcott, they were meddlesome people, whom he had never liked; besides, Mrs. Talcott was delicate, and the night threatened storm. Let her go to bed like a good girl, and think nothing about the money, which he would take care to put away ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... alone again, there was a violent outburst of wrath against that meddlesome Aunt Teresa, and Mr. Meyer himself waxed so wroth that he felt bound to pour forth his grievances outside as well as inside the house. He still possessed two or three acquaintances whom he had learnt to know in his official days: they were now leading counsel in the supreme court, eminent jurists ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... by night and by day On their problem, like moles. Have mercy, O Heaven, I pray, On their meddlesome souls! ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... rest of us, Christopher Quarles had his weaknesses. Whenever he failed to elucidate a mystery he was always able to show that the fault was not his, but somebody else's; either too long a time had elapsed before he was consulted, or some meddlesome fool had touched things and confused the evidence, or even that something supernatural had been at work. Once, at least, according to the professor, I had played the part of meddlesome fool, and one of my weaknesses ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... hossen's people insisting on cash. No one insisted so loudly as the cousin with the red flower in her wig; and when the other cousins seemed about to weaken and accept the note, Red-Flower stood up and exhorted them to be firm, lest their flesh and blood be cheated under their noses. The meddlesome cousin was silenced at last, the contract was signed, the happiness of the engaged couple was pledged in wine, the guests dispersed. And all this while my mother had not opened her mouth, and my father had scarcely ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... power as that of Britain was evidently foredoomed to failure. But to the north and east a great wild country lay open before them, where they could lead that solitary and half-nomadic life which they loved, preserve their old customs, and deal with the natives as they pleased, unvexed by the meddlesome English. Accordingly, many resolved to quit the Colony altogether and go out into the wilderness. They were the more disposed to this course, because they knew that the wars and conquests of Tshaka, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... that there should be any unrest in India at all. "We have," say the die-hard wiseacres, "governed India jolly well and jolly honestly, and the Indians ought to be jolly grateful instead of kicking up all this fuss. If that meddlesome Montagu had not put these wicked democratic ideas into their heads, and stirred up all this mud, we should have gone on quite comfortable as before." But if we face the facts squarely, we shall see that the wonder is not that there has been so ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... thinking of it, as it is! Or else we might have taken her home with us, and kept her till she had got a little dress-making in the congregation, but for this meddlesome child; that spoils everything. You must let me grumble to you, Thurstan. I was very good to her, and spoke as tenderly and respectfully of the little thing as if it were the Queen's, and born ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... be for any calculations in life in a state of things in expectation of a revolution any moment? Compared with the freedom of action in such a government as ours, any form of communism is an iniquitous and meddlesome despotism. In a less degree an association to which a man surrenders the right to say when, where, and for how much he shall work, is a despotism, and when it goes further and attempts to put a pressure on all men outside of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... were made during the Tudor and early Stuart periods to organise all the Inns of Court and Chancery into a University of Law. Those attempts failed; chiefly through the lack of wisdom displayed in issuing arbitrary and meddlesome Orders in Council, instead of allowing unification to mature on those natural and voluntary lines which had already ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... the meddlesome ass that came to recommend me to put poetry and conundrums in my report, as if it were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... quadruple, the endless negotiations, the interminable congresses, the innumerable treaties, which make up the history of Europe during the earlier half of the eighteenth century; nor is it easy to follow with patience the meddlesome activity of English diplomacy during that period, its protests and interventions, its subsidies and guarantees, its intrigues and finessings, its bluster and its lies. But wearisome as it all is, it succeeded in its end, and its end was a noble one. Of the twenty-five years between ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... to us on the 25th of November, and I will quote some of the remarks made in it. The writer observes:—'It must not be inferred when such remarks are absent from the reports that nothing is done. I have great difficulty sometimes in overcoming the feeling that my questions on these points are a meddlesome interference in private matters.' Bearing that remark in mind, I say here are instances which I am sure reflect as much credit on the individuals as on the interest they represent and the county to which they belong. I am sure ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... decemvirs rejoiced, and sixty persons had cause to rejoice with them. So be it! There were plans evolved already as to national fetes and wholesale pardons when that impudent and meddlesome Englishman at last ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... were for some years kept up to a very high standard. Mr Richard Champernowne,—who, it must be admitted, from the general tenor of his ways, seems to have been one of those well-meaning but egotistical and meddlesome people who are always being surprised and hurt because their good offices are not better received,—wrote to ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... solving. Gogyrvan at once seemed to be schooling himself to patience under some private annoyance and to be revolving in his mind some private jest; he was queer, and probably abominable: but to grant the old rascal his due, he was not meddlesome. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... "Of course it seems meddlesome," said Sir Julius, tugging at his white moustache, "but we're fond of Auriol. I've been much more of a father to her than that damned old ass Mountshire"—Evadne, again; though for once in her life she had exercised restraint—"and ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... been accomplished than Villon shook himself, jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and extinguish the embers. Meanwhile Montigny opened the door and cautiously peered into the street. The coast was clear; there was no meddlesome patrol in sight. Still it was judged wiser to slip out severally; and as Villon was himself in a hurry to escape from the neighbourhood of the dead Thevenin, and the rest were in a still greater hurry to get rid of him before he should discover ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Belgium is safe enough so far as that goes, but one certainly has to work hard here just to make ends meet and get food for all the hungry mouths! They say it is different in America; there you work less and get more, and are farther away from meddlesome neighboring countries besides. I sometimes wish we had gone there with my sister. She and her husband started with no more than we have, and now they are rich—at least they were when I last heard from them; but that was a ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... one who dared to tell him the truth. The truth? No, it was a lie, a lie; he was not dying, he was going to be well and strong again as soon as he could shake this cold that had settled upon him. Nancy was a meddlesome old woman. He had told her so not more than an hour ago and had sent her off about her business. He had been harsh to her and rude, and after all she was old and had probably meant to do him a kindness. But, then, he was not sorry; she'd not come bothering him any more now with her dismal ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... lawless. It was land without an owner; no one claimed any manorial right over it; they could build cottages without paying rent. It was a district recognized by no parish; so there were no tithes, and no meddlesome supervision. It abounded in fuel which cost nothing, for though the veins were not worth working as a source of mining profit, the soil of Wodgate was similar in its superficial character to that of the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them. Meddlesome Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou. While you are shaking hands please take notice—cautiously—of their attire. Yes, cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a stare as a lady in a box ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... rid of me yet," he said. "As for you, Squire Thorndyke, I shall not forget your meddlesome interference, and some day, maybe, you will be sorry ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... of the Edict of Nantes. From these descended the late General Joubert, Commander-in-Chief of the Transvaal forces at the opening of hostilities. The administration of the colony by the Dutch East India Company being both arbitrary and meddlesome, some of the more independent spirits withdrew from the coast and moved inland, behind the difficult {p.005} mountain ranges that separate the narrow strip of sea-coast from the high ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... honesty are brought into the highest possible relief by the restoration to the feebly guileful Polonius of the speeches of which he has long been deprived. Among the reinstated scenes is that in which the meddlesome dotard teaches his servant Reynaldo modes of espionage that shall detect the moral lapses of his son Laertes in Paris. The recovered episode is not only admirable comedy, but it gives new vividness to Polonius's maudlin egotism which ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Just for a minute." It struck me that perhaps I was a meddlesome fool. Wilks, of all of Grantline's men, was, I knew, most in his commander's trust. The signal could have been some part of this night's ordinary routine, ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... "That meddlesome old Doctor Platt keeps on hoping for something to happen. The other physicians have given it up, and say that Love will be an idiot for life. He is sure that if the bullet could be removed, he would be restored; but I will not permit them to cut into the poor boy's head, and ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... gone to thinking of Ella, and all that nonsense; but never mind, he's worth waiting for, with his fine house and immense wealth; I shan't care so much about Uncle Nat's money then, though goodness knows I don't want him turning up here some day and exposing me, as I dare say the meddlesome old thing ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... 'Mediterranean' which included the coast of Tunis, the coast of Tripoli, and even, Lord Lansdowne added, the Adriatic." (Sir Charles Dilke in the English Review, October, 1909: "On the Relations of the Powers.") On this subject see Crispi Memoirs, vol. ii., chap. v.] The meddlesome intrigues of Russian partisans, and a long series of political outrages culminating in the murder of M. Stambouloff, were gradually forming an Austro-German party in Bulgaria; while the wise and progressive administration of Bosnia and the Herzegovina by Herr von Kallay had encouraged a ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... any sort, so his sincerity was cheerfully admitted by all. When, however, he had one day, soon after his arrival, asked several prominent men why the town had no society or even person to visit the very poor and the persons who might be in prison, he ran some risk of being considered meddlesome. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... time the influence of bureaucracy (that ponderous curtain hung between the service to be done and the man who orders it), it was permanently organized under the constitutional government, which was, inevitably, the friend of all mediocrities, the lover of authentic documents and accounts, and as meddlesome as an old tradeswoman. Delighted to see the various ministers constantly struggling against the four hundred petty minds of the Elected of the Chamber, with their ten or a dozen ambitious and dishonest leaders, the Civil Service ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... So called from their habit of going entirely naked. One of them is said by Arrian to have said to Alexander. "You are a man like all of us, Alexander—except that you abandon your home like a meddlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions; enduring hardships yourself, and inflicting hardships on ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Pussy" Jane Taylor Little Things Julia Fletcher Carney The Little Gentleman Unknown The Crust of Bread Unknown "How Doth the Little Busy Bee" Isaac Watts The Brown Thrush Lucy Larcom The Sluggard Isaac Watts The Violet Jane Taylor Dirty Jim Jane Taylor The Pin Ann Taylor Jane and Eliza Ann Taylor Meddlesome Matty Ann Taylor Contented John Jane Taylor Friends Abbie Farwell Brown Anger Charles and Mary Lamb "There Was a Little Girl" H. W. Longfellow The Reformation of Godfrey Gore William Brighty Rands The Best Firm Walter G. Doty A Little Page's Song William Alexander Percy ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... what gardens, after all, are meant to produce, in the decay of time, as we may think at first sight, the systematic, logical gardener put his meddlesome hand, and straightway all ran to seed; to genus and species and differentia, into formal classes, under general notions, and with—yes! with written labels fluttering on the stalks, instead of blossoms—a ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina Haddox; but I reckon every livin' soul hev forgot' it but me. She is jes Meddlesome by name, ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... nothing more fruitful than distrust. I would like to emphasise that it was in no way from any desire to interfere in other people's affairs that young Bohun undertook these Quests. He had none of my own meddlesome quality. He had, I think, very little curiosity and no psychological self-satisfaction, but he had a kind heart, an adventurous spirit, and a hatred for the wrong and injustice which seemed just now to be creeping about the world; but all this, again thank God, was ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... some few changes for the better, so obvious and so demanded beforehand by all educated opinion that to have neglected them would at once have stamped the revisers as blockheads and dunces; but that the set-off in the way of petty and meddlesome changes for the worse, neglect of really desirable improvements, bad English, failure in the very matter of pure scholarship just where it was least to be expected, and general departure from the terms of the Commission assigned to them (notably by their introduction of confusion instead ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... in your nice frock. Do let the furniture alone, child. Ring for Bridget, if any thing wants cleaning. You're a real Meddlesome Matty, Bertha." ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge |
