"Moodiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But moodiness, fear—especially financial fear—long-sustained hatreds and resentments, and lack of change are indirectly responsible for those diseases which bring about the end, ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... felt that Miss Graham was behaving badly, ungratefully, selfishly; on the way home in the carriage he was silent from utter boredom and fatigue, but Mrs. Bowen was sweetly sympathetic with the girl's rapture. Imogene did not seem to feel his moodiness; she laughed, she joked, she told a number of things that happened, she hummed the air of the last waltz. "Isn't it divine?" she asked. "Oh! I feel as if I could dance for a week." She was still dancing; she gave Colville's foot an accidental tap in keeping time on the ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... He had heard it called an incomprehensible puzzle of poetry; it gave him pleasure, then, to unriddle and proclaim it plain as print. He was thus delectating himself one day, while Flor, still in her phase of moodiness, stood behind Miss Agatha's chair; and, the passage pleasing him, he read it aloud to Miss Agatha, whom, in the absence of his son, her husband, he was wont to consider his opponent in the abstract, however dear and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... backed away from the Wrangel wharf with Tommy waving his hand to his partner on the pierhead. Thompson went back to their room feeling a trifle blue, as one does at parting from a friend. But it was not the moodiness of uncertainty. He knew what he was going to do. He had simply got used to Tommy being at his elbow, to chatting with him, to knowing that some one was near with whom he could try to unravel a knotty problem or ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... eyes followed hers without satisfaction. A certain moodiness had come upon him. He made ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... different from the poor fellows I saw in New York," she said slowly. "I mean the men who had been gassed and shell-shocked. I saw loads of them in the hospitals, you know,—and talked with them. I was always tremendously affected by their silence, their moodiness, their unwillingness to speak of what they had been through. The other men, the ones who had lost legs or arms or even their eyes,—were as a rule cheerful and as chatty as could be,—oh, how my heart used to ache for them,—but the shell-shock men and ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... him in terms of peace. Elizabeth Macpherson saw his purpose; but she scorned to display her emotion. A flush indeed mantled her brow, and her eye shed one sparkle of indignation—but she remained silent. Fraternal affection was banished the halls of Castle Feracht. An increasing gloom and moodiness of heart began to sink upon the rugged chief; and, at length, to prevent his dark soul's loneliness from becoming altogether insupportable, he began to take an interest in the affairs, first of his own clan, next ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... August which in winter, or even in such a March as we have been suffering, one can view as something more desirable than rubies, but which in actual fact are depressing, enervating, and the mother of moodiness and fatigue. We had left Chop Yat early in the morning after a night of excessive heat in beds of excessive featheriness and were walking towards Helmsley by way of Rievaulx, all unconcerned as to lunch by the way, because the ordnance map marked with such cordial legibility an inn on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... grow tame, before my moodiness grieve you, While yet my heart is flame, and I all lover, ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... knows its own bitterness," he answered. "Don't pay the least attention to me. You mustn't let moodiness of mine cast a blight upon ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... adjustment. Rapid bodily growth is nearly or quite at an end; new functions are asserting themselves. The new demands for directed activity may, under the ambitious impulses of youth, make undue drafts on the energies. The apparent moodiness that at times characterizes this period may be due to poor health. The moral strain of the period will need sound muscles and good health. Parents who would sit up all night—perhaps involuntarily—when ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... crawl forward at night to ascertain the precise position of the Prussian outposts or to endeavor to find out the meaning of any stir or movement that might be heard towards their front. At other times his fits of moodiness seemed to increase. He was seldom present at any of the gatherings of his companions, but went off after work at the studio was over, and it was generally late at night before he ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... late such frays had been of rare occurrence, yet many had taken place before, and with disastrous results, and yet the chief actors in them still lived to tell the tale; so that it was not altogether that which disturbed him, although it greatly added to his former moodiness, which had originally sprung out of the growing distaste to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... of who was to go had not been hitherto decided, and Giles and Stephen were both so excited at being chosen that all low spirits and moodiness were dispelled, and the work which went on almost all night was merrily got through. The Dragon court was in a perpetual commotion with knights, squires, and grooms, coming in with orders for new armour, or for old to be furbished, and the tent-makers, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... in private, but grieved at his moodiness all the evening, and at bed-time watched a red spark moving to and fro in the garden. Her heavy sigh made Theodora ask ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was gratified. She had worried the poor child out of her silent moodiness, and now fell to soothing her exactly as she would have pulled the ears of a lap-dog, till he was ready to bite, and then patted him into ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... physically, he had nevertheless a sense of having been worsted, of having been treated with ignominy, in spite of the fact that it was his foe, and not he, who had retired from the field. For several days he wore a subdued air and kept about meekly with his docile cows. Then his old, bitter moodiness reasserted itself, and he resumed his solitary broodings on the crest ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... was no corner of the globe however remote with which he was not to some degree familiar. He was well read, and possessed the ability to discuss what he had read intelligently and entertainingly. There was no evidence of moodiness in him now. He was the personification of affability, for was he not monopolizing the society of a very beautiful, and ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the mind of Andrew Lee. He had never given to his faithful wife even the small reward of praise for all the loving interest she had manifested daily, until doubt of his love had entered her soul, and made the light thick darkness. No wonder that her face grew clouded, nor that what he considered moodiness and ill-nature took possession ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... he had achieved an impasse, a dog-in-the-manger victory. By preventing the election of a rival he had gained little and incurred much censure for depriving the State of national representation. Benito and Alice tried to rouse him from a fit of moodiness as he dined with them one evening in November. Lately he had made a frequent, always-welcome third at ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... a new ring in his voice, for Sansevero's moodiness was never a good omen. "What are you thinking ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... duties and cares as upon Mrs. Carlyle; yet few consider this a great hardship, and the sympathies of the world are not invoked in their behalf. It was not this so much in Mrs. Carlyle's case as it was the moodiness and fault-finding and general irascibility of the husband which aggravated everything, and made ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... ragged. He was apt to be silent until his shyness wore off, when he became a rapid, nervous talker, full of theories and schemes, which he changed from one day to another, but which were always quite complete and convincing for the moment. At times he had long fits of moodiness and would not open his mouth for days. At other times he sought society and sat up all night talking, planning, discussing, drinking, smoking, living on bread and cheese or whatever happened to be within reach, and sleeping whenever he happened to feel in the humor for ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... universe. With all the mishaps to which our life is subject, a glance over a wide range of human experience proves that God helps those who help themselves, and whatever be the tenor of our fortune, levity is more seemly than moodiness, and under any circumstances there is more virtue in being a clown than a cynic. But in adversity, a subdued cheerfulness and quiet humor are, next to Christian fortitude, the golden mean of feeling that makes the loss ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to moodiness, pride, and recklessness should be considered in our estimate of Byron, and should modify any harshness of judgment in regard to his character, which, in some other respects, was interesting and noble. He was not at ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... transient moodiness had passed away like a bad devil exorcised by the power of good wine, joined heartily in the praise bestowed on this ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... extent the others, noted peculiarities in her manner and that of Hemstead. Her moodiness was gone, but in its place was not her old levity. When Moses came down from the presence of God, his face shone so that he was compelled to veil its brightness; and it has ever seemed true that nearness to God and His truth ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... about our theatre or any other amusement. He almost quarrelled with Roderick, his most intimate friend, for trying to divert him, and not pampering him in all his moping humours. In fact, this exaggerated irritability and moodiness must have been a disease that was gathering in his body; for, as you know, he was seized four months since with a most violent nervous fever, so that we were all forced to give him up for lost. After his fancies had raved themselves ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... moodiness out into the village street, and suddenly remembering that I was smoking a cigar the harmless, merry-hearted youngster had given me, I hurled it away and walked hotly along the road in a state of mind altogether unenviable. I brought myself to reason in a ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... kind of man who wears a fawn-coloured top-coat and drives to the Derby in a dog-cart; and usually there seemed to be nothing on his mind except the vagaries of the weather, concerning which he was a great conversationalist. But now moodiness had claimed him for its own. After a short and melancholy "Good morning," he turned to the task of measuring out ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... kill me. I am used to late hours," he declared, with ingenuous levity. But, feeling an instant compunction, he began to assume an air of statesman-like moodiness, as one draws on a glove. "His massive intellect will stand any amount of work. It's his nerves that I am afraid of. The reactionary gang, with that abusive brute Cheeseman at their ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the tendencies of the school-bred child are to be simple, natural, and childlike. His inclination to moodiness and suspiciousness is much less. He is happier. He becomes self-reliant, independent, and respectful of the rights of others. He is less petulant and more obedient. The wisest parents do not educate their hearing children at home, nor ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... looking away again and with the same moodiness, "that I was a fool to leave the army. That was my job. I should have stuck to it. I should have used my commission and father's influence to stay in the army. But it's too late now. I guess I had my chance and didn't know enough ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... asked a signal from Elsa, and it was given. We all stood together for a moment, then they left us, she accepting his arm to cross the room. Elsa sat down again and did not speak. I found no words either, but leaned again over my chair, regarding the scene in absent moodiness. I was thinking how odd a thing it was, and how perfect, that absolute contentment of the one with the other, that mutual sufficiency, that fitting in of each to each, that ultimate oneness of soul which is the block from which is hewn love's image. And the block is there, though by fate's ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... seeing his faults and wayward moods—seeing and owning that there are men better than he—loves him always with the most constant affection. His children or their mother have never heard a harsh word from him; and when his fits of moodiness and solitude are over, welcome him back with a never-failing regard and confidence. His friend is his friend still,—entirely heart-whole. That malady is never fatal to a sound organ. And George goes through ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... first time he had gone into fits of abstraction as deep as his absorption in the books he read so hungrily. He had been at the Wolverine a month, and they were pretty well acquainted by now and inclined to friendliness when Ward threw off his moodiness and his air of holding himself ready for some affront which he seemed to expect. But for all that the distrust never quite left his eyes, and there were times like this when he was absolutely oblivious ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... tails cocked up, watching the boys ever so long before they darted up the beech-tree bole, and hid behind the great branches. But it was of no use; there was no tempting the boys out of their solid sombre moodiness; and on they tramped, fishless and disconsolate, for their young spirits were not damped, but literally drenched; and then, too, they had lost their wicker idol, full of captives—captives which, like those of the ancient Britons, were to have been roasted; but now, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... occasion it elicited no outburst of cheering. On the contrary, the long man frowned, and his two companions helped themselves to a handful of cigars apiece with a marked moodiness. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... shortly, and went up to his room. The tears came to her eyes, but she blinked them away resolutely. She must not mind, must not show him that she even dreamed of any connection between his moodiness and the events ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... concerned in the fulfilment of the desire. She bore the blow from Musa admirably, keeping both her smile and her dignity, and with one gesture excusing Musa to all beholders as a capricious and a sensitive artist in whom moodiness was lawful. It was exquisitely done. It could not have been better done. But not even Madame Piriac's extreme skill could save the episode from having the air of a social disaster. The gaiety which had ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... line a dark, grim, sardonic appreciation of the advantages which common minds have over those that, like the poet's own, have to endure the splendid miseries of genius,—a dark moodiness, like that of a tame Byron remorsefully recalling a wild debauch upon green tea,—that is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... then Clara thought she discerned in Madge that she was not entirely content, but the cloud-shadows swept past so rapidly and were followed by such dazzling sunshine that she was perplexed and hoped that her sister's occasional moodiness might be due to parting and absence, or the anticipation of them. She never ventured to say anything about Frank to Madge, for there was something in her which forbade all approach from that side. Once when he had shown his ignorance of what was so familiar to the Hopgoods, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... face—while Mrs. Bartlett only heard his words. She gave Anna a searching look as she said: "So it is you whom David loves." At last Kate understood the secret of Anna's distracted face—and at last the mother understood the secret of her boy's moodiness—he loved Anna. And her heart was filled with bitterness and anger at the very thought; she had taken her boy, this stranger, with whom the tongue of scandal was busy. The kindly, gentle, old face lost all its ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... forfeit,' the king rejoined, looking down at the floor and immediately falling into a moodiness as sudden as his excitement. His lips moved. He muttered something inaudible, and began to play absently with his cup and ball, his mind occupied apparently with a gloomy retrospect. 'M. de Guise, M. de Guise,' ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... refuse his assistance. The backwoods people had to front peril and hardship without stint, and they loved for the moment to leap out of the bounds of their narrow lives and taste the coarse pleasures that are always dear to a strong, simple, and primitive race. Yet underneath their moodiness and their fitful light-heartedness lay a spirit that when roused was terrible in its ruthless and stern intensity ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... companions. They talked gaily, their voices carrying to each other with entire ease through the still glades. He found her spirited, warm-hearted, responding with an eager gladness to every fresh manifestation of the wild; and in spite of his gay laughter she read something of the dark moodiness and intensity that were his dominant traits. But he was kind, too. His attitude toward the Little People met with on the trail—the little, scurrying folk—was particularly appealing: like that of a strong man toward children. She saw that he was sympathetic, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall |
