"Nagging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ebb. Andrew Windybank had time to reflect, and he wished himself well out of the whole business. Here and there a man sighed or fidgeted in the darkness. Basil was quick to notice the signs, and equally quick to combat them. He whispered words of hope and promise, and stimulated the nagging ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Amelia. I'm so sorry! George is more upset than I've ever seen him—they've got what they wanted, and they're sailing before long, I hear, to live in Florence. Father said he couldn't stand the constant persuading—I'm afraid the word he used was "nagging." I can't understand people behaving like that. George says they may be Ambersons, but they're vulgar! I'm afraid I almost agree with him. At least, I think they were inconsiderate. But I don't see why I'm unburdening myself of all this to ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... lay the blue lake, a shining spread of water, quiet and silent, here and there upon it the shadow of a floating, fluffy cloud. She listened to the nagging chatter of the squirrels, mingled with the fluttering of the forest birds high above her head. As she stood on the hill, the only human being in all the wilderness about, in fancy she seemed to be at the very ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... the retired collegiate assessor Plemyanikov, was sitting on the back-door steps of her house doing nothing. It was hot, the flies were nagging and teasing, and it was pleasant to think that it would soon be evening. Dark rain clouds were gathering from the east, wafting a breath of moisture every ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... good point in her character: she was not of a nagging disposition. When she scolded she did it thoroughly, and was perhaps a long time doing it, but she never carried it ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... outside the realm could be brought to England for trial, should be put into operation against the colonial agitators. When the Virginia legislature protested against this step, it was dissolved. Hillsborough and North acted as though they believed that a policy of scolding and nagging, if made sufficiently disagreeable, would bring the colonists to their senses. That the Whigs did not cease to pour contempt and ridicule on the folly of such behaviour was probably one reason why the government persisted in its course. The American question ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... for what seemed a week, though in reality it could not have been over five minutes, we heard a low whispering in our rear and footsteps on the stone nagging of the courtyard. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... but the piazza was dusky. "She can't help me," he thought, "and if she was worrying she might hinder me. Things are no worse, and they may soon be better. If I had fifty thousand for a month, though, the strain would be over. She'd be nagging me to take a lot of her money, and I'd see Wall Street sunk first. Well, well, Wildmere and I may land together ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Were you as unconscious of me as you seemed? Was it possible that you didn't know. And if you did know, was it possible that you were—waiting? That it only needed a word of mine to put everything between us on a different basis? I couldn't get rid of that idea. It kept nagging at me. But after what you told me last night—and you certainly told it straight—that idea's exploded. What you said explains everything about you. I know now that I haven't a chance in the world. From now on, I imagine, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and camels, strung in groups of five, came swinging in, or kneeling in the dust, waved their long, bird-like necks, and lifted up a mournful bellow, as if protesting in a bored, Oriental way, at a fate which compelled them to bear burdens for the nagging ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... each Christmas many tons of turkeys not only to voters, but to families who are represented by no vote. By a judicious management some families get three or four turkeys apiece; but what of that, the alderman has none of the nagging rules of the charitable societies, nor does he declare that because a man wants two turkeys for Christmas, he is a scoundrel who shall never be allowed to eat turkey again. As he does not distribute his Christmas favors from ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... for nagging; I am but a woman; you would not have been so cruel to your own flesh and blood knowingly, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... your brother when he plays the martyr, but you've got to love your wife. A violent woman drives a fellow to drink, but a nagging one drives him crazy. She takes his faults and ties them to him like a tin can to a yellow dog's tail, and the harder he runs to get away from them the more he hears ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... would think your speaking mere nagging. Preserve an ominous silence if he speaks. His school-fellows will be his ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... twiddled his thumbs as he contemplated this latest evidence of earthly difficulty and uncertainty. Time and chance certainly happened to all men, and here was one opportunity of paying out those who had been nagging him. To take this stock at one-fifty on loan and peddle it out swiftly and fully at two-twenty or less would bring American Match crumbling about their ears. When it was selling at one-fifty or less he could buy it back, pocket his profit, complete his deal with Mr. Stackpole, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... answers to the Lower Sixth of a boys' school rocking and whooping together. Given a week of warm weather, two stately promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice meal in the middle of the day, a certain amount of nagging from the teachers, and a few other things, some amazing effects develop. At least this is what folk ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... sea-sickness, he had not the will even to loosen his sash or rid himself of his weapons. The hunting knife with the big handle dug into his ribs. His revolver bruised his leg, and the final straw was the nagging of Tartarin-Sancho, who never ceased whining and carping:—"Imbecile! Va! I warned you didn't I?.... But you had to go to Africa!.... Well now you're on your way, how ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... is a better sort of woman to live with than you. If Lua nagged at me as you are nagging, and as you nag at Adam, I would beat her black and blue from head to foot. I have done it too, slave ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... also not efficacious. We are justified in having our indignation aroused at times and in letting the offender feel our displeasure. There is something calm and impressive about genuine indignation, while scolding is apt to become nagging and to arouse contempt in ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... cajoling her, watching her, dodging her, nagging her, driving her, he got her off to bed at last. Being alone, he looked around, listened, shut the doors of the parlour and the kitchen, put the bolt on the door of the stairs, the chain on the door of the porch, took ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... of the engagement period may indeed be trying. Tact is required to avoid fault-finding, nagging, and jealousy. A few "lovers' quarrels" do not matter—they give flavor to a romance—but scolding and criticism do. Romance dies when thoughtless quarreling enters. An engaged man should be even more ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... a nagging mood. He walked up and down the room a few times, finally stopping in front of his chum, Buck Badger. They had been talking about the Saturday ball-game, and both ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... they could, by making life at the ranch unbearable for him. That, he was convinced, was the reason that Betty had adopted her cold, severe, and contemptuous attitude toward him. She expected he would find her nagging and bossing intolerable, that he would leave in a rage and allow her and Taggart to come into possession of the property. Neither she nor Taggart would dare make off with the money and the idol as long as he was at the ranch, for they would fear ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... husband, sternly; "I don't want any of your back answers. It goes on all day long up to bedtime, and last night I laid awake for two hours listening to you nagging in your sleep." ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... father's custom to spend long hours in his library, sometimes far into the gray dawn. He found this preferable to the presence of his sharp-tongued second wife, who was always nagging him for more money, or to put his property into her name as proof positive of his unbounded, undying ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... off when a mosquito that in some inexplicable way has eluded all screens and nettings comes singing its way about your face. It is just one. It seems so small. If it were only big enough to hit, something worthy of one's strength. But the mean little nagging specimen seems to elude every effort of yours. Maybe you take calm, deliberate measures to end its existence, but meanwhile you are thoroughly aroused and lose quite a bit ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... only one of my stones[FN488] and leave me the other." So he ceased not running and the other followed after him, but being unable to catch him he returned to his guests and served them with somewhat of bread and so forth, whilst the woman kept blaming him and nagging about the matter of the geese which she said had been carried off, but which had been given by her to her lover. The husband enjoined her to silence; however she would not hold her peace[FN489] and on this wise he was balked of the meal to feed his wife's friend. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... sneered the officer in a nagging way, that irritated me, though the remark was, doubtless, true. "Home with his wifie," he repeated in a sing-song, paying no attention to the elucidation of a subject he had raised. "Good old man, Hamilton, but since marriage, utterly gone to ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... capacity. Outside of their business they knew absolutely nothing; they were even ignorant of Paris. To them the great city was merely a region spreading around the Rue Saint-Denis. Their narrow natures could see no field except the shop. They were clever enough in nagging their clerks and their young women and in proving them to blame. Their happiness lay in seeing all hands busy at the counters, exhibiting the merchandise, and folding it up again. When they heard the six or eight voices of the young men and women ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... who first considered crime as disease, for women are naturally sweet-tempered and charming. The shrew and the scold are to be reformed only by a physician, and as for nagging, is it not allopathic scolding ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... substantial international assistance and political reforms - including Rwanda's first local elections in March 1999 - the country continues to struggle to boost investment and agricultural output and to foster reconciliation. A series of massive population displacements, a nagging Hutu extremist insurgency, and Rwandan involvement in two wars over the past four years in the neighboring DROC continue ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... him. She was not yet aware that his hunger came on in periodic attacks and thought that she must have hurt him in some way to make him so wretched. She tried to be especially gentle to him, but he was rather difficult to please. He developed a habit of womanish, almost shrewish, nagging that astounded her; he grumbled at his food, he grumbled at the discomforts of living in one room; he made her feel cheap when she kissed him by turning away and saying, "There, that's enough, now!"; he found fault with her clothes and, one morning as she was dressing, said he ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... over to the window, stooping to peer at the machine. "What's the good of that?" he demanded, disdainful; and without waiting for her response went on nagging. "Foolishness! That's what it is. Why don't you tell him not to waste his time ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... promises—among them, to resume the apparel of her sex; and that if she relapsed, the Church would cast her out for good and all. She heard the words, but they had no meaning to her. She was like a person who has taken a narcotic and is dying for sleep, dying for rest from nagging, dying to be let alone, and who mechanically does everything the persecutor asks, taking but dull note of the things done, and but dully recording them in the memory. And so Joan put on the gown which Cauchon and his people had brought; and would come to herself by and by, and have at first but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... values seem to be,— permanence, respectful treatment, immunity from kicks and cuffs and from abuse, especially in his own tongue, and, above all, a quiet life, without kitkit, which may be vulgarly translated, nagging. He considers his situation with regard to these conditions, he considers also his pay and prospect of unjust emoluments, with a judicial mind he balances the one against the other, and if he works patiently on, it is because the balance is in his favour. I ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... City Lots, those forming a colony make a considerable community, in which the authority of the committee, or board of trustees, is absolute, and the few cases they have had to adjudicate have generally been caused by nagging women. It is claimed in the press that these colonists are literally without scandals, and that the life led by young and old is a most peaceful and happy one. People who are hard at work are not likely to be quarrelsome: ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... you women too; a man has a drink. Well, he swaggers about a bit, and sleeps it off, and everything goes on all right; but then the likes of you keep on nagging at him. ...
— The Cause of it All • Leo Tolstoy
... Grandma, what of all things do you suppose has happened? Old man Mullin's back. Nobody can hardly believe it. He's been gone these ten years and nobody blamed him a mite when he left that miserly, nagging wife of his and went off to California. Why, they say she nearly died giving him a ten-cent piece every week for spending money and that he used to work on the sly unbeknownst to her to get money ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... render you totally indifferent to the unpleasant side of your position as a sateen or rival wife, though it is the antipode of the bed of roses, especially under internecine feuds and perpetual snipsnaps with sundry aunts and sisters-in-law of mine of rather nagging idiosyncracies. But ignorance of language will probably blind your sensitive ears to the sneering and ill-natured ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... weakest point. It doesn't attempt to undermine my imagination. That would be a forlorn hope. I have, alas! a very strong imagination. At ordinary times my imagination allows itself to be governed by my will. My will keeps it in check by constant nagging. But when my will isn't strong enough even to nag, then my imagination stampedes. I become even as a little child. I tell myself the most preposterous fables, and—the trouble is—I can't help telling them to my friends. Until I've thoroughly shaken off ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... as we tread the varied path of life, Disaster dire demands a valued limb, We with the mood of Stoic bear the pain; While nagging tooth doth ever set us wild. 'Tis vain on deep philosophy to call When stinging gnats, unseen, do us assail; A warring instinct urges us to kill, And we delay not, till Dame Reason speaks. 'Twas but an automatic action of the mind When matter trivial late did rouse a phlegm ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... when a girl's happy at home, I do think it's a pity for her to jump into being a woman at eighteen. More'n one I've coaxed into waiting. But when a girl's disposition is wearing thin through bickering and nagging day in and day out, the sooner she's in a home of her ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... comforting about it. He'd driven a couple of the experimental jobs, one with the cockpit set on gimbals, and one where the whole ship rotated, and he hadn't cared for them at all. Felt disoriented, with something nagging at his mind all the time, as though the ships had been sabotaged. A couple of pilots had gone nuts in the "spindizzy," and remembering his own feelings as he watched the sky go by, it ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... outwardly he was harassed to desperation by the junior editor of the rival paper who jeered daily at his poetical pretensions. So, to prove that editors would praise from a known source what they did not hesitate to condemn from one unknown, and to silence his nagging contemporary, he wrote Leonainie in the style of Poe, concocting a story, to accompany the poem, setting forth how Poe came to write it and how all these years it had been lost to view. In a few words Mr. Riley related the incident and then dismissed it. "I studied Poe's methods. He seemed ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... over sickness and death, over prospective but delayed punishment, over the thousand and one real or imaginary troubles of childhood, should be eliminated so far as possible. School examinations that prey on the peace of mind, threats of failure of promotion, all nagging and sarcasm, and whatever else may cause continued pain or worry to sensitive minds should be barred from our schoolroom methods and practice. The price we force the child to pay for results through their ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... "Hah, then," says he, "that tedious dear nagging woman and that priceless snub-nosed brat may not be real. They may be merely happy and prosaic imaginings, hiding the night which alone is real. To consider this possibility is troubling. It makes for even greater loneliness. None the less, I know that I am real, and certainly the grayness ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... wrong ethically, he will probably concede the point, provided,—and don't overlook this,—you "go about it in the right way, and in the right spirit." It isn't likely you will be given a patient hearing, if in the past you have been in the habit of nagging and browbeating him. Don't look upon tactful ways of gaining your point as evidence of weakness. It is distinctly an evidence of strength of character, and, each time you win a point in a friendly debate with your husband, you will have gained much. He will respect ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... already applying it to tobacco. I never can see why they should not apply it to talking. Talking often goes with tobacco as it goes with beer; and what is more relevant, talking may often lead both to beer and tobacco. Talking often drives a man to drink, both negatively in the form of nagging and positively in the form of bad company. If the American Puritan is so anxious to be a censor morum, he should obviously put a stop to the evil communications that really corrupt good manners. He should reintroduce ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Captain Hamilton leaned back to light a cigar, and in the momentary nagging of conversation that ensued while he was getting it to going well, his gaze fell on ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... surface evidence, the average woman of today is, as Kipling says, far "more deadly than the male." She is more unscrupulous in her methods; more unreasonable in her demands; more devoid of sentiment or sympathy; more fickle in her desires and more nagging in her complaints. But, when all is said and done, we must admit that woman is only expressing her inheritance. When she becomes balanced, the sexes ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... of a certain mother with several unconverted children. She was a fretting, chafing woman, and by her impatience, fault-finding, and nagging she fretted and vexed the whole family. When she got the blessing she became so even in her disposition that she was kept in such 'perfect peace' that, by the power of the Holy Ghost, the domestic circle became like ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... wife for one of the seven following reasons:—Want of children, adultery, neglect of his parents, nagging, thieving (i.e. supplying her own family with his goods, popularly known as "leakage"), jealous temper and leprosy. To the above, the humanity of the lawgiver has affixed three qualifying conditions. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... unjustly, and thus make the first step towards rendering his baseless suspicions a reality, his unjust accusations justified. And, of course, what is true of the husband is also true of the wife. Many a wife has driven her indolent husband into the hands of prostitutes or mistresses by her incessant nagging, false accusations and vicious epithets applied to all his female ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... "Awfully nagging sort, yes. Doesn't know the strain I'm under getting this silly affair straight. Country interesting no doubt, what, what! But, my word! saw nothing but country coming out. Country quite all about, miles and miles both sides of the metals. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... bondage, or of those who, though they might see the whole face of society, nevertheless choose to spend all a life's space poring upon some single vice or blemish? I would not for the world discredit any sort of philanthropy except the small and churlish sort which seeks to reform by nagging—the sort which exaggerates petty vices into great ones, and runs atilt against windmills, while everywhere colossal shams and abuses go unexposed, unrebuked. Is it because we are better at being common scolds than at being ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... retorted Hamilton. "We cannot go through life successfully with the bare gifts of the Almighty, generous though He may have been. If I find that I have need of cunning, or brutality,—than which nothing is farther from my nature,—or even nagging, I do not hesitate to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... prompting Mrs. Gower had discovered such a view of insurance in her brain. She now recalled expressing it—and regretted. But she was silenced. She tried to take her mind of the subject of money. But, like Mildred, she could not. The thought of imminent poverty was nagging at them like toothache. "There'll be enough for a year or ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Aunt Matilda had been annoyances to her ever since she could remember. Their continual nagging had fretted her, their constant restraint had chafed her, their narrowness had cramped her. To-day she saw them from a new point ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the privilege of voting. This attitude on the part of some of the suffrage Members of this House is on an exact equality with the acts of these women militants who have spent the last summer and fall, while they were not in the district jail or workhouse, in coaxing, teasing, and nagging the Presi dent of the United States for the purpose of inducing him, by coercion, to club Congress ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... before any of our western valleys could be safe. On one point he was very positive: the Cherokees, he insisted, would not join the Ohio tribes, despite the murder of Oconostota's brother. Could the people of the Clinch and Holston have felt the same confidence, they would have spared themselves much nagging. ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... been resting both for a month, with Italian, and tea, and manna of sentiment, and late hours, and every restful thing a young husband could need for the refreshment of weary limbs and a sore conscience, and a nagging sense of ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... small hope now of changing the widow and her "orphan" but if he could not convert them he could show them. As sure as he knew anything he was convinced that Colonel Huff had simply fled from his wife's nagging tongue and, when he got the time, Wiley intended to hire a pack-train and set out across Death Valley to find him. Virginia came and went, but always she avoided him scrupulously. Not once since she had returned from Vegas had she met ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... smells; a place of great trees, fat fungoids, sprawling creepers, preposterous looking parasites, orchids, lianas; a place of things that crawled and climbed and twined and clung. It was filled with weird sounds—the booming of wild pigeons; a nagging, tapping sound as though woodchoppers were at work far off in its depths; and a constant insane chattering sound, as though mad children, hidden all about him, were laughing at him. Dusk brought from their coverts the flying foxes, to utter curious notes as they sailed through the gloaming, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... men have been selected, they should be supported, their acts and proposals, of course, criticised if necessary, but not made the subject of perpetual and irritating nagging, or dull refusal to understand and appreciate what they are doing and aiming at. They may not expect gratitude. Most people learn in the course of life that recognition given and gratitude shown for any work done varies inversely as the trouble ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... correction of proofs, about which, we may remember, he had reserved the right of punctilious examination. La Peyrade had now reached a point when he was forced to see that, in order to restore his influence, which was daily evaporating, he must strike some grand blow; and it was precisely this nagging and vexatious fancy about the proofs that the barrister decided to take as the starting-point of a scheme, both deep and adventurous, which came ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... nightingale from a hawk. Messer Folco was at first very stern and then very angry at his daughter's attitude, but he was stern and angry alike in vain. The more Messer Folco stormed, the less he effected. Though Beatrice seemed to grow paler and frailer at her father's nagging, she grew none the less stubborn, and Messer Folco's fury flamed higher at her unwonted obstinacy. His naturally choleric disposition got the better of his philosophic training and his habitual self-restraint, and he threatened, pleaded, and commanded in turns ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... H. The patient was a Galician Hebrew, a shirtwaist operator. Not much was known about her make-up, but it is certain that she was a bright girl. The patient herself said after recovery that her father was nagging her constantly with complaints that she was not making enough money, although he himself did not work and she contributed much to the support of her family. She disliked him very much and claimed that all her relatives ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... Can we believe that on the 30th of September, 1686, Defoe, provoked by his wife's nagging tongue, made a vow to live a life of complete silence; that for twenty-eight years and a month or two he never addressed a word to his wife or children; and that his resolution was only broken down by a severe illness ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... peace. Whether she liked it or not, the girl found herself to be under his protection. Like all deaf-mutes, he was very suspicious, and very readily perceived when they were laughing at him or at her. One day, at dinner, the wardrobe-keeper, Tatiana's superior, fell to nagging, as it is called, at her, and brought the poor thing to such a state that she did not know where to look, and was almost crying with vexation. Gerasim got up all of a sudden, stretched out his gigantic ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the entire summer nagging at me," Eleanor concluded. "I couldn't do a thing to please her. If I stayed in she wanted me to go out; if I went out she thought I ought to stay in. If I put on one dress she invariably made me change it for another. And as ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... him. And so thou escaped, I would care not if never I saw him again, though I paid a pretty penny for him and love him better than ever I loved any woman, since he springs to order and stands without hitching, and with never a word of nagging in my ears to make me pay penance for the service. What a man with a good horse, and good wine, and good tobacco, wanteth a wife for, passeth my understanding, but I know thou art young, and the maid is a fair ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... produced. That the union of her parents was unclean, that it was altogether foul and by far worse than a divorce, she still felt confident, but she saw that her mother was totally unable to comprehend the difference between a clean separate life and the nagging poison dealt out as daily bread to the husband with whom she lived; but she saw that because of that very inability to understand the difference, the mother must be left to find the light in her own way. In her desire to help, Elizabeth had ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... compassion for this helpless dear with her double chins and self-sacrificing past, and she wondered whether her father had not had the same attitude during the years of nagging reproach at his lack of material prosperity. She resolved to come home that night with a budget of news items concerning Steve's return, even bringing a rose from the floral offering that was to be placed on ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... sunset. Then there was night, and for three hundred and thirty-six consecutive hours there were only stars overhead and the sky was a hole so terrible that a man who looked up into it—what with the nagging sensation of one-sixth gravity—tended to lose all confidence in the stability of things. Most men immediately found it hysterically necessary to seize hold of something solid to keep from falling upward. But nothing felt solid. ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... mustering all the reserve force I can, the best showing I am able to make is, "You Louie! Go off and die!" I almost hold my own—468 boxes of "assorteds" do I pack. And again the anguishing stand in the Subway. I hate men—hate them. I just hope every one of them gets greeted by a nagging wife when he arrives home. Hope she nags all evening.... If enough of those wives really did do enough nagging, would the men thereupon stay downtown for dinner and make room in the Subway for folk who ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... father; mother likes the idea of my getting married, but they used often to be nagging about something. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... nagging little reminders of his real duty, Johnny's imagination and his ambition were fed a full meal of anticipation, and he had the joy of being actually at work on an airplane that he could proudly speak ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... urge him to a finish. He was not the man to endure much pressure, and the more they urged the more resentful he became. Finally, he began to feel a bitter dislike for the prior, the man who annoyed him most. One day, when the prior was nagging him about the picture, wanting to know why he didn't get to work upon it again, and when would it be finished, Leonardo said suavely: "If you will sit for the head of Judas, I'll be able to finish the picture at once." The ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... I thought no more about it. Until this morning. Then I remembered. Jim Killian never knew his mother. He was brought up by an uncle and aunt, both of them dead ten years now. Struck me all of a sudden. It had sort of been nagging at the back of my head that something was fishy about that mate's story anyway, so this morning I went to his house and I ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... nagging at the children. It was a habit, but they didn't seem to mind. Most Bushwomen get the nagging habit. I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most willing, and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged that child ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... here begin to scorn you. And that will soon happen, don't rely upon your youth—all that flies by express train here, you know. You will be kicked out. And not simply kicked out; long before that she'll begin nagging at you, scolding you, abusing you, as though you had not sacrificed your health for her, had not thrown away your youth and your soul for her benefit, but as though you had ruined her, beggared her, robbed her. And don't expect anyone to take ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... the county," he returned. "If your sanity doesn't make you happy, I can tell you it's worth a great deal less than my craziness. Look at that dandelion, now—it has filled two hours chock full of thought and colour for me when I might have been puling indoors and nagging at God Almighty about trifles. The time has been when I'd have walked right over that little flower and not seen it, and now it grows yellower each minute that I look at it, and each minute I see it better than I did the one before. There's nothing in life, when you come to think of it—not ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Blake, "I've half a notion you do like him. That would account for the way you keep at him with your nagging and teasing." ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... than ever to San Francisco, frequently staying in the city for days at a time, which was bad for Adelle's fortune, had she but realized it. But, as has been shown, she had come now to the time when she felt relieved if Archie was not at home, glum and sulky, or nagging and fighting her will. With the place and her boy she had enough to fill her mind, and easily forgot all money troubles when Archie was not there to remind her of them. Somehow they raised the money for the workmen, and the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... as usual, polite and charming. She was smilingly cruel; regaled him with Lord Uxmoor's wealth and virtues, and said he was an excellent match, and all she-Barfordshire pulling caps for him. Severne only sighed; he offered no resistance; and at last she could not go on nagging a handsome fellow, who only sighed, so she said, "Well, there; I advise you to join us before the opera is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... thing for the whole police force to keep worrying at a little boy like me," he said, in shame-faced apology. "I'm not doing nothing wrong, and I'm half froze to death, and yet they keep a- nagging ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... their form of intoxication. Such demanding is not, of course, what I mean. Demand nothing for yourself, beyond simple justice. Not love, for that flies at the very sound of demand, and dies before nagging. But demand for the man himself, call upon his nobler qualities, and don't let him palm off on you his second-best. Many a man is loved and honored by his business associates whose wife and children never catch ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... a sad scene, only restrained by respect for my friend. I need not tell it. There was a man's side to the question, a strong one. The wife had a terrible temper, a peevish, nagging, maddening fashion of talking. She was a woman very hard for a ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... loved, Abraham had nagged a little all his married life when things went wrong. And Angeline, fretted and nervous, herself worried almost sick over Father's condition, was guilty once in a while out of the depths of her anxiety of nagging back again. So do we hurt those whom we love best as we would and could ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... justice, Mrs. Mallow certainly had, and never ceased nagging at Cuthbert to break the engagement. Had she known that Mrs. Octagon had forbidden the marriage she would have rejoiced, but to save making awkward explanations to a woman who would not hold her tongue, Cuthbert said nothing about ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... Little Colonel was more embarrassed than ever. She could not tell Fidelia that it was because a little poodle received the fondling and attention that belonged to them, and that it was Fidelia's continual faultfinding and nagging that made the boys tease her. So after a pause she changed the subject by asking her what she wanted most to ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... certificated by the College of Spiritual Athletics. Terms for ordinary nagging, two shillings and sixpence per hour. ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... "Forgive me for nagging," said she. "Thy mother too is waiting for thee. Is it well done to keep her on thorns so long She will not sleep this night, Bethink thee, Gerard, she is all to thee that I am to this sweet child. Ah, I think so much more of mothers since ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... laid him down to sleep beside a brook—having been chased thither betimes, no doubt, by a nagging bedfellow. I have no wife, nor mean to take one, and find it more to my comfort to sleep here by the River Charles and dream of Malvern, secure that I shall wake to find myself detached from ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... morning, we talked over the Indian question, and then went down to the fort. We hadn't been there for three or four days, but now we had decided not to stand nagging by a couple of red-skinned savages, but to go and see the captain and tell him all about it. All except the proclamation—Rectus wouldn't agree to have that brought in at all. Mr. Cholott had introduced us to the captain, and he was a first-rate fellow, and when we told him ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... mean. "With all my heart," says she. So I read although it be on a Sunday, so good are your letters; and you must know, I have copies of many, and after a little while we are as much alive and brisk, as if we had no nagging at all, and return to the duties of ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... was method in Phil's nagging—perhaps he was trying to goad the Spaniard into an admission that could be used against him. If that were his purpose he had ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... where opening space he sees; Now on his sides; now where his tapering tail In fish-like form is finish'd, bites the steel. High spouts the wounded monster from his mouth; The waves with gore deep purpling: drench'd, the wings Droop nagging; and no longer Perseus dares To trust their dripping aid. A rock he spies Whose summit o'er the peaceful waters rose, But deep was hid when tempests mov'd the main. Supported here, his left hand firmly grasps The craggy edge; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... old-fashioned wives, I suppose," his daughter answered cheerfully, "and keep nagging till it is there. We'll keep up such a nagging," she added, in sweet even tones, "that you'll get the money by hook or crook, to save ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... a most reverent servant to the soul. But in fact, and particularly in hours stately with momentous things, what a sacrilegious trick it has of nagging its holy mistress with triflet light as air—small as gnats ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... things of the rest of your brethren if you can help it, but you know—yes, you must know that parsons are as jealous of each other and as nasty to each other as actors, singers, writers, or any other 'professional' persons in the world. In fact, I believe if you were to set two spiteful clergymen nagging at each other, they'd beat any two 'leading ladies' on the operatic stage, for right-down malice ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... uncle came down here to try and get hold of them. Well, after our return, I suppose the delight of having Roger back again put the whole affair out of my uncle's head, but lately he hasn't been very well—at least that is the most charitable way to look at it—and he has been perpetually nagging at me about the contents of the cupboard, ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... conciliatory, nobody's remarks upset him, nothing seemed worth getting angry about. Fray Diego, on the contrary, who, in his normal condition, was always a jovial, jocose priest, turned into a very devil for disputing and nagging, and he betrayed a combative disposition that nobody would have suspected under his round, placid face ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... together above a long straight nose. Nose, eyes, jaw announced obstinacy, and the eyes, quick and fiery, warned you that it was of the aggressive kind which not only holds to its purpose, but never ceases nagging until it be attained. In build he was lean and wiry: in carriage amazingly dignified for one who (to be precise) stood but 5 feet 5 and ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fulfilled. Bud fought back, telling Marie how much of a snap she had had since she married him, and how he must have looked like ready money to her, and added that now, by heck, he even had to do his own cooking, as well as listen to her whining and nagging, and that there wasn't clean corner in the house, and she'd rather let her own baby go hungry than break a simp rule in a darn book got up by a bunch of boobs that didn't know anything about kids. Surely to goodness, he finished his heated paragraph, it wouldn't break any ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... incongruous life is here, on the palm of my hand, with all its cynicism, monstrous and coarse injustice; but there is in it none of that falsehood and that hypocrisy before people and before one's self, which enmesh all humanity from top to bottom. Consider, my dear Lichonin, how much nagging, drawn out, disgusting deception, how much hate, there is in any marital cohabitation in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. How much blind, merciless cruelty—precisely not animal, but human, reasoned, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... different, Malone thought, though maybe he was a little more tired. Henry VIII had obviously had a hard day trying to get his wives to stop nagging him. "Ken," he said. "I thought you were on vacation. What are you doing calling up the FBI, or do you just want to feel superior to us ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... philosophical, thinking that a year or so of town life would be a cure. If he missed the children, he was free from tears and nagging complaints, so that his content balanced his loneliness. Frank proved up and came down to live with him, and the partnership began to wear into permanency. Share and share alike, they lived and worked and ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... connubial acquaintance. He was lazy and sloven of mornings, and since he had no office to go to he grew more neglectful of his appearance than ever. His end-to-end cigarettes got on Kedzie's nerves and cost a nagging amount of money, especially as she could not learn to like ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... said Clay, with a yawn. He put down his banjo, stretched, and stood up. Behind him the bullets pattered merrily against the iron plating. "Why on earth do you two keep on nagging? Look at me—I'm half drunk as usual, and I'm as happy as a lord. Take a peg, each of ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... stores and houses and gas mains and water pipes all over the table; with what a clatter and clamor and with what vain pride! Now the pride of those years in Harvey came with the railroad, and here, pulling at the paper, stands big George Brotherton with his ten stone heart. He has been sputtering and nagging for a dozen pages to swing off the front platform of the first passenger car that came to town. He was a fat, overgrown youth in his late teens, but he wore the uniform of a train newsboy, and any uniform ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... married life the couple remained with the bride's mother who instructed her in the household arts. Disputes between the newlyweds were not tolerated and punishment by the parents was the result of "nagging". At the end of a year, another log cabin was added to the quarters and the couple began housekeeping. The moral code was exceedingly high; the penalty for offenders—married or single, white or colored—was to be banished ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... sister, you are not holding the reins right!—Oh, hullo!" he exclaimed as he saw Irene and Rosamund. "Won't you tell my sister that she is not to hold the reins like that? She is nagging at the pony's mouth all the time, and ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... perfectly true; Mrs. Melcombe and Laura were not of the nagging order of women, they never said sarcastic or ill-natured things to one another, the foibles of the one suited the other; and if they had a few uncomfortable words now and then between themselves, they had enough esprit de corps to hide ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... as water, and William Devine often came home in a very lively condition, but his wife did not mind, for she thought that a man must have his glass. Women of the lower and middle classes have a great deal to do with supplying customers to the public-house. Some of them drive their men there by nagging, but more of them lead a man on to drink by sheer indulgence. They encourage him to enjoy himself without thinking of the day when enjoyment will be impossible, and when they and their children will reach the lowermost rung of the ladder ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... to a bit of French and considerable Spanish, Rockyfeller's valet spoke Russian very (I did not have to be told) badly. The Young Pole, perhaps sore at being rolled on the floor of The Enormous Room by the worthy Sheeney, set about nagging him just as he had done in the case of neighbour Bill. His favourite epithet for the conqueror was "moshki" or "moski" I never was sure which. Whatever it meant (The Young Pole and Monsieur Auguste informed me that it meant "Jew" in a highly ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... essential, but discipline does not consist in inconsistent nagging; harshly insisting on unquestioning obedience to some unreasonable command one moment, and weakly giving way—to avoid a scene—on some matter vitally affecting the child's welfare ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... almost every day about her overdue rent and that daily nagging was an unbearable torment. Janina could not ask her to sell those costumes, for she knew that Sowinska would unscrupulously keep the money, so she decided to sell ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... only a tiny, nagging, disturbing thought in his mind. It had to do with Mike Fueyo and the Silent Spooks, and a lot of red Cadillacs. But he pushed it resolutely away. It had nothing to do with the evening he was about to spend. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... tiny, nagging disturbing thought in his mind. It had to do with Mike Fueyo and the Silent Spooks, and a lot of red Cadillacs. But he pushed it resolutely away. It had nothing to do with the evening he was about to spend. Nothing ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... reformed?' I says. 'Do you think nine months is long enough to have taught her a lesson?' I didn't want to damp him, but personally I have never known but one case of a woman being cured of nagging, and that being brought about by a fall from a third-story window, resulting in what the doctors called permanent paralysis of the vocal organs, can hardly be ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... eyes, and I knew that Madame Renard was boiling with rage, for she kept on nagging at me: 'Oh, how horrid! Don't you see that he is robbing you of your fish? Do you think that you will catch anything? Not even a frog, nothing whatever. Why, my hands are tingling, just to ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... debates, the prosing of bores, interrupted by angry cries of "Vote! Vote!" the reiterated announcement of the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations that the conferees could not agree, the perpetual nagging of two Democrats and one Populist, the long trying intervals of debate on matters irrelevant to the great question torturing every mind, during which there was much confusion on the floor: the Senators talked constantly in groups except when the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton |
