"Nuisance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Protestant gentleman who had been very hospitable to me that I must choose my party. I could not sit both at Protestant and Catholic tables. Such a caution would now be impossible in any part of Ireland. Home-rule, no doubt, is a nuisance,—and especially a nuisance because the professors of the doctrine do not at all believe it themselves. There are probably no other twenty men in England or Ireland who would be so utterly dumfounded ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... has the wheat-fly and the turnip-fly to contend against; the former has actually devoured Lower Canada, and the latter has obliged me in a garden to sow several successive crops. The melon-bug is another nuisance; it is a small winged animal, of a bright yellow colour, striped with black bars, and takes up its abode in the flower of the melon and pumpkin, breeding fast, and destroying wherever it settles, for young plants are ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... This or Mrs. That to have made up her mind to give a ball, where will she give it? At home, no doubt, in the great majority of cases; but if her rooms happen to be small, or she wishes to avoid the nuisance of having her own house turned upside down (as it must be for a couple of days at the least if a ball is to be held in it), she may prefer—I am assuming expense to be no object—to hire some public rooms, like Willis's, or an empty house for the occasion; of which alternatives it is ten to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... really gone!" she muttered. "Always snooping about like a cat,—prying and fussing. She's such a nuisance, poor grandma." ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... these confounded acorns that keep me awake," thought Gay, with a nervous irritation which was characteristic of him when he had been disturbed. "A dozen ghosts couldn't have managed to make themselves more of a nuisance." ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... in the past a confounded nuisance," Sir Charles interrupted. "It looks as if he were going to be just as much trouble ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... Malachy that the roses seemed to be in a most discouraging condition, and that the garden in general was altogether disappointing. I noticed that my dogs barked a great deal, that the neighbors had become most tiresome, and that Bunsey was an unmitigated nuisance. Even the cuisine, which had been my pride and boast, grew at times unbearable, and I had not been home a fortnight before I astonished Prudence by positively assuring her that the dinner she had set before me was not worth any sane man's serious attention. Whereupon that excellent ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... remarkable for its Silk Stockings, Waistcoats, Breeches, and Caps; Soap, Perfume, and Snuff-boxes. They cool their Wine with Snow, which they get out of pits dug in the Mountain-sides. Near here, too, is a Burning Mountain they call Vesuvio. It may be mighty curious, but 'tis as great a Nuisance and Perpetual Alarm to the peaceable Inhabitants of Naples as a Powder Magazine. Very often this Vesuvio gives itself up to hideous Bellowing, causing the Windows, nay the very Houses, in Naples to Shake, and then it vomits forth vast Quantities of melted Stuff, which streams down the Mountain-sides ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... at Waverly," said the general, "have become something of a nuisance under Hallie's management. There is a great flock of them on the place, and in the summer they sing all night. It is not a very pleasant experience to have one whistling at your window ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... Shelby, coming in. "You two never have an out and out row, but you're always bickering. Thorpe, you ought to mend your ways—it is a confounded nuisance to have ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... must be a nuisance, because she doesn't like dogs; so that Mrs. Gisborne can only take the old one, which she could never part with. So she wanted to give Mab to some one who would be kind to her; and she has come to the right shop; hasn't ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was regarded highly as a spark arrester and used practically to the exclusion of any other arrangement, it had the basic defect of keeping the smoke low and close to the train. This was a great nuisance to passengers, as the low trailing smoke blew into the cars. If the exhaust had been allowed to blast straight out the stack high into the air, most of the sparks would have burned out before ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... formal nods, important sneers, Thy whisperings foisted in all ears, (Which are, whatever you may think, But nonsense wrapt up in a stink,) Have made thy presence, in a true sense, To thy own side, so d—n'd a nuisance, That, when they have you in their eye, As if the devil drove, they fly. T. My good friend Mullinix, forbear; I vow to G—, you're too severe: If it could ever yet be known I took advice, except my own, It should be yours; but, d—n my blood! I must pursue the public good: ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... morose disposition) could with reason have complained of anything. It continued to sparkle till the first train came down from town, when our guests and the rain arrived together. It was a dreadful nuisance, as the awning, which, with the flowers, had cost us hours to arrange, speedily got soaked, and had to be taken down. Then, of course, the sun came out again, and for a time the heat was intense. ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... so, certainly," Tom agreed. "The less baggage one travels with the better, for when I leave the railway I shall only want what I can carry with me or pack on horses. Anything else would only be a nuisance. As to a rough suit for the voyage, the clothes I had before I put these on" (and he glanced at his black suit) "will do capitally. Of course I shall go steerage. I can get out for four or five pounds that ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... heroic war but defensive war, and as the only honorable warriors such men as those peasants of Vise who went out with shotguns against the multitudinous overwhelming nuisance of invasion that trampled down ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was thereupon passed by Parliament forbidding the exportation of hats from any American colony, and the selling in one colony of hats made in another. Colonial iron mills began to blast; they were promptly declared a nuisance, and Parliament ordered that no mill or engine for slitting or rolling iron be used, but graciously allowed pig and bar iron to be imported from England into the colonies. Distilleries were common; ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... that had been doing on this side of the globe while he had been on the other. No more was said about Marian, or Gilbert's plans for the future. In his own mind that one subject reigned supreme, shutting out every other thought; but h did not want to make himself a nuisance to John Saltram, and he knew that there are bounds to the endurance of which ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... same basis laws have been upheld which restricted the location of dairy or cow stables,[381] of livery stables,[382] of the grazing of sheep near habitations.[383] Also a State may declare the emission of dense smoke in cities or populous neighborhoods a nuisance and restrain it; and regulations to that effect are not invalid even though they affect the use of property or subject the owner to the expense of complying ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... is one of the chief problems yet to be solved for the benefit of automobilists and the general public alike. A good deal of the "dust nuisance" is due to badly made and badly kept roads, but we must frankly admit that the automobile itself is often the cause. "La Ligue Contre la Poussiere," in France, has made some interesting experiments, ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... watchful care of the architect is required from the cutting of the first sod until the finishing touches are put on the house. He must assure himself that all is done, and nothing left undone which is likely to cause a nuisance, or worse still, jeopardize the health of the occupiers. Yet, with all his care and the employment of the best materials and apparatus at his command, complete success seems scarcely possible of attainment. We have all much to learn, many things must be accomplished ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... Why, Miss, do you know that your sex are carrying about them some thousands of tons of brass and steel in the shape of these skirts? As to the waste, it is already so large as to have become a public nuisance. An old hat or shoe may be given away to somebody,—an old scrubbing-brush may be disposed of by putting it into the stove; but as to an old skirt, who wants it? You cannot burn it; the very beggars will not take it; and hence it is thrown into the street, or into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... crazy lady mad," murmured the Patchwork Girl. "I'll tell you what, Vic," she added as she smoothed out her apron and put it on again, "for some reason or other you've missed your guess. You're not a concert; you're a nuisance." ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... his word, and, when one or two lads had received a dose of the stuff, which punishment was followed by more severe from home, for having gotten their clothes soiled, the nuisance ceased, to a certain extent. Sam Snedecker and Pete Bailey were two who received a liberal sprinkling of the lime, and ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... something which made his comrade jog his elbow, and the host say, "Hush! Hush!" What he was muttering was, that if they wanted to get rid of a nuisance, the aristocrats were fewer than ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... to defend them. They had been a great nuisance and were ordered to appear in court. But none of them turned up. M. Chassensee therefore argued that a default should not be taken because all the rats had been summoned, and some were either so young or so old and decrepit that they needed more time. The court thereupon granted him an extension. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... any proposition by no means depends on its tendency to promote the interests of society; yet a man has but a bad grace, who delivers a theory, however true, which, he must confess, leads to a practice dangerous and pernicious. Why rake into those corners of nature which spread a nuisance all around? Why dig up the pestilence from the pit in which it is buried? The ingenuity of your researches may be admired, but your systems will be detested; and mankind will agree, if they cannot refute them, to sink them, at least, in eternal silence and oblivion. Truths ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... below; if down below, and there is a noise, she is convinced there is danger; and, if it be perfectly still, she is sure there is something wrong. She fidgets herself and everybody, and is quite a nuisance with her pride and ill-humour; but she has strict notions of propriety, and sacrifices herself as a martyr. She ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... London with coal, that is, charcoal, before the days of "sea-coal," the coal which blackens London smoke to-day. Then it reached London by sea. One Grimes, or Grimme, the greatest of the Croydon colliers, who lived in the reign of Edward VI, was actually sued by an archbishop for creating a nuisance with his smoke. The collier won. He was sufficiently celebrated to become the hero of two sixteenth-century plays, one of which bears his name, Grim, the Collier of Croydon. To be "as black as a Croydon collier," was to ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... us that he is inspired; if we cannot well gainsay it, we are at least not obliged to read his works. An architect or a sculptor, however, or a public performer of any sort, that thrusts before us a spectacle justified only in his inner consciousness, makes himself a nuisance. A social standard of taste must assert itself here, or else no efficacious and cumulative art can exist at all. Good taste in such matters cannot abstract from tradition, utility, and the temper of the world. It must make itself an ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... absorbed the victim's mind to such an extent that he thought of nothing but the licking of stamps and mailing of cards to friends—who get so many of them that they are for the most part considered a nuisance and after a hasty glance are quietly dropped in the waste-basket. Many had such an extensive collection of mailing lists that it became necessary to segregate them into divisions; in some cases these last were labeled for classification, "Atlantic ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... said Owen; 'the connection is nothing, absolutely nothing. I believe, poor dear, the attraction was that she had once been attached to my father, and he was too popular a preacher to keep well as a lover. Well, there were we, a couple of orphans, a nuisance to all our kith and kin—nobody with a bit of mercy for us but that queer old coon, Kit Charteris, when she takes us home, treats us like her own children, feels for us as much as the best mother living could; ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a nuisance," muttered Clovis, as he sat in the smoking-room after lunch, talking fitfully to Jane Martlet in the intervals of putting together the materials of a cocktail, which he had irreverently patented under ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... instances occur where traps are placed as close to the fixtures they serve as they might be, and yet a very short length of untrapped pipe, when fouled, will sometimes smell dreadfully. A set bowl with trap two feet away may become in time a great nuisance if not properly used. A case in point where the fixture was used both as a bowl and a urinal was in a few months exceedingly offensive—a fact largely (though not wholly) due to its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... selling place is not only a declared nuisance, but a constitutional outlaw. And in the case from Pennsylvania where a private individual had abated a nuisance, the court held: "We consider it also well settled, as is claimed by this defendant, that a common nuisance may be removed, or, in legal language, abated by any individual. Any man, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... necessity for coaling stations in the Eastern seas. Taking Mauritius with its large French population, the Cape with its conflicting elements, and Hongkong, Singapore, and Penang with their vast Chinese populations, who may be with or against us, but who are at any time a nuisance, I would select such places where no temptation would induce colonists to come, and I would use them as maritime fortresses. For instance, the only good coaling place between Suez and Adelaide would be in the Chagos group, which contain a beautiful harbour at San ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... ladder, I found them combining over a little bottle, and they informed me plaintively that they had been taking medicinal brandy and snow instead of measurements,—a very necessary precaution, for anyone to whom brandy is not a greater nuisance than utter cold. We found the dimensions of the bottom of the pit, i.e. of the field of snow on which we stood, to be 31-1/2 feet by 21; but we were unable to form any idea of the depth of the snow, beyond the fact that 'up to ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... Quincey, in one of his essays, reports the case of an officer holding the rank of lieutenant- colonel who could not tolerate a breakfast without muffins. But he suffered agonies of indigestion. "He would stand the nuisance no longer, but yet, being a just man, he would give Nature one final chance of reforming her dyspeptic atrocities. Muffins therefore being laid at one angle of the table and pistols at the other, with rigid equity the Colonel awaited the ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... of November came the Queen of the Fleet, despatched several weeks before to fetch along the troops "sidetracked" at Honolulu, just as the commanding general and his chief surgeon were in consultation as to what on earth to do with Zenobia Perkins—the woman had become a public nuisance. ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious. I speak of total depravity, and one says all that is written on the subject is deep raving. I have committed my self-respect by talking with such a person. I should like to commit him, but cannot, because he is a nuisance. Or I speak of geological convulsions, and he asks me what was the cosine of Noah's ark; also, whether the Deluge was not a deal huger than any ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have been dragged up under a cloud; made the scape-goat. How often in the course of your hypocritical days have you wished me dead? You hear I've a cough; but I cannot promise you it's a churchyard one. I'm a nuisance; but I suppose I'm not responsible for my existence, Mrs. Rowe. I ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... for? They perform no useful function; they have no value. They are but a trap for tonsilitis and quinsy. And what is the appendix for? It has no value. Its sole interest is to lie and wait for stray grape-seeds and breed trouble. What is his beard for? It is just a nuisance. All nations persecute it with the razor. Nature, however, always keeps him supplied with it, instead of putting it on his head, where it ought to be. You seldom see a man bald-headed on his chin, but on his head. A man wants to keep his hair. It is a graceful ornament, a comfort, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... represent. It is not like the life of an ordinary schoolmaster, still less like that of an ordinary clergyman. Much of the domestic and cooking department I may manage, of course, to superintend. I would much rather do this than have the nuisance of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Polezhaevs at second-hand, without the genius, are insufferable beings. Andrei Ivanovitch went on living at his aunt's; he did not seem to find the bread of charity bitter, notwithstanding the proverb. Visitors to the house found him a mortal nuisance. He would sit at the piano (a piano, too, had been installed at Tatyana Borissovna's) and begin strumming 'The Swift Sledge' with one finger; he would strike some chords, tap on the keys, and for hours together he would howl Varlamov's songs, 'The Solitary Pine,' or 'No, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... nuisance!' exclaimed Alan, as he and Marjorie stood a moment on the doorstep before he started off on his father's mission. 'Why should father have ordered the horses just to-day? We can't make an excuse either, for we are all supposed to be keen on riding. If only the horses could go ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... she takes no pains to search out a trespass, which, by the mere act of seeking to evade public display in the streets of the university, already tends to limit itself; and which, besides, from its costliness, can never become a prominent nuisance. This I mention as illustrating the spirit of her legislation; and, even in this case, the reader must carry along with him the peculiar distinction which I have pressed with regard to English universities, in the existence of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... it is very often not the laugh of incredulity; it is a mode of distorting the sense of inferiority into a sense of superiority, or a mimicry of superiority interposed between the laugher and his feeling of inferiority. Two persons in conversation {253} agreed that it was often a nuisance not to be able to lay hands on a bit of paper to mark the place in a book, every bit of paper on the table was sure to contain something not to be spared. I very quietly said that I always had a stock of bookmarkers ready cut, with a proper place ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Ju," she said gayly. "It sounds suspiciously like unimposing me, rather than the elegant young lady of the three-room apartment. The only thing I'm afraid of is that she'll get tired of her bargain before the week is out. I may be an awful nuisance with my ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... draw such music from the cheapest violin that the world is astonished. However is that any reason why the great violinist should choose to play on a poor violin; or should one say nothing of the smoke nuisance in Chicago because more light and heat penetrate its murky atmosphere than are to be found in cities only a few miles farther north? The truth is, we must regard the bad spelling nuisance, the bad grammar nuisance, the inartistic and rambling language nuisance, precisely as we would the smoke nuisance, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... shall flow away, and nothing be left of me but a rivulet. I eat oranges all day long. We have a basket full put by our bedsides at night, and I never leave one by breakfast time if I can help it. It is a horrid nuisance being so sick at sea. I really thought in the Bay of Biscay that I should make a fool of myself and wish I was at home again. I don't like this place much, one is so stewed; there is not a shadow, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... mustn't go, Willis. You mustn't indeed! I shouldn't know what to do with that tipsy nuisance. Ah, ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... unjust heaven had possessed the secret admiration and love of men. He didn't go so far as love but he could not deny to himself that his feeling toward Lingard was secretly friendly and—well, appreciative. Mr. Travers sat up suddenly. What a horrible nuisance, thought d'Alcacer, fixing his eyes on the tips of his shoes with the hope that perhaps the other would lie down again. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... was only too likely to win her in the end, and not undeservedly, Gerrard knew his friend's good points as few others did, and he did not deceive himself as to his chances of success. At this point he broke off his musings abruptly, and went to bed. Bob was not only superfluous, but a positive nuisance. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... jaw drop for the moment.—He had heard of John Pereira's death two years ago, and welcomed the news on her account, since, if report said true, that dashing cavalry officer had taken to evil courses. Gambling and liquor made him a nuisance, not to say disgrace to his regiment, and how much greater a one to his wife. Poor thing, she must have had a lot to endure and that of the most sordid! It wasn't nice to think about. Clearly Pereira's ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... has remained faithful to Ed Wetherford's memory all these years—that is conceded. Doesn't that argue some unusual quality? How many women do we know who are capable of such loyalty? Come, now! Lize is a rough piece of goods, I'll admit, and her fly-bit lunch-counter was a public nuisance; but she had the courage to send her girl away to be educated, denying herself the joy of seeing her develop by her side. We mustn't permit our prejudices to run away ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... barbed wire has been placed, and where such barbed wire may probably be injurious to persons or animals lawfully using the highway, the local authority may require the occupier of the land to abate the nuisance by serving notice in writing upon him. If the occupier fails to do so within the specified time, the local authority may apply to a court of summary jurisdiction, and such court, if satisfied that the barbed wire is a nuisance, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Isabelle peevishly, "don't you grow to be one of those tiresome women who think the whole world is interested in a baby's tooth! I certainly do not echo your wish. I think children are a nuisance." ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... for some time," the Rooster told Henrietta Hen. "Mrs. Green has put old Spot out of the farmhouse. And Farmer Green intends to put him off the farm. Everyone agrees that he's a nuisance. It's a wonder the folks in the Green family have kept him all ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... started in on that lay he never let me finish; said all right, he'd go just as soon as he'd balanced the books. Then, by gad, it was all I could do to get him to stay. He is the most independent damn man I ever met. Says he knows he's a drunkard and nuisance one week out of four, and don't wonder I want to discharge him. Discharge him? I couldn't get along without him! Any time he wants a better job and plenty of society all he's got to do is go to Prescott. Discharge him! All I'm afraid of is ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... principle of the old Roman, as we can compass. This is the remedy; at least till common sense will condescend to the better expedient of pulling down and laying open all these retreats of misery and vice; the disgrace and the nuisance of London, and not less a standing inhumanity to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... was natural enough though perhaps not noble. "These western cocks have crowed loudly," we said; "too loudly for the comfort of those who live after all at no such great distance from them. It is well that their combs should be clipped. Cocks who crow so very loudly are a nuisance. It might have gone so far that the clipping would become a work necessarily to be done from without. But it is ten times better for all parties that it should be done from within; and as the cocks are now clipping their own combs, in God's name let them do it, and the whole world ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... told Rip. "The base is comfortable and we only work a two hour shift out of each ten. We've had a plague of silly dillies recently. They got into one man's suit while we were working, but mostly they're just a nuisance." ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... of the fact that I find my hair a terrible nuisance, with no Hortense to struggle with it every morning. As you know, it's as thick as a rope and as long as my arm. I begrudge the time it takes to look after it, and such a thing as a good shampoo is an event to be approached with trepidation and prepared for ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... said Mr. Jelliffe, as the girl left the room. "I have not yet decided, Doctor, whether that young female is an unmitigated nuisance or a pearl of great price. At any rate we ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... mere fiction of Buzzby's brain. It was a veritable fact. Notwithstanding the extreme cold of this inhospitable climate, the rats in the ship increased to such a degree that at last they became a perfect nuisance. Nothing was safe from their attacks—whether substances were edible or not, they were gnawed through and ruined—and their impudence, which seemed to increase with their numbers, at last exceeded all belief. They swarmed ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of no manner of use, but, on the contrary, a great nuisance, for, when it is introduced, a disagreeable stiffness and disarrangement ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... he took command with a firm hand, organised the whole male population into a warlike garrison, built barricades across the streets, planted cannon in commanding positions, cleared the town of flocks and herds, which were breeding a nuisance, sent them to the open country with a cattle guard, and prepared not only to defend the capital, but to carry war into the enemy's country. In short, he breathed into the people much of his own energy, and soon ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... contact, as it were. He had known, fortunately, many virtuous gentlewomen, but it now appeared to him that in his relations with them (especially when they were unmarried) he had been looking at pictures under glass. He perceived at present what a nuisance the glass had been—how it perverted and interfered, how it caught the reflection of other objects and kept you walking from side to side. He had no need to ask himself whether Charlotte and Gertrude, and Lizzie Acton, were in the right light; they were always in the right light. He ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... papers, Hans, but I think the whole thing stupid nonsense. What does it matter to any one what Poland wants? What a nuisance all these old boring political things are! They always spoiled our happiness since the beginning—and now if it wasn't for them we could have a glorious time here together. I would love managing to come ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... household were entirely free from the fuss of being too much looked after. The fact is that, while the process of looking after may be an occasional treat for the guardians, to the children it is always an unmitigated nuisance. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... phrase about the almighty dollar is that it is an almighty phrase, and therefore an almighty nuisance. I mean that it is made to explain everything, and to explain everything much too well; that is, much too easily. It does not really help people to understand a foreign country; but it gives them the fatal illusion that they do understand it. Dollars stood for America as frogs stood for ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... stall bordered on the Market, and his panacea for all the evils the Slave Market brought with it was the London School Board. "Why don't the officers come down and collar some o' them youngsters, sir?" Why, indeed? At present the Slave Market is undoubtedly a nuisance; but there is no reason why, under proper police supervision, it should not become a local convenience. The ways of East London differ in all respects from those of the West, and Servants' Registries would not pay. Masters and servants are alike too poor to advertise; and there seems to ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... immediately he became aware of this, he sought and made acquaintances. Not only in my house but everywhere we became so accustomed to him that he grew to be indispensable. In spite of his rude exterior, even the children liked him, without ever proving a nuisance to him; for, notwithstanding all their friendly passages together, they always retained a certain timorous awe of him, which secured him against all over-familiarity. You have to-day had an example of the way in which he wins their hearts by his ready skill in various things. We ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... mutual compact, we talked little in the cars. A communicative friend is the greatest nuisance to have at one's side during a railroad-journey, especially if his conversation is stimulating and in. itself agreeable. "A fast train and a 'slow' neighbor," is my motto. Many times, when I have got upon the cars, expecting to be magnetized into an hour or two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... to be funny to Mr. and Mrs. Gainsborough, but now he had developed into a nuisance. To escape him, they resolved to turn the pretty compliment of King George into a genuine request. They packed up and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... the Saint Werner's men would be coming soon to condole with him. What a nuisance it would be! He got up and sported the door. This action recalled in all their intensity his bitterest and angriest feelings, and he flung the door open again, and threw himself full length on the sofa, until a sort ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... that he was a wearisome hypochondriac. He was really much too well-bred to be a nuisance. He had an eye for the small weaknesses of humanity. But it was a good-natured eye. He made a restful, easy, pleasant companion for the hours between dinner and bedtime. We spent three evenings together, and then I had to leave Naples ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... these small-fry craft were an intolerable nuisance. We were running chute after chute,—a new world to me,—and if there was a particularly cramped place in a chute, we would be pretty sure to meet a broad-horn there; and if he failed to be there, we would find him in a still worse locality, namely, the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cold some dirty drops of water and some black sticky stuff. If you are just an ordinary person, you won't pay any attention to this because there is only a little of it and because what you are after is the coke and gas. You regard the nasty, smelly mess that comes in between as merely a nuisance because it clogs up and spoils your nice, ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... scrub to the water that I found on the 14th instant; from thence I changed to 301 degrees 30 minutes for nine miles, and then to 275 degrees, and at two miles camped at the ponds I had discovered on the 16th. Native smoke all around us. The day has been very hot, and the flies a perfect nuisance. Wind, south-east. ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... reimbursed. He also persuaded the Assembly of Pennsylvania to provide the younger officers of the regiment with horses and stores for the campaign, although to Washington, as we know, all this accumulation of provisions for such an expedition seemed no better than a nuisance. Franklin, too, had his fears, and even went so far as to caution Braddock against the ambuscades of the Indians. Braddock smiled at his ignorance, and replied: "These savages may indeed be a formidable ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... do something to abate the nuisance of which I complain," said Confucius. "Can't we adopt a house rule that poets must not be inspired between the hours of 11 A.M. and 5 P.M., or in the evening after eight; that any poet discovered using more than five arm-chairs in the composition ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... measure of cathedrals and interpret to the world the meaning of brainy men! Unfortunately, the "critic fly" is confined to no one nation—is what might be called, in vigorous Texanese, an all-pervading dam-nuisance. Mounted upon a mole, pimple or other cutaneous imperfection of an intellectual colossus, it complacently smooths its wings and explains, with a patronizing air, that the big 'un isn't half bad; but sagely adds that had it been ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the instant reply. "Should you do that you would cause no end of interference and make yourself a nuisance to everybody. The rule is that after you have called a station three times at two-minute intervals you must stop for a quarter of an hour before you call again. If you happened to be calling a fleet of ships it is desirable to alter your tune rather than keep repeating the summons in the same key. ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... guns, Making a nuisance of the blessed air, Child-crying bellmen, children in despair, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... but civilization has not yet made him a drunkard. American drinking-shops, or "saloons," as they call them, are all over the place, except in certain streets in Binondo, where they have been prohibited, as a public nuisance, since April 1, 1901. It was ascertained at the time of the American occupation that there were 2,206 native shops in Manila where drinks were sold, yet no native was ever seen drunk. This number was compulsorily reduced to 400 for a native population ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... great nuisance, I think. How tired you get of the regular routine of the morning toilet; always the same, never any variety. Why are we not born, like dogs, with nice cosy rugs all over us, so that we should just have to get out of bed in the morning, shake ourselves, and be ready at once to go down to breakfast ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... to the foreshore, and not five yards from the Mayor's. On the street side one window of the Custom House raked the Mayor's porch; in the rear another and smaller window overlooked his garden, and this might have been a nuisance had the Collector of Customs, Mr. Pennefather, been a less considerate neighbour. But no one minded Mr. Pennefather, a little, round, self-depreciating official who, before coming to Troy, had served as clerk in the Custom House at Penzance, and so, as you might say, had learnt his ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... goes up to that institution, gets his pass, and returns to civil life, so they tell me, with a dangerous knowledge that he is a suckling Von Moltke, and may apply his learning when occasion offers. Given trouble, that man will be a nuisance, because he is a hideously versatile American, to begin with, as cock-sure of himself as a man can be, and with all the racial disregard for human life to back him, through ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... the door and hide," replied Polly inhospitably. "There are times when company is a nuisance,—I don't mean you, Molly, for you are head housekeeper, and I couldn't get along without you. But come, we'll go up and put our room in order, while we are waiting for her to get out ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... may be summed up under two heads: (a) there wasn't any answer; (b) it was all an unmitigated nuisance. And so thinking, divided between despair and disgust, Mr. Staff gave the problem up against his arrival on board the steamship. There remained to him a single gleam of hope: a note of explanation had ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... establishment for the reception of the most thoroughly incurable class of maniacs, while on the other side is a family who make their living by piano, violin, and cornet performances, at private houses. I have asked the landlord to abate the nuisance by adding another brick to the thickness of the walls on each side; but he writes to me, giving his address at the Bankruptcy Court, to explain that the houses are not so constructed as to bear the extra weight, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... me to-night? Don't let me be a nuisance, but do come if you have nothing to do. I ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... particular happening. Sir John bought the six old houses like ours opposite, and gave twice as much for them as they were worth, because some one was going to build an Institution there, which might very likely prove to be a nuisance. ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... impatiently, "I wish I was a gypsy, free and happy, to wander about all day long, singing in the sunshine, to sleep at night under the waving trees, to tell fortunes, and wear a pretty scarlet cloak, and never know, when I got up in the morning, where I would lie down at night. It's nothing but a nuisance, and a trouble, and a bother, being rich, and dressing for dinner, and going to the opera and two or three parties of a night, and being obliged to talk and walk and eat and sleep by line and ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... make the weak ones lead them—then, for Heaven's sake, let this dear old all-abused world keep on its course without these outcries and tearings of hair, and don't be for ever goading the Karls and other trodden-down creatures till they get their carbines in order (very rationally) to abate the nuisance—when you make the man a long speech against some enormity he is about to commit, and adjure and beseech and so forth, till he throws down the aforesaid carbine, falls on his knees, and lets the Frederic ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Court-rule—corresponded to the system of serfdom. Representative government corresponds to capital-rule. Both, however, are class-rule. But in a society where the distinction between capitalist and labourer has disappeared, there is no need of such a government; it would be an anachronism, a nuisance."[66] If Social-Democrats were to tell him they know this at least as well as he does, Kropotkine would reply that possibly they do, but that then they will not draw a logical conclusion from these premises. He, Kropotkine, is your ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... admirer too? This promises to become complicated, not to say a nuisance,' said the old man; but he still looked amused, for he was a very kindly man, and Stella's quiet, ladylike manners, as well as her beauty, ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... a week. The stable floor should be kept perfectly level. Do not make the horse stand in a strained, unnatural position. The stall should be large enough for him to move around—at least six feet wide. Narrow stalls are a nuisance ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... touched them. From the extremest point Of elevation down into the abyss, His wrath is busy and His frown is felt. The rocks fall headlong and the valleys rise, The rivers die into offensive pools, And, charged with putrid verdure, breathe a gross And mortal nuisance into all the air. What solid was, by transformation strange Grows fluid, and the fixed and rooted earth Tormented into billows, heaves and swells, Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs And ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... enquiries, had established her weeding apparatus at a bed near the yew-hedge. She heard the voices raised in discussion, and, catching words here and there, felt that if these were the topics that occupied her charges, Isabel need not have inflicted upon her the abominable nuisance of poking in her nose where it was not wanted. Thus did Miss Coppinger summarise the duties of a chaperon; but it must be remembered that she had never been broken to the work, and in any case she had been out of harness ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... return for which they were bound to "provide four hundred birds" whenever a king was crowned, "and an equal number when the queen made her first entry into her good town of Paris." The goldsmiths and money-changers, however, finding that this became a nuisance, and that it injured their trade, tried to get it abolished. They applied to the authorities to protect their rights, urging that the approaches to their shops, the rents of which they paid regularly, were continually obstructed by a ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... edge, and Fritz seemed to know it, because he never gave us an hour's rest. Our reputation as machine gunners was at stake; we tried various ruses to locate and put this gun out of action, but each one proved to be a failure, and Fritz became a worse nuisance than ever. He was getting fresher and more careless every day, took all kinds of liberties, with us,—thought he ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... youngest and probably the least in requisition, he was always "Johnny on the spot" before any of the Toms. To solve this dilemma which was first considered a joke but later developed into an unmitigated nuisance, the chief operator eventually said to Moran, "Say, ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... centimetre long, was very fond of sweet things. According to the Malays, if irritated it is able to sting painfully, but in spite of its formidable appearance it is timid and easily turned away, so for a long time I put up with its activities, though gradually these ants got to be a nuisance by walking into my cup, which they sometimes filled, or into my drinking-water. Another species, much smaller, which also was fond of sugar, pretended to be dead when discovered. One day at ten o'clock in the morning, I observed two of the big ants, which ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... you build?" said he. "A town house is a nuisance. If I could induce my wife to take the children to the country to live, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... satisfaction first, or the Vice-Roy shall know how he's serv'd by drunken Officers, that are a Nuisance to a ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... probably one of the very oldest, if not actually quite the oldest, of domesticated plants—that it has all but lost the original habit of producing seeds. This is a common effect of cultivation on fruits, and it is of course deliberately aimed at by horticulturists, as the seeds are generally a nuisance, regarded from the point of view of the eater, and their absence improves the fruit, as long as one can manage to get along somehow without them. In the pretty little Tangierine oranges (so ingeniously corrupted by fruiterers into mandarins) the seeds have almost been cultivated out; in the best ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen |
