"Peevish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blasted country he'd git up for," he reported circumstantially to the clerk. "He told me to tell you to go plumb to hell, an' that if any one else come poundin' 'round thar to-night, he'd take a pot shot at 'em through the door. 'Fifteen' seemed a bit peevish, sir, an' I reckoned if he was riled up much more, he might git rambunctious; his language ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... this, now that—now disappointed and peevish because all is not exactly as I had pictured it, and now suddenly discovering that the reality is far more beautiful than I had imagined it. Oh, Helstone! I shall never love any place ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Freddie Firefly. "Then it's time for me to be moving along. For I never stay where I'm not welcome." And he flitted away, feeling somewhat peevish—and all the more determined to get the news of the discovered secret to Mr. Crow ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the temper, the digestion, the mental quickness, and even the morals of children. The child who gets enough sleep is the one who is bright and quick mentally, who grows normally and well, who eats properly and who is not peevish and irritable. ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... until they went upon the road, however, that Bobby fully realized what a lot of irresponsible, fretful, peevish children he had upon his hands. With the exception of serene Nora McGinnis, every one of the principals was at daggers drawn with all the others, sulking over the least advantage obtained by any one ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... the wife of Socrates, a woman of a peevish and shrewish disposition, the subject of exaggerated gossip in Athens, to the exaltation of the temper of her husband, which it never ruffled. She is quaintly described by an old English writer as "a passing shrewde, curste, and wayward woman, wife ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... easier as my charges and I got better accustomed to each other, became more arduous as their characters unfolded. The name of governess, I soon found, was a mere mockery as applied to me: my pupils had no more notion of obedience than a wild, unbroken colt. The habitual fear of their father's peevish temper, and the dread of the punishments he was wont to inflict when irritated, kept them generally within bounds in his immediate presence. The girls, too, had some fear of their mother's anger; and the boy might occasionally ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... may, Bonaparte's defiant scorn and habits of solitary study grew stronger together. It is asserted that his humor found vent in a preposterous and peevish memorial addressed to the minister of war on the proper training of the pupils in French military schools! He may have written it, but it is almost impossible that it should ever have passed beyond the walls of the school, even, as is claimed, for revision by a former ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... little, and his lean face was as hard and as impassive as ever, and the bright blue eyes shone from it steady and unwinking. Stewart looked up to him with a sort of peevish resentment at the man's confidence and cool poise. It was an odd reversal of their ordinary relations. For the hour the duller villain, the man who was wont to take orders and to refrain from overmuch thought or question, seemed ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... color; and long indulgence of a fretful, peevish temper had drawn down the corners of her mouth, lined her forehead, and left its ugly pencilings here and there over the once pretty face, so that it already began to look old and care-worn. She was ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... from my lips some angry accents fell, Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well, And waters clear, of Reason; and for me Let this my verse the poor atonement be— My verse, which thou to praise wert ever inclined Too highly, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... I repeated in some surprise, thinking to myself that so peevish a creature must certainly ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... glances, puzzled by this pompous and peevish exordium. It did not promise well; it sounded quite unlike Mr. Keith's usually bland address. Perhaps he had not yet breakfasted. "We ought to have waited," they thought. One of the listeners was ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... led my list. There were four or five sunlight-destroying, sky-scraping office buildings in New York and elsewhere; nuisances of every kind that I could think of were put down—the headquarters of the Beef Trust and a few of its sponsors; the editorial offices of the peevish and bilious newspapers, which deny principles and right motives to all save themselves; a regiment of alleged humorists who make jokes about the mother-in-law and other sacred relations of life; an opera-box full of the people who hum every ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... expected to live through it. She probably thought that through that gate she would rejoin Katie. She was very sweet to her husband in those days, very gentle and considerate to the neighbours, to whom she had often been peevish and haughty in old times. Many a one changed their former opinion of her that winter, and her kindness made kindness for her. This neighbour would often help her at the washing-tub, and that would ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... left no legacy, Save that his story teaches:— Content to peevish poverty; Humility to riches. Ye scornful great, ye envious small, Come follow in his track; We all were happier, if we ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from now until tea-time. The nurse of those peevish little Mortons is worn out, for the mother is ill, and can't help her at all, so I promised to amuse the children for an hour after lunch while she takes a nap. Then I have to play a game of halma with old Mr Schute, and help Miss Ranger to dress and ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... getting all the valuables under lock and key, the landlady warmed up the remains of our beefsteak, and fried the cold potatoes in slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to waken the boy, who had come far that day, and was peevish and dazzled by the light. He was no sooner awake than he began to prepare himself for supper by eating galette, unripe pears, and cold potatoes—with, so far as I could judge, positive benefit ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mer. Farewel thou peevish Boy, I can alter my Will too so I can, marry can I; I had left him 20000 Pound after my Death, and he shall see I can find another Executor too. Within this Hour did he say, Gad I'll be with one as soon as he, unless he rides Post to the Devil, and that's ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... an element of good humour and fair play not prevalent among the Gafsa boys; there was no peevish squabbling, and I only saw one fight which was a perfectly correct transaction—nobody interfering with the two combatants who hammered lustily at each other's faces, and at last separated, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... said that when Mrs. Breynton was in the room. Gypsy went down one evening with her mother, to help her carry a bundle of fresh bed-clothing, and she was astonished at the gentleness which had crept into the old withered face and peevish voice. Mrs. Littlejohn called her up to the bed, just as she ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... sch-u-u! up through the box so proud The rocket flared and spluttered. "I said that hat was all too loud!" Her peevish ...
— The Rocket Book • Peter Newell
... both parents in bed, "saving themselves for to-morrow," and was gently rubbing the hot little body of the baby. She kept giving it warm tea she had made of herbs, until soon the threatening jerks were over, the peevish whining ceased, and the child slept peacefully on Grandma's lap. I watched her, fascinated. There was never a bit of faltering, no indecision; everything she did seemed exactly what she ought ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... work-room and the dangerous recreations of the Sunday, to sit and watch by the bed-side of a peevish, uncomfortable sort of an old woman, who was perpetually making demands upon her patience and good-nature, but who really suffered so greatly from her accident, that Lucy's pity and kindness were proof against every thing. The young surgeon went and came—went and came—and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... boorish, bearish; brutal, brusque; stern, harsh, austere; cavalier. taint, sour, crabbed, sharp, short, trenchant, sarcastic, biting, doggish, caustic, virulent, bitter, acrimonious, venomous, contumelious; snarling &c. v.; surly, surly as a bear; perverse; grim, sullen &c. 901a; peevish &c. (irascible) 901. untactful, impolitic, undiplomatic; artless &c. 703; Adv. discourteously &c. adj.; with discourtesy &c. n., with a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... remembered, too often wants that element of hardihood and manliness which is supposed to be the birthright of mountaineers), one cannot help, as a lowlander, hoping that there is a little truth in the threnodes of a certain peevish friend who literally hates a mountain, and justifies his hatred in ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... in the world," he observed, "handed out free of charge, without paying people to bring it into the house when you're peevish." ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... owned now, since the recent death of its master, Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton, by his widow, the sister of the lady with the cat and the embroidery, and mother of many children, for the most part an unattractive brood, peevish and slow-minded like their father. Hester was the bright, particular star in that house, as Stephen ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... looks, that labouring sigh, The peevish offspring of a sickly hour! Nor meanly thus complain of Fortune's power, When the blind Gamester throws a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and peevish," said Jack. "You see he lives a lonely life, and has a narrow vision. Besides, some boys have given him a lot of trouble, and he doesn't know the difference between decent fellows and scamps. We'd better let him alone, ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... the food upon the table) Now, why are you so peevish to everybody? Why don't you be sociable, and take some supper? (Glances at sideboard.) You seem to have taken everything else. Oh, that reminds me. Would you object to loaning me about—four, six—about six of our knives and ...
— Miss Civilization - A Comedy in One Act • Richard Harding Davis
... wrung with pity for the young maimed creature; but the peevish image of the wife was swept away by the more truly tragic image of the husband. Eugenie might try to persuade herself of the possibility of Elsie's recovery; her real instinct denied it. Yet life was not necessarily threatened, it seemed, though certain fatal accidents might end it ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... finds fault with these things? he would be a cynic, he would be white-livered, and would have gall for blood, who was not struck with this graceful, touching evidence of the love her subjects bear her. Who could have the head, even if he had the heart, who could be so cross and peevish, who could be so solemn and perverse, as to say that some of these stories may be simple lies, and all of them might have stronger evidence than they carry with them? Do you think she is displeased at them? Why then should He, the Great Father, who once walked the earth, look sternly on the unavoidable ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... it so, to make me happy. Hence with this peevish virtue, 'tis a cheat; And those who taught it first were hypocrites. Come, these soft tender ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... this particular evening when Sarah had been instructed to put a hot-water bottle in his bed, Henry's tone, in greeting his aunt, had been curt, fretful, peevish, nearly cantankerous. 'Don't worry me!' he had irascibly protested, well knowing that his good aunt was guiltless of the slightest intention to worry him. Here was a problem, an ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... back like the peevish child that she was: "An you come not when I ask you, you may stay!" And ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... day, for which they have no use, by childish amusements, or vitious delights. They act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with rancour, and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home, and malevolent abroad; and, as the outlaws of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to disturb that society, which debars them from its privileges. To live without feeling or exciting sympathy; to be fortunate ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... to your partner at any time during a match; but do not insist on his following them, and do not get peevish if he doesn't. He simply does not agree with you, and he may be ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... favourite had become necessary to the existence of his frivolous master, far more so, indeed, than the wife who was no longer rendered irresistible by novelty; and the only result of her entreaties was a peevish order not to listen to any complaints against those who ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... genuine feeling, which directs the tongue to eloquence, had its effect while she listened to him, and she sometimes put on the looks and gesture of assent—sometimes even spoke the language of conviction; but this the first call of dissipation would change to ill-timed raillery, or peevish remonstrance, at being limited in delights her birth and fortune ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... clad, sleeping in the lazy sun that falls across her narrow doorway, droning out life; now and then, in an hour of wakefulness, muttering some coarse word. And then regard the over-cultured, the wrongly-bred girl; the peevish, dictatorial, selfish, haughty miss of a certain other door-way,—a parlor-way. The womanliness in both would not amount to so much as is in one bright gleam from ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... unconsciousness of them with measurable ignorance. Never having enjoyed the sense of achievement, he was troubled with unsatisfied aspirations that filled him with melancholy and convinced him that he was a born artist. His wife found him selfish, peevish, hankering after change, and prone to believe that he was attacked by dangerous disease when he ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... She then got up, and without vouchsafing a word, took a seat a little way off. So the Indian was left with the same stereotyped smile on his face, like the petrified grimace of a satyr. But when he saw the eyes of the others fixed derisively upon him, he suddenly became cross and peevish. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... some order, and to avoid showing the first sallies of my resentment, which I know you would disapprove; nor does it become your friend to rail. My anger shall be a little more manly, and the plan of my revenge a little deeper laid than in peevish bon-mots. You shall judge of my indignation ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of society! Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her tutelary angel, it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe's hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... what the picture really is. No man is a hero to his own valet. And that is not because a man is not a hero, but because the valet is too close to see the real man. Cecil Rhodes at close quarters was peevish, irritable, and like a big spoilt child. Now at a distance we know him, with all his faults, to have been a great-souled man. Social reformers near at hand are often intolerable bores and religious fanatics frequently a pestilential nuisance. We have to ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... was a man of solemn deportment, had a sullen gravity in his looks, and was considerably learned. He had put on a monastic strictness, and lived abstracted from company. ... He was a dry, cold man, reserved, and peevish; so that none loved him, and few ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... should influence our very stride, and set its mark upon our "daily walk and conversation." It ought to make us so big that we can never speak a mean word, or do a petty and peevish thing. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... one way or the other. This is a turning-point. So far his general health has been remarkably good, and we've just got to set our minds to keeping it good. He must not fret if we can help it. If he frets, instead of developing into the sane, manly fellow he should, he may turn peevish, Lady Calmady, and grow up a morbid, neurotic lad, the victim of all manner of brain-sick fancies—become envious, spiteful, a misery to others ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and the light, falling dubiously among the woody places, gave a melancholy tone to the scene well calculated to foster any lurking feeling of awe or superstition. The night hawk, wheeling about in the highest regions of the air, emitted his peevish, boding cry. The woodpecker gave a lonely tap now and then on some hollow tree, and the firebird[1] streamed by them with ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... nephew. At the same time, in a merry moment, he would load down his table with all that kitchen and cellar could provide, for the reflection of his friends. Thus he oscillated continuously between two extremes; but the power which swung the pendulum was always the aural malady. He grew peevish and capricious towards his best friends, rude, even brutal at times in his treatment of them; only in the next moment to overwhelm them most pathetically with attentions. Till the end of his life ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... provincial capital, that the seat of government should not be at the London of General Simcoe. He was not favorable to York. A muddy, marshy, unhealthy spot, it was unfitted for a city. Lord Dorchester, peevish from age, was, to some extent, under the influence of the Kingston merchants, and was inclined, by a feeling of gratitude, to grant the wishes of Commodore Bouchette, who resided at Kingston, with his family, and to whom Lord Dorchester was ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... the poker, but I could not but notice the skilful and almost noiseless manner in which he manipulated the coals. Then he looked round for a match, and lighted a candle on the mantelpiece, in spite of a peevish ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Strange, peevish, exacting! One would think that one pleased him For his money... Day and night I'm on all fours, At the least sign I'm silent; It is just as if I sang! But no, if I sang, His contempt he'd have to modify. ...
— The Tales of Hoffmann - Les contes d'Hoffmann • Book By Jules Barbier; Music By J. Offenbach
... inspire confidence, and courage. Many a young man has taken highest honors in medical school only to fail in practice because he could not handle people successfully, or because he lacked the courage to face the constant reiteration of complaints and suffering by his patients. Sick people are selfish, peevish, whimsical, and babyish. It takes tact, patience, understanding, and good nature ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... didn't notice for a while that Vee was conductin' a perfectly good monologue. That's what it was, though. Hardly a word out of our stately passenger. She sits there as stiff as if she was crated, starin' cold and stony straight ahead, and that peevish flush still showin' on her cheekbones. Why, you'd most think we had her under arrest instead of doin' her a favor. And when I finally swings into the Garvey driveway and pulls up under the porte cochere she untangles herself from the brake lever ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... than the look of sadness or neglect which motherless children sometimes wear. It was of a wayward temper grown more wayward still for want of a mother's firm and gentle rule. One could not doubt that peevish words and angry retorts fell very naturally from those pale lips. She looked like one who needed to be treated with patience and loving forbearance, and who failed to meet either. And, indeed, ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... dispassionate opinion," Sarah pronounced, "and I don't want any peevish remarks from you, Roger Kendrick. You're jealous because you let Mr. White get in ahead of you and secure Jimmy. It was only three days ago that we agreed he should go into the City. He was perfectly sweet about it, too. He was playing for the M.C.C. ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... then, but I heard no sound till I put my ear down, and caught the peevish comment: "This is crawling. . . ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... wonder that he felt upset. And he felt quite peevish, too, as he picked himself up and looked about him to ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey
... grieving that God should be so facile to man, was to set straiter limits to obedience than God had set, to enslave the dignity of Man, to put a garrison upon his neck of empty and over-dignified precepts: and we shall read our Saviour never more grieved and troubled than to meet with such a peevish madness among men against their own freedom. How can we expect him to be less offended with us, when much of the same folly shall be found yet remaining where it least ought, to the perishing of ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... passed me to the hands of Mme. Levicq—that was the name of my governess. The next day my mother left me and I repeated my disturbance, crying, stamping my feet, and calling to mother Catharine and Bastien. (To tell the truth, Jerome and Matthieu were two big lubbers [rougeots] very peevish and coarse-mannered, which I could not endure.) Madame put a book into my hands and wished to have me repeat after her; I threw the book at her head. Then, rightly enough, in despair she placed me where I could see the cottage in the midst of the ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... father's knee, is, and ever will be, a living, breathing present to me. In stifled sobs, I tried to tell my little tale of grief, and was about to bury my tear-stained face upon his shoulder, when he raised his eyes impatiently, and brushed away, with a peevish gesture, one of my salt tears that lay appealingly upon the smooth broadcloth covering of his arm: he chided me for crying so very immoderately, saying, he hated "little girls that cried," and drawing a silver piece from his ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... trust me; she is peevish, sullen, froward, Proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty; Neither regarding that she is my child, 70 Nor fearing me as if I were her father: And, may I say to thee, this pride of hers, Upon advice, hath drawn ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... write to you to please myself. I hear you are melancholy, because you have a bad head and deaf ears. These are two misfortunes I have laboured under these many years, and yet never was peevish with either myself or the world. Have I more philosophy and resolution than you? Or am I so stupid that I do not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... sensitive, a little vibrant perhaps sometimes, and so tense as to become attenuated, but of a most rare and wistful beauty. His humor which is his weakest point is a thing of almost feminine perceptions but quaintly pliable, as the sense of humor in women often is, to an odd strain of peevish extravagance. ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... his wits. Gayangos was sent back to Spain posthaste. But, alack! he found a library swept and garnished; no trace of the volume he had once held there in his hand, and on the face of his friend the librarian only a frank and peevish wonder that anybody should tease him with questions ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Christian's offence against me and mine? Born a Mankesman—bred and nursed in the island—he broke the laws under which he lived, and died for the breach of them, after the fair trial which they allowed.—Methinks, Margaret, we have enough of this peevish and foolish magistrate—I ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... seemed to have grown, thought the Major, in contact with the theatrical world when, on its return, it filled the summer night with sound, and made the one-eyed piebald cat who lived at The Retreat foreclose an interview with a peevish friend acrimoniously. Perhaps it was only because the laughter and the jests, the good-nights mixed with echoes of "Charley's Aunt," and reminders of appointments for the morrow, broke in so suddenly on a long seclusion that the Major seemed to hear so ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... would be both more wholesomely and happily employed if they were going out to farm-work for the day. But they are gentlemen's sons, and so must enter what are called the liberal professions, to retire at the age of sixty with a poor digestion, a peevish wife, and a family of impossible children. But it is only in such inconsequent moments that I allow myself to think thus slightingly of Latin Prose. It is a valuable accomplishment, and, when I have repaired the breaches ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... courtly now, this is sweete, this plaine, this is familiar, but by the Court of France, our peevish dames are so proud, so precise, so coy, so disdainfull, and so subtill, as the Pomonian Serpent, mort dieu the Puncke of Babylon ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... didn't stop to think that probably all of them had use for their tails. No, Sir, he didn't think of that. Everybody else had a tail, and he hadn't. He felt that it was a disgrace that he, the king, should have no tail. He brooded over it so much that he lost his appetite and grew cross and peevish. ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... upon his hands, and he pored, with a fiery unquiet eye, over a paper which I took to be a commission, and which, at all events, bore the signature of a monarch. He muttered to himself, as did the first seaman whom I saw in the hold, some low peevish syllables of a foreign tongue, and although the speaker was close at my elbow, his voice seemed to reach my ears from the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... think up tortures. It was really the only thing in which he was clever. And here again was an instance of practice making perfect, for Wainwright had done little else since his kindergarten days than to think up trials for those who would not bow to his peevish will. He seemed to be gifted in finding out exactly what would be the finest kind of torture for any given soul who happened to be his victim. He had the mind of Nero and the spirit of a mean little beast. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... unseasonable snuggle of sable furs and flaming red hair a small, peevish face peered forth at her ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell ...
— The Madman • Kahlil Gibran
... whatever vicious impotence women are under, it is acquired, not natural; nor derived from any illiberality of God's, but from the ill-managery of his bounty. Let them not charge God foolishly, or think that by making them women, he necessitated them to be proud or wanton, vain or peevish; since it is manifest he made them to better purpose; was not partial to the other sex; but that having, as the prophet speaks, "abundance of spirit," he equally dispensed it, and gave the feeblest woman as large and capacious a soul as that of the greatest hero. Nay, give me leave to say ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... never mean to tell me that you have allowed all this to go on without inquiry into Mr. Lydgate's prospects?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, opening her eyes with wider gravity at her brother, who was in his peevish warehouse humor. "Think of this girl brought up in luxury—in too worldly a way, I am sorry to say—what will she do on a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... countenance, therefore, will become pale; its look sickly and aged; the flesh soft and flabby; the limbs emaciated; the belly, in some cases, large, in others, shrunk; and the evacuations fetid and unnatural; and in a very few weeks, the blooming healthy child will be changed into the pale, sickly, peevish, wasted creature, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... "Tut, don't be peevish," said Adrian. "Sit up, and tie your table-napkin round your neck, and try to be polite when the kind gentleman speaks to you. I did order tea. But tea at Sampaolo is regarded in the light of a pharmaceutical preparation. Pia said she thought I might be able to ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... after candle-light. And she moved restlessly about her chamber and listened and sighed for the return of his Lordship. Surely the silence was more pronounced than usual; it became ominous to her, and she spoke out quickly in a voice that was peevish: ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... McClellanism was and is propitious to general disorder, and how Mr. Lincoln improves is exemplified above. Independent men, independent Senators and Representatives who approach Mr. Lincoln, find him peevish, irritable, intractable to all patriots. All these are criteria of a lofty mind and character. Weed, Seward, Harris, Blair, and such ones alone, are ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Davy was quite alarmed at seeing that a broad leathern belt about his waist was stuck full of old-fashioned knives and pistols. Davy was about to retreat quickly from the shop, when the old man looked up, and said, in a peevish voice:— ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... catastrophe. It remains to be examined, whether comedy will allow pictures larger than the life, that this strength of the strokes may make a deeper impression upon the mind of the spectators; that is, if a poet may make a covetous man more covetous, and a peevish man more impertinent, and more troublesome than he really is. To which I answer, that this was the practice of Plautus, whose aim was to please the people, but that Terence, who wrote for gentlemen, confined himself within the compass of nature, and represented ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Joseph Hall, a painful preacher and solid divine of Puritan tendencies, declares that he prefers good-nature before grace in the election of a wife; because, saith he, "it will be a hard Task, where the Nature is peevish and froward, for Grace to make an entire Conquest whilst Life lasteth." An opinion apparently entertained by many modern ecclesiastics, and one which may be considered very encouraging to those young ladies of the politer circles who have a fancy for marrying bishops and other fashionable ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hungry," spoke a high and peevish voice, "feed her. If she need money, give it to her. But do ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... time that a spell of the set smile and the barren labours had brought me near to breaking point, Fanny would be frequently tearful and desperately peevish from her boredom, and from poor health; for I fancy she was in little better case than I as regards the penalties of a faulty and inadequate dietary, combined with long confinement within doors. These conditions would produce in me a day or two (and a sleepless night or two) of black, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... she married Jack Drayton. The afternoon we rehearsed for the wedding I looked at her, before we pranced down the aisle and endured the endless silly giggles of the bridesmaids, and the usher louts who would fall out of step, and grew more peevish by the minute. I looked her over then, and I said to myself: "You feeble paranoiac, imagine that girl tying up with you." Well, I couldn't very well imagine it, although I tried. But I was extremely noisy, and I heard two or three of the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... obstinate, passionate, quarrelsome, raging, saucy, tantalizing, uncomfortable, vexatious, abominable, bitter, captious, disagreeable, execrable, fierce, grating, gross, hasty, malicious, nefarious, obstreperous, peevish, restless, savage, tart, unpleasant, violent, waspish, worrying, acrimonious, blustering, careless, discontented, fretful, growling, hateful, inattentive, malignant, noisy, odious, perverse, rigid, severe, teasing, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... are enough to provoke a saint!" replied a peevish voice from the furthest corner of the room. "You and your providences are more than I can stand. What do you mean this time, I should like to know? the picnic set for to-day, and every soul in the village lottin' on goin', 'xcept ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... fire. His tyrannous soul wanted nothing but the dead, the merest plaything of his will. And this girl, by the boldness of her first move, had forced him to come. The scholar had drawn the master along. The peevish pedant treated the matter as he would have treated a rebellion at school. His lewd severities, his coolly selfish pursuit of a cruel pleasure, blighted the unhappy girl, who now had nothing left her ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... was over, but when Arthur went quietly away the boys soon followed. Graeme would fain have stayed to speak a few words to her father, on this first night of his return. He was sitting gazing into the fire, with a face so grave that his daughter's heart ached for his loneliness. But a peevish voice from the cradle admonished her that she must to her task again, and so with a quiet "good-night, papa," she took her little sister in her arms. Up-stairs she went, murmuring tender words to her "wee birdie," her "bonny lammie," her "little gentle dove," more ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... been getting more and more peevish. To be sure, for two weeks, daily, his shoulders had been washed and rubbed and massaged and lotioned and parboiled and anointed and fomented and capsicon-plastered, till his very soul was sensitive and a suspicion was ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... on hearing these spiteful and silly speeches, born of an envy that now rushed, peevish and drivelling, to avenge the past, would have felt the blood mount to their foreheads; others would have wept; some would have undergone spasms of anger; but Modeste smiled, as we smile at the theatre while watching ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... where blocks and ropes were made. George, strong and sturdy, had a tender mind, And was to Isaac pitiful and kind; A very father, till his art was gain'd, And then a friend unwearied he remain'd; He saw his brother was of spirit low, His temper peevish, and his motions slow; Not fit to bustle in a world, or make Friends to his fortune for his merit's sake; But the kind sailor could not boast the art Of looking deeply in the human heart; Else had he seen that this weak brother knew What men to court—what objects to pursue; That he to distant ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... then the two cousins parted. It did not put Jasper Jay in any better humor to hear Mr. Crow's hoarse haw-haw echoing across the valley. Of course, Jasper did not know what he was laughing at. But that only served to make the blue-coated scamp all the more peevish. ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... you are ready to take up reports and to judge so rashly as you do, I cannot but conclude you are some peevish or melancholy man, not fit to be discoursed with; ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... besides the Crowds of English Gentlemen, that are possess'd of Employments, Commissions, Pensions, and Preferments here, she makes near two Millions by the Trade with Ireland; which I know is more than she gains from the rest of the World. I am not peevish, or at least so peevish, as I used to be, when I had vile Flesh and Blood about me; but these are plain confest honest Truths, and if that generous large thoughted Nation, will consider them calmly ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... Washington was assembled around the tea-table at Locust Hill. The evening passed very cheerily. The commodore, Mrs. Waugh, Marian and Thurston, were all in excellent spirits. And Thurston, out of pure good nature, sought to cheer and enliven the pretty, peevish bride, Jacquelina, who, out of caprice, affected a pleasure in his attentions that she was very far from feeling. This gave so much umbrage to Dr. Grimshaw that Mrs. Waugh really feared some unpleasant demonstration from the grim bridegroom, and seized ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... feed every hobo that comes through, whether he's got any money or not. How'd you like to buy your grub at these war-time prices and run a hotel for nothing, and at the same time keep up the assessment work on fifteen or twenty claims? Maybe you'd get kind of peevish when a big bum laid in his blankets and wouldn't even get up ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... a "cold in the head," with running nose and a cough. The child is indisposed and peevish because of the cold. In a few days the cough becomes worse, fever develops, the breathing is quicker, and the baby looks and acts sick. The cough may be constant and severe; sometimes the cough does not seem to bother the baby, although this ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... kittiwakes rose and fell, uttering their peevish wails; a large shoal of fish fretting the radiant surface of the sea was passed and about a dozen porpoises went right across the cutter's bow, rising and diving down one after the other like so many black water-boys, playing at "Follow my leader;" but the eyes of all on board the Kestrel were ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... joined by a diminutive red-faced woman, with hair and eyes very much like his own, and a face that wore a peevish, pinched expression. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Browning's knaves cannot be better expressed than by Chesterton. 'They are real somewhere. We are talking to a garrulous and peevish sneak; we are watching the play of his paltry features, his evasive eyes and babbling lips. And suddenly the face begins to change and harden, the eyes glare like the eyes of a mask, the whole face of clay becomes ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... of personal persecution and ill-use. The Hebrews belonged to him, and because he held them their God afflicted Egypt. Egypt complained and would have him sacrifice his private property, his slaves, for its sake. To the peevish king the demand was unreasonable. Yet he was not extraordinary in his behavior. Unselfishness was not an attribute of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... will you be content?" The speaker was a little man with keen eyes, a supercilious smile, a shrill sharp voice, and peevish manners. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the child had been homely, misshapen, peevish, or all three, can scarcely be conjectured. Had Jennie been less tactful, even in the beginning, he might have obtained a disagreeable impression. As it was, the natural beauty of the child, combined ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... twine: And base desire bade men to delven low, For needless metals, then 'gan mischief grow. Then farewell, fairest age, the world's best days, Thriving in all as it in age decays. Then crept in pride, and peevish covetise, And men grew greedy, discordous, and nice. Now man, that erst hail-fellow was with beast, Wox on to ween himself a god at least. Nor aery fowl can take so high a flight, Though she her daring wings in clouds have dight; Nor fish can dive so ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the present we had all agreed splendidly, but now John's irritability seemed to increase hourly; and as regards myself, I often found it necessary to exercise very great self-control to avoid giving very sharp and snappish answers to John's peevish ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... who made me feel that we are all too ready with our peevish outcries against the beautiful world in which we have been placed; too ready to complain that all is sadness and sorrow and disappointment, when the gloom exists within ourselves, not without us; it is from ourselves ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... far as money could do it, faithful to his designs—diabolical as they were. He accordingly went one night, about the hour mentioned by Donnel, to the cabin of that worthy man; and knocking gently at the door, was replied to in a peevish voice, like that of an individual who had been interrupted in the performance of some act ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the humane and equal temper of the man of the house, who also perfectly well knows how to enjoy a great estate, with such economy as ever to be much beforehand[43]. This makes his own mind untroubled, and consequently unapt to vent peevish expressions, or give passionate or inconsistent orders to those about him. Thus respect and love go together; and a certain cheerfulness in performance of their duty is the particular distinction of the lower part of this ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... into a more violent passion, which occasioned him to say several bitter reflecting things, that nettled me to the quick. He left me, as much dissatisfied with myself as he could possibly be with me; and in this peevish mood I gave a spring from the bottom of the sea up to the Island ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... breakfast, rinsed his pit-bottle, put his pit-clothes on the hearth to warm, set his pit-boots beside them, put him out a clean scarf and snap-bag and two apples, raked the fire, and went to bed. He was already dead asleep. His narrow black eyebrows were drawn up in a sort of peevish misery into his forehead while his cheeks' down-strokes, and his sulky mouth, seemed to be saying: "I don't care who you are nor what you are, I SHALL ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... place to a dull persistent rain, and a peevish wind was complaining in area and chimney cowl. Philip turned to the street with a pleasantly haunting vision of Patty's vivacious face outlined against the warmth and brightness of the hall. The touch of her good-night kiss lingered ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... glow.{N} For this reason it was always a great relief to her, when, from the top of the steep hill, she saw Albert ascending towards her. She then felt herself more secure, and went with better spirits forward. It was near Whitsuntide—the father sickly and more peevish than ever, and work bringing in no supply; for provisions had risen fearfully in price in consequence of the previous unusually hard winter. Now, as often as Maud brought the dinner to her father, he complained ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does not prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn. Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man and woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his watch and counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she smiled to herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing swiftly at ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... girdle, which had the gift of inspiring love. This charm will doubtless ensure the volume hundreds of possessors. The names of a few of the galaxy will give the reader a faint idea of their charms, unless the reader accord with Juliet's somewhat peevish "What's in a name." Thus, we find Julia, the queen of sentimentality; Belinda, gay and sparkling; Madeline, the early prey of despair; Lolah, languishing amid Eastern magnificence; the Orphan, pencilled in the very simplicity of nature, and finely contrasted with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... fact that Johnson, who was born in 1709, actually came to Birmingham in his tenth year, on a visit to his uncle Harrison, who in after years, in his usual plain-speaking style, Johnson described as "a very mean and vulgar man, drunk every night, but drunk with little drink, very peevish, very proud, very ostentatious, but, luckily, not rich." That our local governors have a due appreciation of the genius of the famed lexicographer is shown by the fact of a passage-way from Bull Street to the Upper Priory being named "Dr. Samuel ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... about his own age and size, apparently, but rather more slender in figure. He had a peevish expression, and Ernest doubted ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... written a letter to my lady ——, that I believe she won't like; and, upon cooler reflection, I think I had done better to have let it alone; but I was downright peevish at all her questions, and her ridiculous imagination, that I have certainly seen abundance of wonders which I keep to myself out of mere malice. She is very angry that I won't lie like other travellers. I verily believe she expects I should tell her of the Anthropophagi, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... foreseen, he was so irritated with the unfortunate issue of his military operations, and so much vexed and affronted by his foreign creditors, that he was determined to throw the blame somewhere off himself and he came in very bad humor into England. He discovered his peevish disposition by the first act which he performed after his arrival: as he landed unexpectedly, he found the Tower negligently guarded; and he immediately committed to prison the constable and all others who had the charge of that fortress, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... of Mr. Falkland: but his disposition was extremely unequal. The distemper which afflicted him with incessant gloom had its paroxysms. Sometimes he was hasty, peevish, and tyrannical; but this proceeded rather from the torment of his mind than an unfeeling disposition; and when reflection recurred, he appeared willing that the weight of his misfortune should fall wholly upon himself. Sometimes he entirely ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... of anxious hope possessing her, she left the window and hurried down the corridor to Penelope's room. What she found there was most convincing. It was not a trick of the lanterns. The shadow had been real. It must be confessed that the peevish heart of Lady Bazelhurst beat rather rapidly as she hastened back to the window to peer anxiously out into the sombre park with its hooting owls and chattering night-bugs. The mournful yelp of a distant ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... liked the idea of leaving his handsome red coat upon the ground. But he never could bear the thought of being beaten. And Jasper Jay's remark made him feel quite peevish. ...
— The Tale of Old Mr. Crow • Arthur Scott Bailey
... her existence. Neither the small boy nor a big man, nor an old woman standing by, knew anything about it; and I had determined to take the next train to Town, when a flannel-clad young man, with a heavy face and a peevish voice, called out from the bank, "I've been looking for you everywhere." It proved to be KITTY'S husband, but, as we were totally unacquainted with each other's appearances, it was not wonderful that his search for me had been ineffectual. He seemed much ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... the most fastidious person could possibly desire; and it was quite painful to see its occupant, on his handsome and capacious brass bedstead, under a most beautiful embroidered silk coverlet, and surrounded by everything that heart could wish for, lying there wan, peevish, irritable, dissatisfied with everybody and everything, seemingly because his doting parents had gratified his every whim and humoured his every caprice. It was quite evident that he regarded me with almost if not quite as great distaste as ever; he even ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... deepened; and the clear-eyed Northern constellations looked out, one by one, there were other sounds; a peevish growling and whining at the top of the bank above them; a frantic scurry when Garth heaved a stone. The better to ensure Natalie's peace of mind, he weighted the tent all around with rocks; and heaped ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... in the morning if you jiggers will close yore traps and lemme sleep," growled a peevish voice in the next ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White |
