"Fretfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adventurer who had thrown in his lot with Cumberland Ludlow, the sportsman, when both were in the full flush of middle age. His limp, the result of an epoch-making fight in an Australian mining camp, was emphasized by severe rheumatism, and the fretfulness of old age was heightened by his shortness ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... said Bessie: the fretfulness was very much gone out of her tone, and she stood looking at the beautiful flower, without a word, till Susan came back, when she began to show her what Miss Fosbrook had pointed out. Susan smiled with her really good nature, and said, "How funny!" but was more intent on telling Miss Fosbrook that ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... its name implies at the end or closing of a sound or vowel, and is used in expressing disgust, complaint, fretfulness, ardour, surprise, etc. The sound is guttural, and sometimes terminates in sobbing or hic-cough. It has less dignity and grace than the gradual ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... (Letters, p. 324), on June 21, 1790, described to Temple the insults of that 'brutal fellow,' Lord Lonsdale, and continued:—'In my fretfulness I used such expressions as irritated him almost to fury, so that he used such expressions towards me that I should have, according to the irrational laws of honour sanctioned by the world, been under the necessity of risking my life, had not an explanation taken place.' Boswell's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... success, his firmness, his alertness, his general indifference to fate. Good lessons these, all of them. If by the game we learn some of them our time on the green earth has not been wasted. If we rise from the table having learned only fretfulness and self-pity ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... brother's happiness was not secure in Fanny's keeping, or that his love for her would not stand the wear and tear of common life, when the first charms of her youth and beauty, and her graceful, winning ways were gone, that fear did not outlast this time. Through the weariness and fretfulness of the first months of her illness, he tended her, and hung about her, and listened to her complaints with a patience that never tired; and when her fretful time was over, and the days came when she lay hushed and peaceful, yet ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... any direction of inquiry. There is no moral vice, no moral virtue, which has not its precise prototype in the art of painting; so that you may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the art, or the art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness, and quietness, feebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and modesty, and all other such habits, and every conceivable modification and mingling of them, may be illustrated, with mathematical ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... often those of small purposes and are rarely those of great achievement. For all great purposes have to be spread over time, have to overcome obstacles, and these must be met with courage and patience. Impatience is fussiness, fretfulness and a prime breeder of neurasthenia. Patience is realistic, and though it may seek perfection it puts up with imperfection as a part of human life. But here I am drifting into an error against which I warned the reader,—of ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... of a sick-bed comport with her views of life. But Edith now took her rightful position, and by her fearless example recalled those around her to a sense of duty. She was her father's gentle, untiring nurse: his wishes were forestalled, his fretfulness soothed, and his thoughts directed to higher things. She rose in her father's love day by day, as he felt her worth; and bitterly did he now think of the undeserved slight with which she had been treated, while the ungrateful Clotilda had been his pride. ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... first the discovery of so romantic a cause for poor Miss Meadows's fretfulness dignified it in Sophy's eyes, yet it did not prove sufficient to make it tolerable when she tormented the window-blinds, teased the fire, was shocked at Sophy's favourite studies, or insisting on her wishing ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the soul in the flippancy of ordinary conversation, as did some of the fanatics of the Commonwealth. Others have represented it as a perpetual austerity, an investiture of our family circles with all the hues of the sepulchre, and a flinging upon the face of society the frown of a rebuking fretfulness, which would make the good of an archangel evil spoken of in this censorious world. But the scriptural holiness which believers long for, and which the Church is to spread through the land, is not a ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... enforce obedience and submission in every case;—to win and encourage the indications of affection; to check retaliation or revenge; to subdue the violence of passion or inordinate desire;—to keep under every manifestation of self-will;—and to soothe down and banish every appearance of fretfulness and bad temper. In short, she trains her young charge to feel and to practise all the amiable and kindly affections of our nature, encouraging and commending him in their exercise;—while, on the contrary, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... one happy way to satisfy himself. Then, indeed, has he come to himself. Henceforth he knows what his powers mean, what spiritual air they breathe, what ardors of service clear them of lethargy, relieve them all sense of effort, put them at their best. After this fretfulness passes away, experience mellows and strengthens and makes more fit, and old age brings, not senility, not satiety, not regret, but higher hope ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... their babes a desire for incessant 62:9 amusement, to be always fed, rocked, tossed, or talked to, those parents should not, in after years, complain of their children's fretfulness or fri- 62:12 volity, which the parents themselves have occasioned. Taking less "thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink"; less thought "for your body what 62:15 ye shall put on," will do much more for the health of the rising generation than you dream. Children ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... therefore, considered as the loss of their last anchor; and received not only with the fretfulness of disappointment, but the rage of desperation. When they found that all were happy, in spite of their machinations, and the soft effulgence of peace shone out upon the nation, they felt no motion but that of sullen envy; they could not, like Milton's prince of hell, abstract themselves a moment ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... much resemble each other in their early stages: headache, restlessness, and fretfulness are the symptoms of both. Shivering fits, succeeded by a hot skin; pains in the back and limbs, accompanied by sickness, and, in severe cases, sore throat; pain about the jaws, difficulty in swallowing, running at the eyes, which ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... to his wife on the basis of mere affectional habit, which in married life often survives the sense of intellectual equality. He did not expect her to reason with him, but there was help in her listening, and though she could only soothe his fretfulness with soft answers which were often wide of the purpose, he still went to her for solace. "Here, I've gone into this newspaper business, or whatever it is, on his account, and he don't seem any more satisfied than ever. I can see he hain't ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... youth, and her blue eyes were still appealing, especially when she smiled. But she did not smile often, and she had the expression of one perpetually protesting against all the agencies—this-worldly or other-worldly—which had the control of her existence. Her weak fretfulness depressed all the vitalities near her; only ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... frowned and drew back a little coldly. The slight touch of joy and animation that had come into her face fled, leaving only a dispirited fretfulness that was plainly very ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... me?" she said, still quietly and rapidly, and without the least fretfulness or impatience. "I asked if that was the way ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Portland, which was not marked with the decision demanded by the occasion; and his prudence and discretion are equally apparent in the advice he tenders to Lord Temple, upon the necessity of resigning his office into the hands of his successor, instead of throwing it up with an "appearance of fretfulness and intemperance." The contrast between the temperaments of these distinguished men is frequently felt throughout this Correspondence, in the traits of calm, practical wisdom which will be found on the one side, affectionately checking and controlling the tendency to hasty constructions ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... poor industrious devil like me, who have toiled, and drudged, and plotted to gain my ends, and am at last disappointed by other people's folly, may in pity be allowed to swear and grumble a little; but a captious sceptic in love, a slave to fretfulness and whim, who has no difficulties but of his own creating, is a subject more fit for ridicule ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... felt, ever-pervading atmosphere. Heavenly comfort was sung in the sweet hymns, breathed in the trustful prayers, spoken of as something always in mind, and acted out in the sweet offices of love towards the unfortunate. Such surroundings were life-giving to the poor little invalid. Her fretfulness gave way, and a sweet quietness succeeded her nervous irritation. After the weary turmoil of the past in the noisy, crowded home, there was now a serene peace for her, as if the angels had taken her under ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... death every man capable of carrying arms, and made slaves of the rest. He was then stopped for some time before the little town of Gaza, where Batis, the brave governor, had the courage to close the gates against the Greek army. His angry fretfulness at being checked by so small a force was only equalled by his cruelty when he had overcome it; he tied Batis by the heels to his chariot, and dragged him round the walls of the city, as Achilles had dragged the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... him with eyes that seemed to be gazing through and beyond the object before them. After a time he drew a long sigh and turned to Pollyanna. When he spoke his voice carried the old nervous fretfulness. ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... I got him to leave the table. When the baby was brought I tried to amuse him with that; but poor little Arthur was cutting his teeth, and his father could not bear his complaints: sentence of immediate banishment was passed upon him on the first indication of fretfulness; and because, in the course of the evening, I went to share his exile for a little while, I was reproached, on my return, for preferring my child to my husband. I found the latter reclining on the sofa just as ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... proneness to treason in the Hibernian nature, as Corcoran and the Sixty-Ninth can bear witness; nor is Pat so fond of a riot that he cannot with fair play be a—well, a good citizen. Yet at home he has been so "civilized" by his British guardian as to be in a chronic state of discontent and fretfulness. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... peace between Bartley and Marcia continued unbroken, and these days of waiting, of suffering, of hoping and dreading, were the happiest of their lives. He did his best to be patient with her caprices and fretfulness, and he was at least manfully comforting and helpful, and instant in atonement for every failure. She said a thousand times that she should die without him; and when her time came, he thought that she was going to die before he could tell ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... But at home all masks are thrown aside, and the true proportions of the man appear. Here he can find his actual moral standard, and measure himself accordingly. If he is irritable, here breaks forth his repressed fretfulness. If he is selfish, here are the sordid tokens. If he passes in any way for more than he is worth, here you may detect the counterfeit in the ring of his natural voice and the superscription of his undisguised life. No, the world is not the place to prove the moral stature ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... every question the general wanted solved in the cleverest manner; and, in short, he so won upon the old man's heart, that he became quite attached to him. The evenings, once so heavy, and spent in a sort of irritable fretfulness, became quite delightful to him: nor were they less delightful to others. At last, things came to that pass that the wearisome backgammon was given up, and reading aloud took its place. The ladies worked and read ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... woman disappeared, but in a few minutes more an unheard-of thing happened—among the servants in the hall, the same old woman appeared making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his side where he ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a perfect unity, like the perfected life of the Buddhist, Nirvana or Nibbana (literally "dying out" or "extinction" as of an expiring fire), there is no room for variety, for the play of life; all such fretfulness ceases, to be replaced by an all-pervading calm, beautiful, if you like, but lifeless. There is this deadness about any conception of perfection that will always make it an unattainable ideal in life. Those who, like the Indian fakir or the hermits of ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... the discomfort experienced, there is likely to be a change of disposition, irritability of temper, fretfulness and peevishness; a tendency to an irascibility all out of proportion to the real provocation. In many cases there is dizziness, and frequently noises in the head, ringing in the ears, spots before the eyes, twitching of the muscles, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... of the insecurity of her tenure of their company aided her the more to meet with good temper and sweetness the various rubs incidental to their captivity in this close warm house in the hottest of summer weather. The pang she had felt at her own fretfulness, when she thought she had lost them, made her guard the more against giving way to impatience if they were troublesome or hard to please. Indeed, she was much more gentle and equable now, in the strength of her resolution, than she had been when uplifted by her position, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... travels done for me? They have made me browner and thinner; they have given me a more patient mind, and a taste for mild tobacco. Have they helped me to forget Stella? Not the least in the world—I am more eager than ever to see her again. When I look back at my diary I am really ashamed of my own fretfulness and impatience. What miserable vanity on my part to expect her to think of me, when she was absorbed in the first cares and joys of maternity; especially sacred to her, poor soul, as the one consolation of her melancholy life! ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... effectually served, though they may be often dazzled, by the labours of an individual. But, indeed, this perpetual talk of 'mankind' signifies nothing: each of us consults his proper happiness, and we consider him a madman who ruins his own peace of mind by an everlasting fretfulness of philanthropy." ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rose in her mind. A more attentive or enduring nurse I'm very sure ne'er shone in poet's verse. When his recovery was manifested Her love and patience were severely tested. For calomel caused him such great distress He was oft found in fits of fretfulness. But yet she meekly bore with his caprice And her self-sacrifice ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... in a thin voice pitched to chronic fretfulness, "what in the world you got your best silk ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... gate is off its hinges." But do not render a friendly letter so long as to tax the patience of the reader. "Samivel Veller" discovered one of the secrets of letter-writing when he made that famous love letter of his short, "so she vill vish there vos more of it." Neither railing, nor fretfulness, nor too great egotism, is wise in letter-writing, for written words have a sad fashion of outlasting the mood in which they were penned, nay, even the hand that ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... an almost heroic truthfulness, devoted fidelity, a dove-like tranquillity of mind, and that abiding, reposeful trust in God which is equal to all trials, and can never be taken by surprise. Her voice was soft and soothing, her motions singularly free from clumsiness or fretfulness, her manners so beautifully blended of unaffected humility, patience, and self-respect as to command, in cheerful reciprocity, the deference they tendered; in which respect she was a severe ordeal to the sham gentlemen and ladies who had the honor to be presented to her,—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... expressed himself very plainly to Mr. Warburton; but with so much indiscreet fretfulness that the discreet private secretary had not told it even to the Duchess. "This kind of thing argues a want of cordiality that may be fatal to us," Sir Orlando had said somewhat grandiloquently to the Duke, and the Duke had made—almost no reply. "I suppose I may ask ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... women towards whom Fate appears to have the best intentions and never to carry them into practice. With the advantages put at her disposal she might have been expected to command a more than average share of feminine happiness. So many of the things that make for fretfulness, disappointment and discouragement in a woman's life were removed from her path that she might well have been considered the fortunate Miss Greech, or later, lucky Francesca Bassington. And she was not ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... type, and to his susceptibility to the influences of climate or weather, occur repeatedly and at brief intervals throughout his correspondence. This is a factor in his career which should not be lost to mind; for on the one hand it explains in part the fretfulness which at times appears, and on the other brings out with increased force the general kindly sweetness of his temper, which breathed with slight abatement through such depressing conditions. It enhances, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... scarcely entered before the telephone renewed its irritating clamor, like a fretful child which yelled whenever it heard his footstep. He responded to its fretfulness in very much the same mood, seizing hold of the receiver as though he ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... that Dr. Johnson saw company on Saturday evenings, and he would meet me at Johnson's that night. When I mentioned this to Johnson, not doubting that it would please him, as he had a great value for Oglethorpe, the fretfulness of his disease unexpectedly shewed itself; his anger suddenly kindled, and he said, with vehemence, 'Did not you tell him not to come? Am I to be hunted in this manner?' I satisfied him that I could not divine that the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... amusement only by fits and starts. He is pale and restless, yet inactive.—His mother is away. True, he is not well. But he is not very unwell; and if she were at home, he would take his share in everything that was going on, with as much enjoyment as any of them. But as it is, his fretfulness and pettishness make no allowance for the wilfulness of his brothers and sisters; and so the confusions they make in the room, carry confusion into his heart and brain; till at length a brighter noon entices the others out into ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... was their only patient, and they had orders not to quit me, and nothing was wanting for my amusement, when I was in a condition to take any, so much good company being around me, and that at a time when convalescents of this malady experience all the weariness and fretfulness of it. At the end of my illness I was bled and purged once, after which I lived as usual, but in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... fretfulness, but with disdainful calm, he criticised and censured the proceedings against himself as a violation of the laws of the land and of the first principles of justice, discussing them as lucidly and steadily as if they had been against a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... learn a lesson properly. Each day Lionel grew more unruly, chiefly from the want of occupation, leading the other two along with him; and each day the female portion of the party grew more inclined to fretfulness, as they felt their own helplessness. It even came to consultations between Miss Morley and Caroline whether they must not really tell of the boys: but the evil day was always put off till ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... little Benoni back to Rusha, not without some sounds of fretfulness from the baby, but the pigs had to be shut up and fed, and the other evening work of the farmyard done; and it was not till all this was over, and Patience had disposed of the milk in the cool cellars, that the ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... says he can't bear the girl we have invited up to love him—that he positively hates her, we till tell him that it is only his wilful temper, and that he's got to like her because she's good for him; and don't let us have any of his fretfulness. And if Grandmamma pouts and says she won't love old man Jones merely because he's got a red nose, or a glass eye, or some silly reason of that sort, we will say to her: 'All right, my lady, you will play with Mr. Jones and be nice to him, ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... still toying with her cup of tea. A book was in her lap, but her thoughts were far away. Her face still wore its sad and somewhat wistful look; yet there was gradually dawning upon it the sense of repose and rest. Her sisters noted the old fretfulness and restlessness had gone out of her tones, and whilst Elfie wondered, Agatha rejoiced that trouble had not hardened ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... in August, Ariadne slept later than usual and when she woke was quite unlike her usual romping, active self. Her round face was deeply flushed, and she lay listlessly in her little bed, repulsing with a feeble fretfulness every attempt to give her food. Lydia's heart swelled so that she was choked with its palpitations. Paul was out of town. She was alone in the house except for her servant. To that ignorant warm heart she turned with an inexpressible thankfulness. "Oh, 'Stashie! Stashie!" ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... painted, and the roads were smoother and wider. It had been so pleasant driving along that Katy dreaded going into the strange town when she first caught sight of it, though Susan Ellen kept asking with bold fretfulness if they were not almost there. They counted the steeples of four churches, and their father presently showed them the Topham Academy, where their grandmother once went to school, and told them that perhaps some day ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a row o' curls round her head, an' not a hair out o' place. It seems hard as my sister Deane should have that pretty child; I'm sure Lucy takes more after me nor my own child does. Maggie, Maggie," continued the mother, in a tone of half-coaxing fretfulness, as this small mistake of nature entered the room, "where's the use o' my telling you to keep away from the water? You'll tumble in and be drownded some day, an' then you'll be sorry you didn't do as ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Instead, however, of setting the other wood on fire, they only grew dimmer and dimmer themselves; and he said to himself, "I knew they would not burn." Then he sat down upon a log, in a sad state of fretfulness and dissatisfaction. ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... peering past Marcia to Hayden who followed, almost obscured by his great package. She stretched out a hand for him to take, not disarranging her pose by rising and thus spoiling the composition. "Marcia, you're dreadfully late, as usual," a touch of fretfulness in her voice. ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... sat down with a rueful face and a weary sigh, but there was no sign of hesitation or doubt in her manner. The time had come for her to take command, and she did it without fretfulness or ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... neither Ansdore nor Ellen could exist, at least decorously, without her, and she must be within easy reach of both. The fortnight between the booking of her room and her setting out she spent in mingled fretfulness and swagger. She fretted about Ansdore, and nearly drove her carter and her looker frantic with her last injunctions; she fretted about Ellen, and cautioned Mrs. Tolhurst to keep a strict watch over her—"She's not to go up to late dinner at Great ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... patriot officials, to give their evidence. Beyond them, leaning against the wall, addressed by no one, and speaking to no one, stood the superintendent, Danville. Doubt and suspense were written in every line of his face; the fretfulness of an uneasy mind expressed itself in his slightest gesture—even in his manner of passing a handkerchief from time to time over his face, on which the perspiration was gathering thick and ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... given warning of my danger. Like a wise little dog, when I ignored his admonitions he had run home. At first his uneasiness and troubled barking had got no notice. Once or twice the Scotchman, worried by his fretfulness, had ordered him away. Then across his preoccupied mind there flashed a doubt. He laid down his tools and spoke to the animal. Instantly Crusoe dashed for the rocks, barking and crying with eagerness. But the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... had ever a few ready to drop upon her dainty embroidered handkerchief when the occasion commanded it; and her visitors, when they agreed among themselves, what a soft gentle woman that poor Mrs. Sankey was, but sadly delicate you know—had no idea of the querulous complaining and fretfulness whose display was reserved ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... of other such outbreaks which were incidental to the camp. Incidents of this character occurred every few minutes in every barrack, which was not surprising seeing that we were all keyed to a high pitch of fretfulness while ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... were all carefully preserved and passed into the hands of some of his descendants in New Jersey, and have after this long lapse of time been published at last. They tell us with painful accuracy of the petty annoyances constantly inflicted upon Napoleon, and of the impatience and fretfulness with which, day after day, he resented them and complained of them. We seem to live with the great dethroned Emperor in his hours of homeliest complainings, when every little grievance that burns in his heart finds repeated ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy |
