"Meddlesome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... serious tone, "the only thing that has consoled me for asking that baby in there is, that she told me she was going in for a drink of water, and had she done so she would, or at least might, have tasted the poison stuff. She was the most meddlesome child and ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... has to hide everything when one has little meddlesome good-for-nothings like you.... But come, out with it, confess that you took it.... I would rather it was that.... I sha'n't tell daddy.... ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... infernal cheek!" croaked the man. "So you have cut me down? You meddlesome idiot, by what right did you poke your nose into ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... on to describe in detail how, governed and possessed by one idea, and by a theory, to oppose which was "moral depravity," he proceeded to establish his intolerable system of discipline, based on dogmatic grounds—meddlesome, inquisitorial, petty, cruel—over the interior of every household in Geneva. What is there fascinating, or even imposing, in such a character? It is the common case of political and religious bigots, whether Jacobin, or Puritan, or Jesuit, poor in thought and sympathy ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... and regard for the public interest. King Robert had not succeeded in keeping his first wife, Bertha of Burgundy; and his second, Constance of Aquitaine, with her imperious, malevolent, avaricious, meddlesome disposition, reduced him to so abject a state that he never gave a gratuity to any of his servants without saying, "Take care that Constance know nought of it." After Robert's death, Constance, having become regent ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fearing for thee from wild beasts or other mischances. Now praise be to Allah for thy safety!" I thanked him for his friendly solicitude and, retiring to my corner, sat pondering and musing on what had befallen me; and I blamed and chided myself for my meddlesome folly and my frowardness in kicking the alcove. I was calling myself to account when behold, my friend, the Tailor, came to me and said, "O youth, in the shop there is an old man, a Persian,[FN212] who seeketh thee: he hath thy hatchet and thy sandals which he had taken to the woodcutters,[FN213] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... her he was going to take her with him. It didn't really matter, of course; he didn't suppose Mrs. Leadbatter could exercise any control over Mary Ann, but it was horrible to be discussed by her and Rosie; and then there was that meddlesome vicar, who might step in ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... overpowering force into my mind, that houses and furniture, scrubbed floors, white curtains, bright tins and brasses were the great, awful, permanent facts of existence,—and that men and women, and particularly children, were the meddlesome intruders upon this divine order, every trace of whose intermeddling must be scrubbed out and obliterated in the quickest way possible. It seemed evident to me that houses would be far more perfect, if nobody lived in them at all; but that, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the industrious are habitually busy. The restless are active from inability to keep quiet; their activity may be without purpose, or out of all proportion to the purpose contemplated. The officious are undesirably active in the affairs of others. Compare ALERT; ALIVE; MEDDLESOME. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the other fellows at the club may chaff me all you choose. I'm going to marry her and that's all there is to it. I'm my own master, do you understand? I have no family—no inquisitive, meddlesome relatives, thank God! If this marriage is going to cost me what friends I have—all right—let them keep away! Such friends are not worth having, anyway. My mind is made up and you know me. Once I make up my mind, nothing can alter it." ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... like old women's chatter, the meddlesome way I scribble this down. It would take a real thing in the line of literature to paint me right, anyway, I fancy. When a third party keeps mixing in with husband and wife, he deserves all the slanging that's coming to him; which same is ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... partridge. Because the land you are standing on is my land. Because my own land was only taken from me by a crime, and a worse crime than poaching. This has been a single estate for hundreds and hundreds of years, and if you or any meddlesome mountebank comes here and talks of cutting it up like a cake, if I ever hear a word more of you ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... my fault," Jack said, contritely. "I should not have tempted you to go on that unlucky trip last Tuesday. So you were seen near Richmond station by some meddlesome individual—probably when you got out of the trap! But it may turn out for the best; your father could not have been kept in ignorance much longer. ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... and in your nice frock. Do let the furniture alone, child. Ring for Bridget, if any thing wants cleaning. You're a real Meddlesome Matty, Bertha." ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... swarms of negroes were stupid and slovenly, the cabins and hospitals filthy, the women overdriven, the overseer callous, the master indifferent, and the new mistress herself, repudiating the title, was more irritable and meddlesome than helpful.[29] The short sojourn was long enough. A few years afterward the ill-mated pair were divorced and Fanny Kemble resumed her own name and career. Butler did not mend his ways. In 1859 his half of the slaves, 429 in number, were sold ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... ability to see herself as others saw her. At the present moment the vision was anything but pleasing or gratifying. Miss North's argument, clear and logical, spoke straight to her conscience. She realized all at once that she had been meddlesome and officious, and she longed to ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... should be a majesty, solemn, awful, unerring: just, as man hopes that God is just; and from its throne it should stretch out a mighty hand to seize and grasp the guilty, and the guilty only. But when the law is only a petty, meddlesome, cruel, greedy spy, mingling in every household act and peering in at every window pane, then the poor who are guiltless would be justified if they spat in its face, and called it by its right name, a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... knew how to profit by the national prostration. Enriched by the confiscation of ecclesiastical property in the sixteenth century and relieved of meddlesome interference on the part of the emperor or the Diet, they utilized the decline of the middle class and the dismal serfdom of the peasantry to exalt their personal political power. They got rid of the local assemblies or greatly curtailed their privileges, and gradually established ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... "that there will be no occasion for applying to a Court of Chancery. There ought to be none. There is but one child, Mrs Vincent, whom you have seen this evening in the drawing-room. The great essential is to keep prying and meddlesome attorneys from thrusting themselves into the business. You acted as confidential secretary as well as tutor, while you were domiciled with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various |
