"Pestering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing to do is to keep them from going to the church next Thursday fortnight, and from pestering you with presents in the mean while. When you've headed them off on that you'll feel more free to—to give your ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... have shipped her by mistake, either," he went on, confused. "For we'd sold her, that same day, to a kid in our town. I ought to know. Because the kid kept on pestering us every day for a month afterward, to find if she had come back to us. He said she ran away in the night. He still comes around, once a week or so, to ask. A spindly, weak, sick-looking little chap, he is. I don't get the point of this thing, from any angle. But we run our kennels on ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... have them used. He always has to start more slips than he needs in case some of them do not root; when they do, he is swamped. Evidently you have helped him solve his problem for no sooner did the owners of the other bungalows see Stevens's boxes than everybody wanted them. They all are pestering the carpenter for boards. It made old Mr. Fernald chuckle, for he likes flowers and is delighted to have the cottages on the place made attractive. He asked who started the notion; and when I told him it ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... made and amply allowed for, Emerson remains among the most persuasive and inspiring of those who by word and example rebuke our despondency, purify our sight, awaken us from the deadening slumbers of convention and conformity, exorcise the pestering imps of vanity, and lift men up from low thoughts and sullen moods of helplessness ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... Restaurations—in short, everywhere—John Bull stalks incorporate. I see an Englishman with his little red book, the Paris guide, in one hand and map in the other, with a parcel of ragged boys at his heels pestering him for money. "Monsieur, c'est moi," who am ready to hold your stick. "Monsieur, c'est moi," ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... responsibilities connected with the election of members of your state councils, just the same as we have; but surely there are other and proper means of obtaining their rights and privileges without resorting to such childish and unwomanly tactics as chaining themselves up, pestering high officers of state, and forcing their way into your ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... isn't to blame for tricks the field-workers put out so that they can earn their money quick and easy. What's the good of pestering me with questions at this awful time? I'm going to die! I'm going ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... green and black flies came pestering and tormenting like a host of wicked jinn. The glare of sunlight on the yellow sand hurt the eyes. The deadly silence of the place was oppressive—especially when you had strung yourself up to concert pitch to face the crash and turmoil of a ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... inch to that Greek, he will make it a mile, and as to Janet, if she can't bring down her pride to write to you like a daughter, I wouldn't give a rap for her receipt, and it might lead to intolerable pestering. Now you know she can't starve on 50 a year besides her medical education. Wakefield will always know where she is, and you may be quite easy ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brought her home to the Mazet, and there she has lived her whole lifelong. Esperit is waiting only until he shall be established in the world to speak the word. And the scamp is in a hurry. Actually, he is pestering me to put him at the head of ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... their helmets, seated on armoured horses and brandishing gigantic lances. I asked my governess whether there were any knights left. She, an excellent but most matter-of-fact lady, assured me that there were plenty of knights still about, after which I never ceased pestering her to show me one. One day she delighted me by saying, "You want to see a knight, dear. There is one coming to see your father at twelve o'clock to-day, and you may stand on the staircase and see him arrive." This was an absolutely ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... me, Blister,' she says, 'when you get your horses put up. There's a Johnny in this town that's pestering the life out of me. He wants me to go to ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... being mistreated. Again and again she went to the judge and asked him to help her—but he never paid any attention. Finally he said to himself: 'I don't care about this woman, but she is becoming a nuisance. Perhaps if I give her what she wants she will stop pestering me.'" Jesus said very emphatically, "If this wicked man finally helped a widow because she kept on asking for justice, won't God, who is good and just, answer ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... may reign in the heart, the heart must first repose in the bosom of Divine Providence—free from the pressure of doleful souvenirs, and from the pestering desires stirred up by vanity; in a word, exempt from every obstacle, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, that might in any way oppose the designs of God. But, alas! by some unaccountable inconsistency, we are in contradiction with ourselves; for, notwithstanding our ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... have anything to do with you. You done fixed yourself with me that time at the Cove picnic. I'll tell Daddy about that if you don't mind. I don't want to make no trouble, but you just got to quit pestering me." ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... possessed of the greatest Talents, and fully persuaded that he gave all he convers'd with a particular Pleasure;— Upon such an Attack, no Resentment or Anger could have been decently shewn by Horace, As the Person thus pestering him, was all the while intending the highest Compliment; And must therefore be received, and attended to, with perfect Complaisance; The Humour of this Person would have been very entertaining, in the strange Conceit which he held of his own Abilities, and ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... all the birds these nestle closest to my heart, be they grimy little cockneys or their trim and dainty country cousins. They come day by day for their meed of crumbs spread for them outside my window, and at this season they eat leisurely and with good appetite, for there are no hungry babies pestering to be fed. Very early in the morning I hear the whirr and rustle of eager wings, and the tap, tap, of little beaks upon the stone. The sound carries me back, for it was the first to greet me when I rose to draw water and gather kindling in my roadmender ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... the coulee road, they went—when Simon saw the grove at the landing. Among those trees many a pestering buffalo-fly had been outwitted; there, where grapevines tangled, many a mosquito had been rubbed away. Quick as a flash, Simon made for the cut, with Matthews ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... princely grace the Duke of Pomerania of the blasphemous lies which I had vomited against him, and which must sorely offend every Christian heart. Item, what an avaricious wretch I must be to be always wanting something of him, and to be daily, so to say, pestering him in these hard times with my filthy letters, when he had not enough to eat himself. This he said should break the parson his neck, since his princely grace did all that he asked of him, and that no one in the parish need give me anything ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... mournful, deplorable, pitiable, lamentable; sad, affecting, touching, pathetic. irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling; unaccommodating, invidious, vexatious; troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome; plaguing, plaguy^; awkward. importunate; teasing, pestering, bothering, harassing, worrying, tormenting, carking. intolerable, insufferable, insupportable; unbearable, unendurable; past bearing; not to be borne, not to be endured; more than flesh and blood can bear; enough to drive one mad, enough to provoke a saint, enough ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... think much of them gentlemen that want to go a pestering a poor lone woman like me. You let them things alone, ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... the intrigues that have been got up here. They have even been pestering our poor Praskovya Ivanovna, and what reason can they have for worrying her? I was quite unfair to you to-day perhaps, my dear Praskovya Ivanovna," she added in a generous impulse of kindliness, though not ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ask favours of such a set of thieves and scoundrels," cried the midshipman passionately; "and once more I warn you that, if you come pestering me with your proposals, I shall knock you down with a ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... word, Dunny," I assured my vis-a-vis. "I was just wondering if Huns and pirates had quite a neutral sound. You know I have to go via Rome to spend a week with Jack Herriott. He has been pestering me for a good two years—ever ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Madame En-Noor is still very unwell with her lip. It is cut right across under her nose, penetrating to the gums; she is, nevertheless, very lively, and is always pestering Overweg to read the fatah with, or marry a young girl, one of her relations. She endeavours to warm my worthy friend to comply with her match-making wishes by luxurious descriptions of the beauties of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... my turn, I found to my horror that the signification of this particular symbol had escaped my memory. There it was, staring me in the face from my note-book, but what it meant for my very life I could not at the moment tell. And the telegraph messengers were pestering me for my copy, and, worst of all, the reporters from London seemed to my guilty conscience to be eyeing me askance, and wondering what the delay meant. In a desperate moment I made a guess, not at the meaning of my symbol, but at some word which ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells In our houses! How it tells Of the folly that impels To the breeding and the speeding Of the Smells, Smells, Smells, Of the Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells— To the festering and the pestering of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... give me my dinner?" he quizzed, his lips' lifting humorously at the corners. "I kinda thought, from the way you turned me down cold when we met before, you'd shut your door in my face if I came pestering around. How ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... her taught songs, what a delightful singer she was capable of becoming, I really had not patience to hear her little French airs, and entreated her to give them up, but the little rogue instantly began pestering me with them, singing one after another with a comical sort of malice, and following me round the room, when I said I would not listen to her, to say, "But is not this pretty?—and this?—and this?" singing away with ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... time of night to the house of the good woman with this silly story. Prithee, good man, let us sleep in peace; begone in God's name; and if thou hast a score to settle with her, come to-morrow, but a truce to thy pestering to-night." ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... mother. "I told you—You see," she broke off, turning to Billy despairingly. "She's been pestering me with questions like that ever since she knew she was coming. She never has forgotten the way you changed from one uncle to the other. You may remember; it made a great impression ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... end of the week I was better but still shaky. I started pestering the M.O. to tag me for Blighty. He wouldn't, so I sprung the same proposition on him that I had on the doctor at the base,—to send me back to duty if he couldn't send me to England. The brute took me at my word and sent ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... at six o'clock in the evening. I will be here to see you, if you still persist in pestering me. But I warn you, Signor Gori, ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... Harry, drawing a long breath. 'For my part, all I know is, that I would these great folks who rule us now had let my father end his days in peace, without pestering him about surplices and Prayer-Books and the sign of the cross, all which he holds for rank Papistry, I suppose; and I cannot wish him to lie, even about such foolish trifles as these things appear to ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... "Stop pestering me ... let's talk ... read me some of that Tennyson you gave me...." and I began reading aloud, for there was nothing else she would for the moment, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... town and mine. All about us there are folks being set upon—cruelly set upon. The tormentors may not be ruffians in flesh and blood. They may simply be cruel circumstances. Sometimes fire, sometimes sickness, sometimes financial loss, sometimes accident, sometimes a combination of a number of pestering calamities, getting the victim down and making life very miserable in mind and uncomfortable ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... dash it, no need to spoil one's brief rest by allowing a beastly doubt like that to rear its ugly head! One thing he was sure of—Robert Fenley could never be a rival; and Fenley, churl that he was, had known her for years, and could hardly be pestering her with his attentions if she were pledged to another man. Moreover he, John, newly in love and tingling with the thrill of it, fancied that Sylvia would not have clung to him with such complete confidence when the uproar arose ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... of Attica was being plundered by Mikion, who had landed at Rhamnus[638] with a large force of Macedonians and mercenary soldiers, and was overrunning the country, Phokion led out the Athenians to attack him. As men kept running up to him and pestering him with advice, to seize this hill, to despatch his cavalry in that direction, to make his attack in this other place, he said "Herakles, how many generals I see, and how few soldiers." While he was arraying his hoplites in line, one of them advanced ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... wants to get away. He doesn't seem quite content with his job of idle aristocrat. I believe he's been pestering the old man to send him West. Old man ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... minutes later, de Beauvallon picked another quarrel with Dujarier, this time complaining that he had neglected to publish a feuilleton of his, Memoires de M. Montholon, that had been accepted by him. As was to be expected, the result of pestering the sub-editor at such a moment was to receive the sharp response that he "must wait his turn, and that, in the meantime, there were more important authors than ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... to say that Isene, your mare, is very well. Papa and the children are well, and Ruyven a-pestering General Schuyler to make him a cornet in the legion of horse, and Cecile, all airs, goes about with six officers to carry her shawl ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... anonymous people. Indeed, names have been mentioned. A lady's name has been drawn, most unwarrantably as it appears to me, into the discussion, and I have no doubt that this lady has been subject to a good deal of pestering and annoyance. She has written to the Editor of The Evening News denying all knowledge of the supposed miracle. The Psychical Research Society's expert confesses that no real evidence has been proffered to her Society on the matter. And then, to my amazement, ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... time, here was the troublesome day passing over him, and pestering, bewildering, and tripping him up with its mere sublunary troubles, as the days will all of us the moment we try to do anything that we flatter ourselves is of a little more importance than others are doing. Aunt Keziah tormented him a great ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hypothetical child in the history of his character development, lost sight of him as he struggles in a morass of desires and purposes of power, fellowship and superiority. His situations become still more complex as we watch him seek to unify his life around permanent purposes, against a pestering, surging, recurring, temporary desire. He desires, let us say, to conform to the restriction in sex, but as he approaches adolescence, within and without stimuli of breathless ardor assail him. He must inhibit them if he proposes to be chaste, and his continent road is beset with never-resting ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... simple method of getting all the Congressmen and Senators of our state at work. Fred, I have just about all of the Congressional delegation from our state pestering the Secretary of the Navy until we get our order. The Congressmen from our own state will be glad to see ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... hand. He has carried off the buffaloes of my villagers over yonder for years and years, and of late he has also become a man-eater. He once ate a whole family at a meal—a man, his wife, and his three children. The people at Janwargurh have been pestering me for weeks to come and shoot him; and each week he has eaten somebody—a child or a woman; the last was yesterday—but I waited till you came, because I thought it would be something to show you that you would not be ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... save for the two horses, and a buzzard that wheeled high in the blue above, there was no living, moving thing within his range of vision, and the only sounds were the soft rattle of bit-chains as the horses thrashed lazily at pestering flies, and the sullen gurgle of the swollen river. Again he swore. His lips drew into a snarl of hate as his glance once more sought the face of the woman. In his eyes the gleam of hot desire commingled with a glitter of revenge as his thoughts flew swiftly ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... the custom to throw open the meetings for remark and exhortation, there has been a jubilee among the religious bores who wander around pestering the churches. We have two or three outsiders who come about once in six weeks into our prayer-meeting; and if they can get a chance to speak, they damage all the interest. They talk long and loud in proportion as they have nothing to say. They ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... participate to the greatest extent possible in the government and administration of the company, and by not hampering and pestering them with unnecessary instructions about details, the captain will get out of his lieutenants the very best ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... Arab's jibbeh, clawing with his brown fingers at the edge of the cotton skirt. The Emir tugged to free himself, and then, finding that he was still held by that convulsive grip, he turned and kicked at Mansoor with the vicious impatience with which one drives off a pestering cur. The dragoman's high red tarboosh flew up into the air, and he lay groaning upon his face where the stunning blow of the Arab's horny ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... heard him talk of his proposed experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an air pump, or the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some similar nonsense, with which he was constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply, Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned with the same ponderous folio, bound in black leather, which common report affirmed to be a book ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... dinner-table with the best grace. It is true that our guests are not very particular if the wine flows freely. I do not think the young lady likes the position, for I know the old, be-spectacled professors are as pestering with their attentions as the insolent officers. She would have been so delighted at the relief promised by your return that she would run to meet you and you would not have been repulsed at ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... first meeting, I should have thought at once, "This man is a sensualist and a ruffian!" His answers were distinctly rude; he said the question was foolish (probably it was)—that people had been pestering him with that kind of thing ever since he left India; in short, he gave me to understand that he regarded me as a nuisance. I had never before seen in him any approach to this manner; indeed, I had continually marvelled ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... Ricks, cheerfully, as he shook hands with the late second mate of the Florence Ricks. "We don't see much of each other now that you're a mate. But don't worry, you'll be a master again, and then you'll be dropping in here a couple of times a month pestering me for a lot of things for your ship that you could probably get along without. You're looking ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... began to rise at such an explanation. "And could ye find no hour out of all the twelve to come pestering us for shoon, but the one little, little hour my master takes his nap, and I sit down to my dinner, when all the rest of the world ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the greediness with which this little bait was swallowed, tested the extent of Mrs Wititterly's appetite for adulation, proceeded to administer that commodity in very large doses, thus affording to Sir Mulberry Hawk an opportunity of pestering Miss Nickleby with questions and remarks, to which she was absolutely obliged to make some reply. Meanwhile, Lord Verisopht enjoyed unmolested the full flavour of the gold knob at the top of his cane, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... pestering me for the last half-hour," said Captain Trimblett, after walking for some distance in wrathful silence. "I wonder whether it would be brought in murder if I wrung old Sellers's neck? I've had four people this morning come up and talk ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... wouldn't." His smile became more pronounced. "If I were more energetic, I should be for ever pestering you to marry me. And, you know, you wouldn't like that. As it is, I take 'No,' for an answer and ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... herself it was caressing. Her heart had gone out to the child the moment she had seen her enter the school-room. She was as helpless before her as before a lover. She was wild to catch her up and caress her instead of pestering her with questions. "Ellen, you must answer me," she said, but ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... man had made obscurity do very well for him till his head was gray; and now he was, there as he stood recognised unblamed, the virtual King of England. Cannot a man do without King's Coaches and Cloaks? Is it such a blessedness to have clerks forever pestering you with bundles of papers in red tape? A simple Diocletian prefers planting of cabbages; a George Washington, no very immeasurable man, does the like. One would say, it is what any genuine man could do; and would do. The instant ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... brook like mad and up through the woods. Marilla and I run down and helped the minister get up and brush his coat. He wasn't hurt, but he was mad. He seemed to hold Marilla and me responsible for it all, though we told him the pig didn't belong to us, and had been pestering us all summer. Besides, what did he come to the back door for? You'd never have caught Mr. Allan doing that. It'll be a long time before we get a man like Mr. Allan. But it's an ill wind that blows no good. We've never seen hoof or hair of that pig since, ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... there is one very great man, Lord Palmerston, who is indeed the sword and buckler, the chariots and the horses of the party; but it is impossible for his lordship to govern well with such colleagues as he has—colleagues which have been forced upon him by family influence, and who are continually pestering him into measures anything but conducive to the country's honour and interest. If Palmerston would govern well, he must get rid of them; but from that step, with all his courage and all his greatness, he will shrink. Yet how proper ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... yard long, making a noise like a puppy-dog, and laying eggs in hollow trees? To be sure, the toucan might retort, To what purpose were gentlemen in Bond Street created? To what purpose were certain members of Parliament created, pestering the House of Commons with their ignorance and folly, and impeding the business of the country? There is no end of such questions. So we will not enter into the metaphysics ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... of you and your geese," he shouted. "I wish you were all at the devil together. If you come pestering me any more with your silly talk I'll set the dog at you. You bring Mrs. Oakshott here and I'll answer her, but what have you to do with it? Did I buy the geese ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... several of them out of the city—men with sweat on their brows and hands that trembled. There is an element of humor in it all, despite the sadness. One of the staff remarked, "Do you notice how all the newspaper men, who for weeks have been pestering us with requests to be sent to the front, now demand as insistently to be sent away, when the front is at last coming to them?" In time of peace diplomats and war correspondents are easily the most pugnacious people in the world. If one has taken them at their own ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... lease in the Rue Cassini, whence he had removed his furniture in the preceding year; and then, feeling still a sneaking kindness for the city in which he had triumphed, he compromised by retreating to Sevres, there to study the ways and means of dwelling secure from pestering military summonses addressed to Monsieur de Balzac, alias Madame Widow Brunet, Man of Letters, Chasseur in the First Legion, and also, if not secure from, at least not so accessible to the calls of dunning creditors. The flat in the Rue de Chaillot, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... good your trying to keep it dark any longer. You told Hanks that Val and I had set that rick on fire, and so got us into a row through the man's speaking to us at Melchester. And last year, when we met him, you made out you didn't know why he should be always pestering ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... he added dejectedly, "I wished to forbid her taking part in them, but, though with me it is usually bend or break, what can a man do when a woman is pestering him day and night, sometimes begging with tears, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... earth is he talking about?" demanded Spencer. "Has he been pestering Miss Wynton this morning with some ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... invented by Raffles, was sufficiently specious in itself. That sick gentleman, Mr. Maturin (as I had to remember to call him), was really, or apparently, sickening for fresh air. Dr. Theobald would allow him none; he was pestering me for just one day in the country while the glorious weather lasted. I was myself convinced that no possible harm could come of the experiment. Would the porter help me in so innocent and meritorious an intrigue? The man hesitated. ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... in Megaris, by the ensuing banquets and religious services and the executions of the prisoners and the nonsense of the King's sister. For this romantic and very pretty girl had set King Theodoret to pestering Manuel with magniloquent offers of what Theodoret would do and give if only the rescuer of Megaris would put aside his ugly crippled wife and marry the ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... a continual dwelling upon the subject had magnified to colossal proportions the space she assumed herself to occupy or to have occupied in the occult critic's mind. At noon and at night she had been pestering herself with endeavours to perceive more distinctly his conception of her as a woman apart from an author: whether he really despised her; whether he thought more or less of her than of ordinary young women who never ventured into ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... him as it would if he had not been preoccupied. And instead of laughing at the crowds of children who clattered after us, waking the clean and quiet streets with the ring of sabots, he let them get upon his nerves. The girls were amused, however, and said that the little pestering voices babbling broken English without sense or sequence, were like the voices of the story in the "Arabian Nights"—haunting voices which tempted you to turn round, although you had been warned beforehand that, if you did, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... there, he too had his maid. They met as if they had known each other for years. She was full of an evil fellow, un gros type, with a roll of fat at the back of his neck and a great diamond ring which flashed in the moonlight, who had waited for her at the stage door and walked by her side, pestering her ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... his wife as they sat together one evening. "I got plenty else to bother me, without worrying my head off about what HE thinks. I can't help what he thinks; it's too late for that. So why should I keep pestering myself ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... insistent pestering and maturing years evoked from my uncle the hoarded lore I sought, there lay before me a strange enough chronicle. Long-winded, statistical, and drearily genealogical as some of the matter was, there ran through it a continuous thread of brooding, tenacious horror and preternatural ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... if you swore it on a stack of Mormon Bibles topped off by the life of Joe Smith. They'd go right out and make Amalon look like a whole cavayard of razor-hoofed buffaloes had raced back and forth over it. And the rest of the two thousand men on Ezra Calkins's pay-roll would come hanging around pestering you all with Winchesters. They'd ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... will conclude that I was a kind of over-affectionate pestering dull dog, who made this brilliant youth's life a burden to him. It was really not so; we had very many tastes in common; and with all his various temptations, he had a singularly constant and affectionate nature—and was of a Frenchness that made French thought and talk and commune almost a daily ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... never can give up a joke, once he thinks he has one," said Mary. "But I'll tell him to stop pestering Uncle Jasper." ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie—no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of man who can't endure a repulse from a woman. To say truth, he thinks himself invincible to 'em all, and when he finds one of 'em proof against him, even though she may once have seemed—when she didn't know her mind—well, she is the woman he must be pestering, to show that he's not to ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... were the horses that even the General's gallopers, who were continually traversing the column's half-mile front, were often unable to spur their horses to anything better than a walk. Very quickly the enemy returned to the attack, pestering French on the right. Realising his peril, he changed his course suddenly and headed away from the Klip Kraal Drift. Naturally, the enemy rushed off to block his way. For an hour and a half the Drift appeared to be the division's urgent objective. Then, ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... street here in Tangier; four, five, six hours afterwards, he mounts his horse, is thrown on to his head. When he wakes again to his senses, the last thing he remembers is—what? A sign, perhaps, over a shop in the street he walked down, or a leper pestering him for alms. The intervening hours are lost to him, and forever. It is no question of an abeyance of memory. There is a gap in the continuity of his experience, and that gap he will never ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... of Roger Williams is thus summed up by Dr. Dexter: "In all strictness and honesty he persecuted them—not they him; just as the modern 'Come-outer,' who persistently intrudes his bad manners and pestering presence upon some private company, making himself, upon pretence of conscience, a nuisance there; is—if sane—the persecutor, rather than the man who forcibly assists, as well as courteously requires, his desired departure." [Footnote: As ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... dear! haven't they been pestering me to sell them my land all along, and when the fire came ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... as he came up to them. "What ye driving at? What was that thing that just sailed over the house? Did you see it? I heard Daisy going on out here like the devil before day—or was it you two who were pestering her? What's ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... again the king's intentions. In spite of all my questions as to his horses, his agricultural affairs, whether he was satisfied with his five farms, whether he meant to cut the timber of the old avenue, he returned to the subject of politics with the pestering faculty of an old maid and the persistency of a child. Minds like his prefer to dash themselves against the light; they return again and again and hum about it without ever getting into it, like those big flies which weary our ears as they buzz upon ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... passed close to where Pete sat, never looking at Phil above the level of his boots. And as often as she bent over the pot, Pete put his arm round her waist, being so near and so tempting. For thus pestering her she beat her foot like a goat, and screwed on a look of anger which broke down in a stifled laugh; but she always took care to come again to Pete's side rather than to Phil's, until at last the nudging and shoving ended in a pinch and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... and I ought to be kicked," Trego agreed heartily. "I only started this in fun, anyway, to make you see why it is you look so good to me—different—so sound and sane and wholesome that I just naturally can't help pestering you." ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... sculptor in process of formation. Mr. Powers and myself were engaged in an animated and, to me, very agreeable conversation, which was constantly interrupted by these ill-bred women, who kept all the time mistaking the plaster for the marble, and asked the artist the most pestering questions on the modus operandi of sculpturing. I was astonished at the marvelous temper of Mr. Powers, who politely and patiently answered all their queries. By some lucky chance these women got out of the way during ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... handiwork. Nobody was in a hurry in those days. Richard Parsons, in his shop at Number 15 Goswell Street, had all the time in the world to make his clock, and could fuss about and experiment to his heart's content. Probably no one ever thought of jogging him on or pestering him to know if his ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... evening drinking black coffee and eating some large, sweet pineapples, whereafter we all took a nap lasting until midnight, when we got up to start on our night trip. It had been considered best to travel at night, when it was nice and cool with none of the pestering insects to torture us, and we were soon paddling the heavy canoe at a merry rate, smoking our pipes and singing in the still, dark night. Soon we rounded a point where the mighty trees, covered with ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... just go out of here," she said. "I don't want you 'round underfoot, pestering me at meal-time nohow. I guess I can get a meal for four just as easy as for three and I ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... you two such men," the governor said. "They both used to be captains of craft that traded among the islands, but now own several vessels; some of these have disappeared, and they are continually coming up here and pestering us with their complaints, though I have told them again and again that I can do nothing in the matter; I know that they would very gladly go with you in order to aid in ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... to lie down for a time during the heat of the afternoon, but thoughts of the suffering all about her banished power to rest. She went down and found the old colonel lying with closed eyes, feebly trying to keep away the pestering flies. Remembering the bunch of peacock feathers with which Zany, in old monotonous days, had waved when waiting on the table, she obtained it from the dining-room, and sitting down noiselessly by the officer, gave him a respite ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... (1872) Mr. W.B. Espeut conceived the idea that it would be a good thing to introduce mongooses to the rats of Barbadoes and Jamaica that were pestering the cane-fields to an annoying extent. It was done. The mongooses attacked the rats, cleaned them out, multiplied, and then looked about for more worlds to conquer. Snakes and lizards were few; but they cheerfully killed and devoured all there were. Then, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... poem, Krishna is shown pestering the cowgirls for curds. Radha decides to stand this no longer and partly in jest dresses herself up as a constable. When Krishna next teases the girls, she descends upon him, catches him by the wrist and 'arrests' ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... with a phantom axe. | |Instead of going to board with Mrs. | |Pepper or another medium and being of | |some use in the world and having a | |pleasant, dim-lighted cabinet all its | |own, this unhappy ghost—or ghostess—is | |pestering Marciana Rose of 1496 Bergen | |street, who owns the cellar and the house | |over it—over both the ghost and the ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... unveiling the portrait of Arthur Constant, presented by an unknown donor to the Bow Break o' Day Club, and it was to be a great function. The whole affair was outside the lines of party politics, so that even Conservatives and Socialists considered themselves justified in pestering the committee for tickets. To say nothing of ladies! As the committee desired to be present themselves, nine-tenths of the applications for admission had to be refused, as is usual on these occasions. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... torn to pieces by a dozen wise old women, who claim the right of carrying the church on their shoulders; he must have dictated to him what sort of dame he may take for wife;—in a word, he must bear meekly a deal of pestering and starvation, or be in bad odor with the senior members of the sewing circle. Duly appreciating all these difficulties, Brother Spyke chose a mission to Antioch, where the field of his labors would be wide, and the gates not open to restraints. And though he could not define ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... whom I found at the encampment were a couple of insane fellows, determined to follow us—perhaps to show "by one satiric touch" what kind of madcap enterprise was ours. The first was a Neapolitan, who had dogged me all the while I was at Tripoli, pestering me to make a contract with him as servant. To humour his madness, I never said I would not; and the poor fellow, taking my silence for consent, had come out asking for his master. They tried to send him away, but he would take orders from none but me. I gave him two loaves of bread and a Tunisian ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... was not more, calamitous to the Athenians, and that of Dionysius to the Syracusans, than they were to the tyrants themselves; for it was disturbing that made them be disturbed; and their first oppressing and pestering of others gave them occasion to expect to suffer ill themselves. Why should a man recount the outrages of rabbles, the barbarities of thieves, or the villanies of inheritors, or yet the contagions of airs and the concursions of seas, by which Epicurus ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... on asking one. We always answer at random and say it's a wagtail or a flowering shrike or a female magnolia. We were brought up in the country and learned that first principle of good manners, which is to let birds and flowers and animals go on about their own affairs without pestering them by asking them their names and addresses. Surely that's what Shakespeare meant by saying a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. We can enjoy a rose just as much as any one, even if we may ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... on the road. No drinking, to find the king's cursed shilling at the bottom of the glass, like poor Bill, for thy mother to come crying and pestering. Thee hasn't got one, eh? So much the better, all women are born fools, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... out of nowhere after I had chased inspiration in vain for months! Even now whenever Jenkins wanted a ghost, he called on me. And I had never found it healthy to contradict Jenkins. Jenkins always seemed to have an uncanny knowledge as to when the landlord or the grocer were pestering me, and he dunned me for a ghost. And somehow I'd always been able to dig one up for him, so I'd begun to get a bit ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough |
