"Sour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as he looked back to-day no shining trout that had ever risen to his fly had stirred his emotions like the diaphanous minnows, caught, with a crooked pin, in the crooked creek; no luscious fruit had ever matched in sweetness the sour grapes and bitter nuts gathered from the native woods—by him and ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... all surplus incumbrances in order to keep up with the moving mass. At one place we passed General Early, sitting on his horse by the roadside, viewing the motley crowd as it passed by. He looked sour and haggard. You could see by the expression of his face the great weight upon his mind, his deep disappointment, his unspoken disappointment. What was yesterday a proud, well-disciplined army that had accomplished ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... manners; he really had great eloquence, and his abilities were far above the average, but the circumstances of his life had not been such as to develop his powers, and give play to his ambition; hence, he was apparently becoming disappointed, sour, and morose. At least, this was the impression which many of his friends had gained, and they accounted for the gradual change in his manners on the above theory; namely, that he was the ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... which act upon the nerves of taste, they are not necessarily soluble in water, and though often spread through and carried by liquids, are in fact rarely dissolved in water. The dissolved particles which act upon the nerves of taste can be distinguished by man into four groups—sweet, sour, bitter, and saline. But no such classification of "smells" is possible. As a rule mankind confuses the "taste" of things with their accompanying "smell." The finer flavours of food and drink not included in the four classes of tastes are really due to odoriferous particles present ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... are souls to be rescued. What a grand idea! It is Ibsen's, as is the interpretation of the Third Kingdom. It should have been Nietzsche's. Why this antinomianism? Why this eternal conflict of evil and good, of night and day, of sweet and sour, of God and ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... pulled a sour face. "We are ditch-water dull. Festivals are celebrated quietly in the home; there is small religious fervor; courtships are consummated by family contract. I fear you will find little sensational ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... sayings and morals seem proper to his beard; and the poetry of Cato does well out of his mouth, and he speaks it as if he were the author. He is not apt to put the boy on a younger man, nor the fool on a boy, but can distinguish gravity from a sour look; and the less testy he is, the more regarded. You must pardon him if he like his own times better than these, because those things are follies to him now that were wisdom then; yet he makes us of that opinion too when we see him, and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Mr. and Mrs. Lovyes as they sat over their breakfast in the parlour at Merchant's Point, he spoke with such huskiness as I never heard the like of. Mr. Lovyes took little heed to us, but went on eating his breakfast with only a sour comment here and there. I noticed, however, that Mrs. Lovyes, who sat over against us, bent her head forward and once or twice shook it as though she would unseat some ridiculous conviction. And after the story was told, she sat with no word ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... when she was a baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and pins; and from the cradle upward had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull-witted; in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Raphael, with the blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... with the raw, sour darkness of an early March morning, and all round me the invisible drip of the trees was as persistent as ever. Very slowly and shakily I scrambled to my feet. My head ached savagely, I was chilled to the core, and every part of my body felt as if it had been trampled ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... seemed to be an Englishman. They were gruff, burly fellows, all of them. For a few minutes they stormed and growled about their miserable luck in being caught in the downpour, ordering schnapps and brandy in large and instant quantities. At last the Englishman, a heavy, sour-faced man, turned his gaze in the direction of the lovers, who sat quite close together in the dark corner. His gaze developed into a stare, then a look of triumph. A moment later he was pointing out the couple to his companions, all three ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... merchants. All they have left is, at the expiration of leases, to rack their tenants, which they have done to such a degree, that there is not one farmer in a hundred through the kingdom who can afford shoes or stockings to his children, or to eat flesh, or drink anything better than sour milk or water, twice in a year; so that the whole country, except the Scottish plantation in the north, is a scene of misery and desolation hardly to be matched on this side ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... thus, by amusing the Baronet with false hopes, he kept off his demands, those of others were not less clamorous: his debts increased, his power of paying them diminished; he grew sour and desperate, and in one night lost 3000 beyond what he could produce, or offer ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... labouring and heavy laden; a metaphor taken from beasts drawing a full cart,—which both labour in drawing, and are weary in bearing. But my text speaketh to those that are like undaunted heifers, and like bullocks unaccustomed to the yoke. The same Christ is a sweet and meek Christ to some, but a sour and ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... in a body's pow'r To keep at times frae being sour, To see how things are shar'd— How best o' chiels are whiles in want, While coofs on countless thousands rant, And kenna how ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... words. Never again perhaps will we throw care over the hedge and stride with Mifflin down the Banbury Road, filling the air with laughter and the fumes of Murray's Mellow. But even deeper is the tribute we pay to the sour old elbow of briar, the dented, blackened cutty that has been with us through a thousand soundless midnights and a hundred weary dawns when cocks were crowing in the bleak air and the pen faltered in the hand. Then is the pipe an angel and ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... abroad, and so we went outdoors for a fresh breath. The other woman came out just then to ask after Molly. She invited us into her cabin, and, oh, the little Mormons were everywhere; poor, half-clad little things! Some sour-dough biscuit and a can of condensed milk was everything they had to eat. The mother explained to us that their "men" had gone to get things for them, but had not come back, so she guessed they had got drunk and were likely in jail. She told it in a very ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... musician and friend of Handel, has described the composer's countenance as having been 'full of fire and dignity.' 'His general look,' continues the doctor, 'was somewhat heavy and sour, but when he did smile it was the sun bursting out of a black cloud. There was a sudden flash of intelligence, wit, and good humour beaming in his countenance which I hardly ever saw in any other.' His sense of humour was keen, and he could relish a joke—especially when it was not directed ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay. I don't know what it is,—whether a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is thorough experience of the thanklessness of critical honesty,—but it is a fact, that most writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about the time when they are beginning to grow old. As a general thing, I would not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himself an author, over fifty years of age. At thirty we are all trying to cut our names in big letters ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all the dignity of her eleven years at being carried like a child, but unspeakably happy in her father's favor, looked over his shoulder with a sheepish, smiling, sleepy face, murmuring, "Sour grapes, Split, sour grapes!" ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... One read, looking up occasionally as if ready for a chat, the other watched him incessantly, only turning his eyes away haughtily when his companion happened to raise his. The manager worked away busily until late. Huerlin's face grew more and more sour and hostile, although he was really pleased to think he would no longer be alone in his bedroom. When ten o'clock struck, the manager spoke: "Now you might as well be going to bed, you two." Both ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... timbered. Although the country generally had decidedly improved, inasmuch as that it was more open, devoid of scrub, and the box flats on the river extending further back on each side, it was by no means good. The flats were very scantily grassed, chiefly with sour water grasses and spinifex, and shewed by the flood marks that they must be quite impassable during floods or wet weather. The dreary tea-tree levels might be seen in glimpses through the white box of the flats extending far beyond. Several small swamps ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... failed. He wrote a satirical comedy called Norma. He endeavored to get certain of his works, dramatic and lyric, published in Christiania, but all the schemes fell through. It is certain that 1851 began darkly for the young man, and that his misfortunes encouraged in him a sour and rebellious temper. For the first and only time in his life he meddled with practical politics. Vinje and he—in company with a charming person, Paul Botten-Hansen (1824-69), who flits very pleasantly ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... Louis XVIII. requiring him in plain terms to put a stop to the machinations of his brother. [274] The interference of the foreigner provoked the Ultra-Royalists, and failed to excite energetic action on the part of King Louis, who dreaded the sour countenance of the Duchess of Angouleme more than he did Wellington's reproofs. In the end the question of a settlement of the unfunded debt was allowed to remain open. The Government was unable to carry the sale ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... many troubles came to these outsiders. Their bread was sour, when they took it out of the oven. So was the milk, in their pans. Sometimes they found their beds turned upside down. Gravel stones rattled down into their fireplaces. Their hats and shoes were missing. In fact, they had ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... of the orchestra [Chopin writes to his friend Titus Woyciechowski] showed me sour faces at the rehearsal; what vexed them most was that I wished to make my debut with a new composition. I began with the Variations which are dedicated to you; they were to be followed by the Rondo Krakowiak. We got through ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... forgotten. Her hair, however, was supposed to be a grand specific, and she was allowed to depart, half dead with terror and ill-usage. For more than a year the families of Cromwell and Throgmorton continued to persecute her, and to assert that her imps afflicted them with pains and fits, turned the milk sour in their pans, and prevented their cows and ewes from bearing. In the midst of these fooleries, Lady Cromwell was taken ill and died. It was then remembered that her death had taken place exactly a year and a quarter since she was cursed by Mother Samuel, and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... tilled continuously, for they needs must eat; gathering from the good ground year after year, and generation after generation, till the ground became sour and stale, and was bad ground and bore ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... occurrences. Something else is added to the play of light. If what here presents itself to clairvoyant perception be reported, it may seem an absurdity to many. Within Saturn, intermingled sensations of taste seem to be surging. Sweet, bitter, sour, etc., are perceived throughout the interior of Saturn; while without, in cosmic space, all this expresses itself as tone, ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... glad when spring comes, and takes the razor-edge out of this northern air. We'll have half a month of mud first, I suppose. But "there's never anything without something," as Mrs. Teetzel very sagely announced the other day. That sour-apple philosopher, by the way, is taking her departure to-morrow. And I'm not half so sorry as I pretend to be. She's made me feel like an intruder in my own home. And she's a soured and venomous old ignoramus, for she sneered openly at ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... "Sour!" said Edmonds with such energy that Banneker turned to look at him direct. "The principal owner of Veridian is named Marrineal.... Where you ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... impudent, rude, saucy, precocious. repulsive; uncomplaisant[obs3], unaccommodating, unneighborly, ungallant; inaffable[obs3]; ungentle, ungainly; rough, rugged, bluff, blunt, gruff; churlish, 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. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sour'd a milky queen— (For "bloody" all enlighten'd men confess An antiquated error of the press:) Who, rapt by zeal beyond her sex's bounds, With actual cautery staunch'd the Church's wounds! And tho' he deems, that with too broad a blur We damn the French and Irish massacre, Yet blames them ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... most divine tobacco' they had smoked in a week, and told enormous lies of living for weeks in the Indies on the fumes alone. They affirmed it was an antidote to all poison; that it expelled rheums, sour humours, and obstructions of all kinds. Some doctors were of opinion that it would heal gout[43] and the ague, neutralise the effects of drunkenness, and remove weariness and hunger. The poor on the other ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Ordinarily sour-tempered, and as bitter as wormwood, Mrs. Chevassat had displayed all the amiability of which she was capable, hiding under a veil of tender sympathy the annoying eagerness of her eyes. Her hypocrisy was all wasted. The efforts she made were too manifest not to arouse ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... it brawly, ha'n't I? Dick wi' the lang neb! an' I'll hae two messes o' parritch an' sour milk, an' a barley-cake; I'm waesome ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... have usually been the result of bad management in respect of heat, water, and air, rather than the use of unsuitable soil. But it must not be supposed that we are careless about this matter. Neither a pasty clay, a sour sticky loam, nor a poor sandy or chalky soil will produce fine Cucumbers. On the other hand, rank manure and poor leaf-mould are both unfavourable materials. There is nothing like mellow loam, which can be enriched and modified at ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Vespasien a Titus, e la Vie Seint Nicolas, qe fust nez en Patras. E la Vie Seint Eustace. E la Vie Seint Cudlac. E la Passioun n're Seygneur. E la Meditacioun Seint Bernard de n're Dame Seint Marie, e del Passioun sour deuz fiz Jesu Creist n're Seignr. E la Vie Seint Eufrasie. E la Vie Seint Radegounde. E la Vie Seint Juliane. Un volum, en le quel est aprise de Enfants et lumiere a Lays. Un volum del Romaunce d'a ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the sky, and behold, dangling from one of the topmost branches of a famous big sour apple-tree, a pair of sturdy boy's legs! And there was Sandy, lying ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... tuft of clover, Where rabbit or hare never ran, For its black sour haulm covered over The ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... does not make the whole banquet other than a banquet singularly solid and simple. The critics complain of the sweet things, but not because they are so strong as to like simple things. They complain of the sweet things because they are so sophisticated as to like sour things; their tongues are tainted with the bitterness of absinthe. Yet because of the very simplicity of Dickens's moral tastes it is impossible to speak adequately of them; and Joe Gargery must stand as he stands in the book, a thing too obvious to be understood. But this may ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... the earlier grades the interest in the story may be a sufficient end, but almost from the beginning children will see the lesson intended. They will catch the phrases that have come from fables into our everyday speech. Thus, "sour grapes," "dog in the manger," "to blow hot and cold," "to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs," "to cry 'Wolf!'" will take on more significant meanings. If some familiar proverb goes hand in hand with the story, it will ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Little Arthur had a garden of his own, and in it grew an apple tree, which was then very small, but to his great joy had upon it two fine rosy-cheeked apples, the first ones it had produced. Arthur wished to taste of them very much to know if they were sweet or sour; but he was not a selfish boy, and he says to his grandmother ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... about sixty pounds of dried figs. I suspect the cost of labor will control the drying of figs, for they must be picked by hand. If they fall to the ground they are easily bruised, and the bruised part turns sour. ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... man, grunted sour amusement. "So-called Movement, isn't exactly the correct phrase. ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... then that the white-headed man dropped his eyes for once; and for once the thin, hard lines of his mouth relaxed in a smile that seemed to epitomize all the evil that was in his face, and to give it forth in one sudden sour quintessence. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... Caesar," act i. scene 3, we are inclined to think the way Casca speaks, quite inconsistent with the "sour fashion" which Cassius very justly attributes to him; till we remember that he is speaking in the midst of an almost supernatural thunder-storm: the hidden electricity of the man's nature comes out in poetic forms and words, in response ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... a little knot of crooked old ladies who were righteous overmuch, and several sour old maids whose only occupation seemed to be to make remarks on any person who had anything different in dress, manners, or appearance from what they considered the type of the becoming. If it is not good that man should live alone, ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... the desired firmness and flavor. They cultivated a few acres of corn, tobacco and potatoes, and had a kitchen-garden for "short sass" and "long sass"—leguminous and tuberous plants. Apples are called "sour sass." The chief local currency was red-fox scalps, for which the State of Kentucky paid a reward: the people did not think of raising such vermin for the peltry, as the shrewder speculator of a New England State did. They sold venison and bear-meat at five cents a pound to the lame trader ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... the object of his implacable hatred and abuse, William Warburton. But his early marriage, and his increasing responsibilities, produced pecuniary embarrassments, and these must have tended gradually to sour him against his profession, and to prepare his mind for that rupture with it which ultimately ensued. To support himself and his family, he opened a school, and met with considerable encouragement—although we suspect that his scholars felt something of the spirit ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... letter, but never mind. I am of a patient and forgiving disposition, so I'll overlook it. I have a very funny bit of news to write. Stanley Forde, the hateful old tyrant, has gone and engaged himself to be married again. Just like that! Don't think this is a case of sour grapes. I am de-lighted. I am sorry for the poor party of the second part, though. I know her well. She is a pretty but foolish young person who was in love with Stanley ages before he became betrothed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... specify every character is not necessary; but the upper figure on the dexter side, with a wig like a weeping willow, should not be overlooked. His lemon-like aspect must curdle the blood of all his patients. In the countenances of his brethren there is no want of acids; but, however sour, each individual was in ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... and has been described under various names by various authors. It is found in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, in the state of New York, and in New England, particularly in autumn, when the berries of the sour gum are ripe, on the kernels of which it eagerly feeds. As a singer it has few superiors. It frequently sings at night, and even all night, the notes being extremely clear and mellow. It does not acquire its full colors until at least the second ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... apple is a tame and insipid affair, compared with the intense, sun-colored, and sunsteeped fruit our orchards yield. The English have no sweet apple, I am told, the saccharine element apparently being less abundant in vegetable nature in that sour and chilly climate than in ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... banquet, Agathocles' pot, a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door, a lion in your path, a frog in your chamber, a fly in your ointment, a mote in your eye, a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends, the one thing not needful, the hail in harvest, the ounce of sour in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Londoners, in circumstances which would drive any Australian to tears, or blasphemy, or suicide, or to all three. And I know now that many Londoners wash as frequently as Australians, or nearly so. But my first impression of the appearance of those I saw was an impression of sour, cross, unwashed sadness. And, being an impressionable person, I immediately found an explanatory theory. The essential difference between these folk and people following similarly humble avocations in Sydney, I thought, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... structure, and above all of odour, the primordial quality in this question of scent! There were some that had no appreciable scent beyond a vague fungoid flavour, more or less common to all. Others smelt of turnips, of sour cabbage; some were fetid, sufficiently so to make the house of the collector noisome. Only the true truffle possessed the aroma dear to epicures. If odour, as we understand it, is the dog's only guide, how does he manage to follow that guide amidst all these totally different ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Eames, sharply. "Beasts can't do for themselves on Sundays no more than any other day. And Londoners can't drink sour milk on ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... undergo more in watching little John de Mohun's endeavours at waiting than he would have suffered from doing it himself. And not a few dissatisfied glances were levelled at the favoured stripling, besides the literally as well as figuratively sour glances ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the rest of us, men, women, and livestock, save only these four porkers, are bedevilled with one grief or another; they alone are happy,—and you mean to cut their throats and eat them! It would be more for the general comfort to let them eat us; and bitter and sour morsels ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for a moment stands in the light at the door of a playhouse, One who is dignified, masterly, hard in the pride of his station; Here too, the stateliest of matrons, sour in the pride of her station; With them their daughter, sad-faced and ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... without a word of self-justification. By so doing she mollified her accuser. They put her mother to bed, and Margaret sate by her till she fell asleep, and afterwards till Dixon beckoned her out of the room, and, with a sour face, as if doing something against the grain, she bade her drink a cup of coffee which she had prepared for her in the drawing-room, and stood over her in a commanding attitude as ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... by, and follow through thick an' thin," he continued, "but you ban't. You'm a mean, ill-minded sawl, as would trample on your awn flesh an' blood, if you got the chance. Do your awn dirty work. Who be I that you should call on me to wallow in filth to please your sour spite?" ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... by a very sour and peevish woman next door, who thrust her head out of the window, and exclaimed in a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... could hardly have told why she did as she was asked. Perhaps the very strangeness of the girl made her uncomfortable in her presence; perhaps in her sour and withered heart there was yet some little soundness of pity and comprehension; or perhaps it was only that she had said her say, and was anxious to get to her friends below, and shake from her soul the dust of any possible complicity with circumstance in moulding ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... passion, John fell on his knees and prayed for grace. But prayer was sour and thin upon his lips, and he could only beg that the temptation ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... the source of electricity, what an infinitely small fraction of that which is active do we obtain and employ in our voltaic batteries! Zinc and platina wires one-eighteenth of an inch in diameter and about half an inch long, dipped into dilute sulphuric acid, so weak that it is not sensibly sour to the tongue, or scarcely sensitive to our most delicate test papers, will evolve more electricity in one-twentieth of a minute than any man would willingly allow to pass through his body ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... life at the theatre went as merrily as a marriage bell. The public, of both high and low degree, crowded Drury Lane, and every one was happy excepting sour-faced Rich, who saw with disgust that the plausible, insinuating Brett was fast overshadowing him in the management. How wily Christopher schemed and schemed, and how the gay Colonel was finally compelled to relinquish his portion of the patent altogether, are details that need not ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... quotation, "The soul that sinneth it shall die," is grappling with the system of things which we are endeavoring to overthrow. The children of Israel fell into the sentiments of our modern Calvinists, and claimed that "The fathers had eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth were set on edge." By this proverb they understood that the son was to bear the iniquity of the father. The Lord rebuked them in the language of our topic, and more severely in the context. [See ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... proud of the manner in which he had carried himself through this interview; but he entertained no such feeling. To the lady he had just left he feared that he had been rough and almost cruel. She was not to him the mass of whipped cream turned sour which she may perhaps be to the reader. Though he had been stirred to anger, he had been indignant with circumstances rather than with Mrs. Houghton. But in truth the renewed accusation against his wife made him so wretched that there was no room in his breast for pride. He ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... writes one can see that he does not convince himself. Possibly, he admits, "after all, the grapes are sour"; and when some years after he did travel, how happy he was! At last, he says, triumphantly, "At last we too are crossing the Atlantic. At last the dream of forty years, please God, would be fulfilled, and I should see (and happily not alone), the West Indies and the Spanish ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... in a warm corner so long, I begin to ferment, and ought to be kneaded up in time, so that I may turn out a wholesome loaf. You can't do this; so let me go where it can be done, else I shall turn sour and good for nothing. Does that make the matter any clearer?" And Christie's serious face relaxed into a smile as her aunt's eye went from her to the nicely moulded loaf offered as ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... news and whence?" said the sheriff, who was a small, wiry man, with a sour look, as I thought. Men ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... agent, beside himself, made a rush, his three untidy children, who had been hanging open-mouthed in the background, set up a howl of terror, and his Scotch wife, more pinched and sour than ever, who had been so far a gloomy spectator of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... very difficult to describe to one not familiar with the subject, and it is one which it is very difficult to properly appreciate unless one has learned it by experience. Some judge more by the odor, or the "smell," as they say, of the manure. It must have lost the fresh manure "smell," or the "sour smell," and possess, as they say, a "sweet smell." Sometimes the odor is something like that of manure when spawn has partly run through it. It sometimes has a sweetish smell, or a smell suggestive of mushrooms even when no spawn has ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... soil and with the same care should show such dissimilarity in development, is a riddle whose answer is to be found only in the binding laws of heredity. That a tiny bud inserted under the bark of a well-grown tree can change a sour root to a sweet bough, ought to make one careful of the buds which one grafts on the living trunk of one's tree of life. The young orchard can teach many lessons to him who is willing to be taught; in the hands of him who is not, the schoolmaster has a very sorry time of it, no ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... eyed the newcomer. He was acquainted with nearly every principal Arab within a radius of several hundred miles. This man he never had seen. He was a tall, weather beaten, sour looking man of sixty or more. His eyes were narrow and evil. Captain Jacot did ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... for instance, change the colour of silver in the pocket of those who use them. Mercury produces the same effect; Tartar emetic, rubbed on the pit of the stomach, produces vomiting. Yawning and laughing are infectious; so are fear and shame. The sight of sour things, or even the idea of them, will set the teeth on edge. Small-pox, itch, and other diseases, are contagious; if so, say they, mercurial amulets bid fair to destroy the germ of some complaints when used only as an external ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... city all the rout rode fast, With many a great black-muzzled yellow hound; And then the teeming country-side they passed, Until they came to sour and rugged ground, And there rode up a little heathy mound, That overlooked the scrubby woods and low, That of the beast's lair somewhat ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... the same, Freddy, when you're sent up—if ever you are sent up," remarked Baldry. "Sour grapes!" ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... There was Lady Tankerville going about to-day enquiring of everybody for news, trembling for her brother 'and his brigade.' Late in the day she got Lady Jersey to go with her to Rothschild, whom she saw, and Madame Rothschild, who showed her all their letters. Tankerville, who is a sour, malignant little Whig (since become an ultra-Tory), loudly declares Polignac ought to be hung. The elections here are going against Government, and no candidate will avow that he stands on Government interest, or with the intention of supporting the Duke's Ministry, which looks ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... my leave of Willemott and his wife, with respect as well as regard; convinced that there was no pretended indifference to worldly advantages; that it was not, that the grapes were sour, but that he had learned the whole art of happiness, by being contented with what he had, and by "cutting his coat according to ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... bards and calm historians, You would arise and say 'We will not hear Another word against them!' [The crowd already says this, repeatedly, with great emphasis.] Take the Dialogues Of Plato, for example. You will find A spirit far more truly Christian In them than in the ravings of the sour-soul'd Savonarola. [Prolonged cries of 'Death to the Sour-Souled Savonarola!' Several cobblers detach themselves from the crowd and rush away to read the Platonic Dialogues. Enter SAVONAROLA. The crowd, as he makes his ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... this kind of penance may be still perceived in the east, where the followers of Mahomet have been found to adopt it. In the history given by Hanway of the Persian monarch, Mir Maghmud, we have an account of a process similar to that above, which this prince thought proper to undergo. He was of a sour and cruel disposition, and had been greatly dejected in his spirits; on which account he wanted to obtain some light and assistance from heaven. [712]With this intent Maghmud undertook to perform the spiritual ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... chapter is on the Religion of the Crapulians. They hate Jove because his thunder turns the wine sour and he spoils ripe fruit by raining on it. Their God is ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... where pork gravy and fried cakes would certainly restore his nervous system; otherwise I felt he would land in a padded cell. Nothing he ate agreed with him and I felt sure it must be a bad case of unrequited love. He looked sour upon all the world, mistaking me most of the time for the man who ran it. We were both on the point of getting a divorce when he began to take a bottle of ale regularly at dinner. The first week ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... there were some big trees over there and she couldn't tell whether the night council had prolonged its sitting. Some vague forms were still moving there and she could picture them to herself: Daman, the supreme chief of sea-robbers, with a vengeful heart and the eyes of a gazelle; Sentot, the sour fanatic with the big turban, that other saint with a scanty loin cloth and ashes in his hair, and Tengga whom she could imagine from hearsay, fat, good-tempered, crafty, but ready to spill blood on his ambitious way and already bold enough to flaunt a yellow state umbrella at ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... ones, and twos, and threes; and when I stood bold up to them and said, 'Do you want any marry-me-quick?' they were off like scared rabbits. A great, sweet lady like you wouldn't think it, of course, but it's a godsend at times for a lone woman when she's ugly enough to turn cream sour, and somedeal crooked o' the body into ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... written in a particularly {obscure} fashion, and no good reason (such as time or space optimization) can be discovered, it is often said that the programmer was attempting to increase his job security (i.e., by making himself indispensable for maintenance). This sour joke seldom has to be said in full; if two hackers are looking over some code together and one points at a section and says "job security", the other ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... silly litter, Tears a handful sour and bitter; All a fool the author hold, But their zest who ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... and sour, buttermilk, yoghurt, kefir, albumen cacao, cereals in the form of mush, strained legumes, cooked in soup or milk, all sorts of glutinous soups, farinose dishes prepared from stale rolls, biscuits, zwieback, tender and easily, digestible meats, mashed game meat, chicken, raw ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... waking; for in a couple of days I shall be with you again.—The strangest being on earth!' he continued, turning to his new friend, 'so moping and fretful and gloomy, that he turns all his pleasures sour; or rather there is no such thing as pleasure for him. Instead of walking about with his fellow-creatures in broad daylight and enjoying himself, he gets down to the bottom of the well of his thoughts, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... burden with a different result? Mr. Quiverful was an honest, painstaking, drudging man, anxious indeed for bread and meat, anxious for means to quiet his butcher and cover with returning smiles the now sour countenance of the baker's wife; but anxious also to be right with his own conscience. He was not careful, as another might be who sat on an easier worldly seat, to stand well with those around him, to shun a breath ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... by guarded methods, encouraged her to violent exercise, whereby she became as hard and trim as an antelope. He continued to supply her with all kinds of sour and biting foods and sharp mineral waters, which are the sworn enemies of any sebaceous condition. And now that she was nineteen, almost at the further boundary of the marrying age, and slimmer ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... real Sunday dinner in a real home has got Sherry's flossiest efforts looking like a picnic collation with ants in the pie. You're coming with me, more for my sake than for yours, because the thought of you sitting here, like this, would sour the day ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... work the Scholar's Gambit on him, but he'll get his hooks on a whole bunch of money when he gets down town, so I turn him over to you. 'Fifty thou. to be paid him by Atwood, Strange & Atwood. You know of them—Mining Engineers and Experts, 25 Broad. Let him get the boodle and hand him a sour one. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... crook in their lot. Childlessness was then an especial sorrow, and many a prayer had gone up from both that their solitary home might be gladdened by children's patter and prattle. But their disappointed hope had not made them sour, nor turned their hearts from God. If they prayed about it, they would not murmur at it, and they were not thereby hindered from 'walking in all God's commandments and ordinances blameless.' Let us learn that unfulfilled wishes are not to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the village tradesmen, and a fair proportion of the surrounding farm labourers and shepherds, had fallen into the habit of assembling at the inn at midday, to discuss the hard times and drink the sour weak "war beer" forced on patriotic Britons as an ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... his wife—sour, querulous, austere— came over him, but he said to himself, "She must take to such a child,— women always take to beauty." He bent down and gently pressed his lips to Sidney's forehead: Mrs. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and with satisfaction toward his happy home. In the latter case the hyenas, jackals, and carrion birds seize their chance. The astute hunter can often diagnose the case by the general actions and demeanour of these camp followers. A half dozen sour and disgusted looking hyenas seated on their haunches at scattered intervals, and treefuls of mournfully humpbacked vultures sunk in sadness, indicate that the lion has decided to save the rest of his zebra until to-morrow and is not far away. On the ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... inquisition had dragged along until everybody looked drowsy and tired but Joan, Brother Seguin, professor of theology at the University of Poitiers, who was a sour and sarcastic man, fell to plying Joan with all sorts of nagging questions in his bastard Limousin French—for he was from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unbent the nerves of her stern, fiery, and concentrated soul. Year after year has rolled on to sharpen her hatred—to disgust her with the present—to root her to one bloody memory of the past—to sour and freeze up the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... especially indignant that the Estates should defend the tone of their letters to the Earl on the ground that he had written a piquant epistle to them. "But you can manifestly see their untruths in naming it a piquant letter," said Elizabeth, "for it has no sour or sharp word therein, nor any clause or reprehension, but is full of gravity and gentle admonition. It deserved a thankful answer, and so you may maintain it to them to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a Fox, leaping with all her might, tried to reach a cluster of Grapes upon a lofty vine. When {she found} she could not reach them, she left them, saying: "They are not ripe yet; I don't like to eat them while sour." ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... apples of so rich and spicy a flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a scion from that tree, and I fail not to bring home my pockets full. But perchance, when I take one out of my desk and taste it in my chamber, I find it unexpectedly crude,—sour enough to set a squirrel's teeth on edge and ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... into a sour laughter. "THEY won't let you, Walter! They won't have you down there after they find ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... Beethoven was of a sour temper, according to all accounts, but he wrote his symphonies in the midst of tribulations under which few men would have worked at all. When we have felt something of the spirit that makes work inevitable, it will be as though ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... a couple of old, sour-looking WOMEN were standing on the steps that were built for them to climb a fence, who, seeing so many blacks, inquired what we were taking them for. "To work," was the reply. "The rebels were about to run them South, and we wanted ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... no!" Dundee denied, in all sincerity. Then he made up his mind swiftly. This woman hated the school and all connected with it, had grown more and more sour and envy-bitten every year of the fifteen she had served here—and she liked Nita Leigh Selim better than anyone she had ever met. The opportunity for direct questioning was too miraculous to be ignored. So he changed his tone suddenly ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... "Well, you'll get a sour one if you aren't good!" said Mr. Hixon, with a laugh. "I'm sorry my parrot fooled you, and made you think a child was lost in the ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... getting out, but there's more damn fools in the world than I thought," he remarked, with a sour smile of gratification. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... and call me buxom Gillian of Croydon—not that the good gentleman was ever uncivil, for he would thrust a silver twopennies into my hand at the same time.— Oh! the friend that I have lost!—And I have had anger on his account too—I have seen old Raoul as sour as vinegar, and fit for no place but the kennel for a whole day about it; but, as I said to him, it was not for the like of me, to be affronting our master, and a great baron, about a chuck under the chin, or a kiss, or ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Becky Pettimore, she's got religion. But it don't keep her from being as sour as vinegar, and as bitter ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... them. The old man's description of her as a hag had not been far wrong. She, was as diminutive and weakened as he was ponderous and heavy. She was acid. Her skin was like a pickled apple's; her expression sour, ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... are bordered by elms cruelly cropped, pollarded, and switched. The demand for firewood occasions these mutilations. If I could waft by a wish the thinnings of Abbotsford here, it would make a little fortune of itself. But then to switch and mutilate my trees!—not for a thousand francs. Ay, but sour ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott |
