"Wrangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fish in a basket, and a request on the part of Monkbarns that they might be prepared for dinner. "It would have been long," said Oldbuck, with much self-complacency, "ere my womankind could have made such a reasonable bargain with that old skin-flint, though they sometimes wrangle with her for an hour together under my study window, like three sea-gulls screaming and sputtering in a gale of wind. But come, wend we on our way ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to read the White Paper recently published on the subject of slavery in the West African dominions of Portugal without coming to the conclusion that the discussion has been allowed to degenerate into a rather unseemly wrangle between the Foreign Office officials and the Anti-Slavery Society. There is always a considerable risk that this will happen when enthusiasts and officials are brought into contact with each other. On the one hand, the enthusiasts in any great cause ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... upper half. His stealthy movements and his strange appearance passed unnoticed. There was a noisy emigrant party in the cloak-room, taking out luggage deposited the night before; they were absorbed in their own affairs, and in some wrangle with the officials which involved a good deal of lost ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it is assumed by a young graduate, just settled in his chambers, and flushed with the triumph of his degree of 'B.A.', whose 'fond conceyte' [to borrow Master Francis Thynne's[87] terse style,] is, to wrangle for an asses shadowe, or to seke a knott in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... is right, it is not well Idly to wrangle, but to act with speed. Only, dear friends, in this mine enterprise, Let me have silence from your lips, I pray; For should my mother know of it, sharp pain Will follow yet my ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... the N.E.D. as 'a brawl, wrangle, squabble' and marked obsolete. It seems to differ from its numerous synonyms by the suggestion of what we call a muddle: that is an active wrangling which has ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... People may wrangle all night as to whether the normal healthy child is at heart a mystic or a realist; whether he likes fairy tales because they show him a magical world where flowers can talk and umbrellas are turned into black geese, or because they tell of strange romantic things ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... overworked newspaper men, who have been without rest and food since yesterday afternoon, and the operators who have handled the messages are already preparing for the work of the day. There has been a long wrangle over the possession of a special train for the press between rival newspaper men, and it has delayed the work of others who are ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... a smart shower of stones, if the fancy takes you, or confiscate their property. The informer's tongue has no terrors for you; no burglar will scale or undermine your walls in search of gold; you are not troubled with book-keeping or debt-collecting; you have no rascally steward to wrangle with; none of the thousand worries of the rich distract you. No, you patch your shoe, and you take your tenpence; and at dusk up you jump from your bench, get a bath if you are in the humour for it, buy yourself a haddock or some sprats or a few heads of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... seems that both the seer and thou, O Oedipus, have spoken angry words. This is no time to wrangle but consult How best we ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... a second; "let them wrangle as much as they may with one another, for their dice, their women, or their wine; in this at least they all agree, in trampling down ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Reform and of the extension of the franchise had been revived. Gladstone might speak in favour of the principle in 1864; Russell might introduce a Reform Bill in 1866; a year later Disraeli might 'dish the Whigs'; and Whig and Tory might wrangle over the question who were the friends of the 'working man', but Bright had made his position clear to his friends in 1846. He began a popular movement in 1849 and for the next fifteen years of his life it was the object dearest ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Henry Grey was talked of as a delegate to the Democratic Convention to meet next year. Now her newspapers remain unopened. They are feeding these dissensions North and South. No wonder she is tired of it all. I am with Uncle Jim, but I hate to wrangle over politics like Senator Davis and this new man Lincoln—oh, and the rest. No good comes of it. I can't see it as you ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... only the wrangle of personal ambitions and of faction intrigues. The Chamber is a legislative anarchy from which a few honest and patriotic men occasionally emerge as ministers through a chance combination, to disappear again ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... shelves, for their lump and mass make a fitting foundation. I must say, however, that the habit of the dictionary of secreting itself in the darkest corner of the lowest shelf contributes to general illiteracy. I have known families wrangle for ten minutes on the meaning of a word rather than lift this laggard from its depths. Be that as it may, the novels and poetry should be on the fifth shelf from the bottom, just off the end of the nose, ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... was a joy. Gwen often wished she could play the organ like Winnie, but she was not clever at music. Beatrice had made a great effort to teach her the piano, with poor success, for she was not a docile or attentive pupil, and the lessons generally involved a wrangle between the two sisters, Beatrice losing her patience, and Gwen arguing hotly. Finally Father had put a stop to the lessons altogether, on the ground that it was sheer waste of time, and Gwen was better employed at something else. Lesbia, however, played rather nicely; she ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... 'Landscape,' which I had a glimpse of while a friend of mine was preparing a review, I was greatly interested, and could write and wrangle for a year on every page: one passage particularly delighted me, the part about Ulysses—jolly. Then, you know, that is just what I fear I have come to think landscape ought to be in literature: so there we should be ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... may venture to say in the world. I told you of Firefly's accomplishments; her sister Glow-worm is equal to her. You shall have a large tent where they can dwell together in harmony, for among their other perfections their tongues are never addicted to wrangle. Take them, then, my friend: be ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... extent, to correct, reverse, or affirm, any decree of a state court." This high assertion of federal authority was made by Jackson of Georgia in the course of a long legal argument. The debate did not follow sectional lines, and in general it was not unfairly described by Maclay as a lawyer's wrangle. The bill was put into shape by the Senate, and reached the House toward the close of the session when the struggle over the site of the national capital was overshadowing everything else. It was so generally believed that nothing important ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... this whole Convention; and if we want to consult them, let us adjourn sine die. If we are loyal to our highest convictions, we need not care how far it may lead. For truth, like water, will find its own level. No, friends, in the name of consistency let us not wrangle here simply because we associate the name of woman with human justice and human rights. Although I always like to see opposition on any subject, for it elicits truth much better than any speech, still I think it will be exceedingly inconsistent if, because some ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Confederation, as he put it, Santa Anna considered that he had more of a right to Mexico than ever, and in 1832 he got into a wrangle with Bustamente, who was then occupying the Mexican presidential chair, with the result that Bustamente was banished by Santa Anna's followers, who forthwith made the general president. At this Santa Anna went still further by dissolving the Mexican congress, which action made him ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... of prices and plenty of work, we might probably come out a little ahead the next six months; but it wouldn't pay for the trouble and the capital invested. Then when trade slackened, we should be running at a loss, and there'd be another wrangle over a reduction. We had better ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dust and din, The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare, The odour and sense of life and lust aflare, The wrangle and jangle of unrests, Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win - As from swart August to the green lap of May - To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware In ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... used to say to his reverend brother of Kildrummie, as they went home from the Presbytery together, "who gets unto a wrangle with his farmers about a collection is either an upstart or he is a fool, and in neither case ought he to be a minister of the Church of Scotland." And the two old men would lament the decay of the ministry over their wine in Kildrummie Manse—being ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... celebration of many old and sacred amusements which humanized the young heart, and moulded and prepared it for the reception of those feelings which are interwoven with the very principle of social good. A political wrangle is a poor substitute for the old moral tales of the winter evenings of old Scotland. Even our legends of superstitious fear carried in them the boon of heartfelt obligation, which, when the subject was changed ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... shocking in a clergyman. It is chiefly German historians who complain of Charles as being priest-ridden, and also of neglecting the affairs of the Empire while concentrating too much on Bohemia. This is a matter for historians to wrangle about; personally I consider that by his Golden Bull, which very much restricted the power of the Popes to interfere with the election of Kings of the Germans, and in the protection he extended to priests accused ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... as before he at least distributes whatever is necessary; the tenants can, at last, breathe comfortably, see clearly and not shiver; after ten years of suffocation, darkness and cold they are too well satisfied to wrangle with the proprietor, discuss his ways, and dispute over the monopoly by which he has constituted himself the arbitrator of their wants.—The same thing is done in the material order of things, in relation to the highways, dikes, canals, and structures ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dogmatize, wrangle, quibble, as though he was an autocrat or a pugilist. He thinks and lets think. He is as willing for others to talk their views in their way as he wishes them to be willing that he should ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... my resentment by natural abuse," I mused, "what does it amount to? Are we not accustomed to swear at every member of the human body, the belly, throat, or even the head when it aches, as it often does? Did not Ulysses wrangle with his own heart? Do not the tragedians 'Damn their eyes' just as if they ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Speak your griefs softly, I do know you well. Before the eyes of both our armies here, Which should perceive nothing but love from us, Let us not wrangle; bid them move away; Then in my tent, Cassius, enlarge your griefs, And I will give ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... awry and blight What grew so fair, sole plant of love and light? Who sit where once in crowned seclusion sate The long-proved athletes of debate 210 Trained from their youth, as none thinks needful now? Is this debating club where boys dispute, And wrangle o'er their stolen fruit, The Senate, erewhile cloister of the few, Where Clay once flashed and Webster's cloudy brow Brooded those bolts of thought that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a saloon, dance-hall, and all-night restaurant, flourishing brazenly within a stone's throw of Broadway, and it is counted one of the sights of the city. Upon entering, one may pass through a saloon where white-aproned waiters load trays and wrangle over checks, then into a ball-room filled with the flotsam and jetsam of midnight Manhattan. Above and around this room runs a white-and-gold balcony partitioned into boxes; beneath it are many tables ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... to digress.... How on earth did any living man pull it off as well as that? I remember arguing with a man who very genuinely thought the talent of Shakespeare was exaggerated in public opinion, and discovering at the end of a long wrangle that he was not considering Shakespeare as a poet. But as a poet, then, how on ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... the Ulster amendment proposing to extend redistribution to Ireland was that this departed from the compromise reached at the Speaker's Conference, and moreover ignored the existence of the Convention. He spoke with studied brevity and avoidance of party spirit: but the debate became a wrangle. Mr. Barrie brought back into it some of the Convention's friendlier atmosphere; but his argument was that in the interests of the Convention this ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... place, their value, their significance. But to the poet they seem only the laborious organising of his dreams, the slow and clumsy manufacture of what ought to be instinctive and natural. If the world must grow upon these lines, if men must toil in smoke-stained factories or wrangle in heated Parliaments, then it is well that the framework of life should be made as firm, as compact, as just as it can. But not here does his hope lie; he looks forward to a far different regeneration than can be effected by law and police. He looks forward to a time when ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... are not only imminent but actual. The whole effort to support a Christian education in the public schools is sometimes called a "bootless wrangle." One section is thrown over towards secularism, pure and simple, in recoiling from Church-education exclusive and reactionary. The leading of the little child, the favorite indication of the millennium's ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... I know not: it makes me almost 75 ready to wrangle with mine own honesty. I'll entertain myself like one that I am not acquainted withal; for, sure, unless he know some strain in me, that I know not myself, he would never have boarded me ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... merely mean that their masters have a right to their service or labor. This idea is recognized in the Constitution, and this right is secured. We ask no more. As Mr. Madison, and the whole South, had the thing, he did not care to wrangle about the name. We are told, again and again, that the word slave does not appear in the Constitution. Be it so. We care not, since our slaves are there recognized as "persons held to service" by those to whom "such service ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... an acquaintance did we possess in St. Petersburg, and even Anna Thedorovna and my father had come to loggerheads with one another, owing to the fact that he owed her money. In fact, our only visitors were business callers, and as a rule these came but to wrangle, to argue, and to raise a disturbance. Such visits would make my father look very discontented, and seem out of temper. For hours and hours he would pace the room with a frown on his face and a brooding silence on his lips. ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the term "cut" in a butcher shop, but when travelling in a hill country and looking out of the train window it meant the mountain cut. They said they never heard of the word sod, except used as a noun. She replied that she never heard the word "turf" used as a verb. We continued in an amiable wrangle which finally brought out the fact which even the most obstinate of them was obliged to admit, and that is that when traced to its proper root, the Americans speak purer ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... from the East, and we cannot tell what profundities of astrologic science they carried with them. It is generally acknowledged that when the rough Teutons came they encountered and checked a mental culture higher than their own. But we can only conjecture dimly, and leave the controversialists to wrangle. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... wrangle instantly began, Sanchez objecting to rubies and demanding more emeralds, and Picquet complaining violently concerning the smallness of the diamonds ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... the Sea-eagle, "we will not wrangle about it. But hearken. Hard by in a pleasant nook of the meadows have I set up my tent; and although it be not as big as the King's pavilion, yet is it fair enough. Wilt thou not come thither with me and rest thee to-night; and to-morrow we ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... to college. Other wrangle with little round head rogue's eye Ghezzi. This time about Bruno the Nolan. Began in Italian and ended in pidgin English. He said Bruno was a terrible heretic. I said he was terribly burned. He agreed to this ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... camp," he said, without looking up, "would 'a' come in a holy minute if there'd been hosses for 'em t' ride. But they only had enough saddle-stock along t' wrangle the bulls—an' I took three uh the best they had. Three of us is enough, anyhow. We kain't ride up on them fellers now an' go t' shootin'. They're all together again. I seen, back a ways, where them two hoss-tracks angled back from the spring. They must 'a' laid up at that camp we passed ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... down. What's your favourite brand of wine? Let's settle on it now, so as to have no unseemly wrangle when the waiter comes. I'm rather in awe of the waiter. It doesn't seem natural that any mere human man should be so obviously superior to the rest of us mortals as this waiter is. I'm going to give ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... said Jacqueline, standing up before him, as indomitable in spirit as he. "All your plots and schemes mean nothing to me. My only aim is to take my father away from here, from you and M. d'Epernay, and let you wrangle over your spoil. There are more than four-legged wolves, M. Leroux; there are human ones, and, like the others, when food is scarce they prey ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... efforts, and expectations little is known, save the abortive mission of Messrs. Stevens, Hunter, and Campbell to Fortress Monroe in the last months of the struggle, and about this there has recently been an unseemly wrangle. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... to see the first meeting of their glances upstairs there," mused Marlow. "And perhaps nothing was said. But no man comes but of such a 'wrangle' (as Fyne called it) without showing some traces of it. And you may be sure that a girl so bruised all over would feel the slightest touch of anything resembling coldness. She was mistrustful; she could not be otherwise; ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... spring as men full-armed from the very ground? Moreover, this was no skirmishing with sharpshooters over a vast extent of country, six thousand miles away from home, as it had been in South Africa. This was home itself. There was no right or wrong here, nothing for politicians to wrangle about for party purposes. Here, in a little corner of little England, two mighty hosts were at death-grips day and night, the one fighting for all that is dearest and most sacred to the heart of man; and the other to save itself from what could be ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... run down a whole gossiping of old women, nay, silence the very noise of a belfry, with louder clappers than those of the steeple; and if their unappeasable clamorousness were their only fault it would admit of some excuse; but they are at the same time so fierce and quarrelsome, that they will wrangle bloodily for the least trifle, and be so over intent and eager, that they many times lose their game in the chase and fright away that truth they are hunting for. Yet self-conceit makes these nimble disputants such doughty champions, that armed with three or four close-linked syllogisms, they ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... hope is in Publius! Let him become, let him become a tribune by all means, if for no other reason, yet that you may be brought back from Epirus! For I don't see how you can possibly afford to miss him, especially if he shall elect to have a wrangle with me! But, seriously, if anything of the sort occurs, you would, I am certain, hurry back. But even supposing this not to be the case, yet whether he runs amuck or helps to raise the state, I promise myself a fine spectacle, if ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the second, no maid would covet him whom fate had given to another, it were too fatiguing, or if such a thing DID happen, then one of them would waive his claims, for no man or woman ever born was worth a wrangle, and it is allowed us to ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... with which he had been lettering his books on the table, and, drawing a chair up to the fire, he sat moodily staring into the embers. So it was all to begin again—the long wrangle and jar of their childhood. Why had he broken silence and taken this burden once more upon his shoulders? He had a moment of passionate regret. It seemed to him more than he could bear. No gratitude, no kindness; and this ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fat soldier attempted to pilfer a horse from a dooryard. He planned to load his knap-sack upon it. He was escaping with his prize when a young girl rushed from the house and grabbed the animal's mane. There followed a wrangle. The young girl, with pink cheeks and shining eyes, ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... children, the biggest not twelve years old, came dancing and leaping round something which they dragged by a string. Now one of the hindmost would burl it onward with a kick, now another, amid screams of childish laughter, tripped headlong over the cord; now at the crossways they stopped to wrangle and question which way they should go, or whose turn it was to pull and whose to follow. At last they started afresh with a whoop, the leader singing and all plucking the string to the cadence of the air. Their plaything leapt and dropped, sprang ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... a direct simple issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether a measure of government be right or wrong, is no matter of fact, but a mere affair of opinion, on which men may, as they do, dispute and wrangle without end. But whether the individual thinks the measure right or wrong, is a point at still a greater distance from the reach of all human decision. It is therefore very convenient to politicians, not to put the judgment of their conduct ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... prisoners, including Sir Edward Merewether, Governor of Sierra Leone, and his wife. They were homeward bound from his African post for a vacation when the Moewe took the Appam. All of the persons aboard, save the Germans, were released and the ship interned. Then followed a long wrangle as to the status of the vessel, Germany claiming the right of asylum for a prize by the terms of an old Prussian treaty with the United States. Great Britain protested this claim and demanded that the ship be released. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... history, in which he was deeply read, that the place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is written about them, but by what is written in them; and that an author whose works are likely to live, is very unwise if he stoops to wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. He always maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept up only by being beaten back, as well as beaten forward, and which would soon fall ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... spent (As Courts must wrangle to decide well). Religion to St. Luke's was sent, And Royalty ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... should be so simple and so reasonable that it will commend itself to every considerate reader or library assistant. All questions of doubt or dispute as to the observance of any regulation, should be decided at once, courteously but firmly, and in a few words. Nothing can be more unseemly than a wrangle in a public library over some rule or its application, disturbing readers who are entitled to silence, and consuming time that should be given to the ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... tears to her eyes, and almost to his, till he suddenly declared she had stolen a card, and with that they came to soft blows and laughing again. So did the two sit and wrangle, seizing the pack out of turn, feigning rage at being cheated, until he juggled to make her win three times out of five; and when chance had thus settled for the guitar, they played for kisses, and so forgot the cards at last. And at last Genesmere began ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... attack of tertian fever. The next record of consequence is from the "Volage" frigate, at sea, June 29, 1811, when he writes in a despondent strain to Hodgson, that he is returning home "without a hope, and almost without a desire," to wrangle with creditors and lawyers about executions and coal pits. "In short, I am sick and sorry; and when I have a little repaired my irreparable affairs, away I shall march, either to campaign in Spain, or back again to the East, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... is the problem in our modern society which is most difficult of solution; that it is the ground upon which earnest and zealous men unhappily too often, and in too many countries meet, not to co-operate but to wrangle; while the poor and the ignorant multitudes around them are starving and perishing for lack of knowledge. Well, then, how has Upper Canada addressed herself to the execution of this great work? How has she sought to ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... profession as my family has done. I think if I had, such folly, or rather stupidity, would have exasperated me too much. Besides, I should have been much less useful to the theater, for I should have lived in an everlasting wrangle with authors, actors, and managers on behalf of the mythological bodies supposed to preside over tragedy and comedy, and I should have killed myself (or perhaps been killed), and that quickly, with ineffectual protests ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a trial by cold, starvation, and death, fit to stand for awesomeness beside Greely's later sorrowful story. From the very outset evil fortune had attended the "Jeannette." Planning to winter on Wrangle Land—then thought to be a continent—DeLong caught in the ice-pack, was carried past its northern end, thus proving it to be an island, indeed, but making the discovery at heavy cost. Winter in the pack was attended ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Vatican Council. A layman, having expressed his disquietude at the unruly behavior of the prelates, the Pontiff replied that it had ever been thus at ecclesiastical councils. "At the outset," he went on to explain, "the members behave as men, wrangle and quarrel, and nothing that they say or do is worth much. That is the first act. The second is ushered in by the devil, who intensifies the disorder and muddles things bewilderingly. But happily there is always a third act in which the Holy Ghost descends ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... present. The wife would be indignant at the suggestion of good money being thus wasted. "No, John, dear," she would unselfishly reply, "you need the lessons more than I do. It would be a shame for me to take them away from you," and they would wrangle upon the subject for the ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... we are never satisfied with our opinions till they are ratified and confirmed by the suffrages of the rest of mankind. We dispute and wrangle for ever; we endeavour to get men to come to us when we ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... "I may not wrangle, especially with a woman," replied Ithiel, who seemed ill at ease; "but if my first words are true, this is true also, that those same rules enjoin upon us hospitality, and above all, that we must not turn away the helpless or ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... slide on my cellar-door do not disturb me a bit. I'm different from Carlyle—you know he had a noise-proof room where he locked himself in. Now, when a huckster goes by, crying his wares, I open the blinds, and often wrangle with the fellow over the price of things. But the rogues have got into a way lately of leaving truck for me and refusing pay. Today an Irishman passed in three quarts of berries and walked off pretending to be mad because I offered to pay. When he was gone, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... they are transplanted to London.' Piozzi Letters, i. 326. He is pleasantly alluding to the fact that he was a Staffordshire man. In the Dialogue in The Gent. Mag. for 1791, p. 502, Mrs. Knowles says that, the wrangle ended thus:—'Mrs. K. "I hope, Doctor, thou wilt not remain unforgiving; and that you will renew your friendship, and joyfully meet at last in those bright regions where pride and prejudice can never enter." Dr. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... cathedral, or a busy town piled up, with church and castle high aloft and a still, transparent lake below. But through it all, and underlying it all, is Bellevue street, with the dirty men and women, who scream and shout at each other and wrangle in its filthy courts and alleys. Still, God knows that I don't repent, and that I wish my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... his work? Has not the passion for worm-eaten speculations yet made victims enough? Are there not many among us who perceive that luxury is a delusion, that if life is a battle, it is not a slaughter-house where ferocious beasts wrangle over their prey, but a wrestling with the divine, under whatever form it may present itself—truth, beauty, or love? Who knows whether this expiring nineteenth century will not arise from its winding-sheet to make amende honorable ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... argument as this: "If he who spake first has plainly proved his cause, the second is not to be heard, for the question is at an end; and if he has not proved it, it is the same case as if being cited he did not appear, or appearing did nothing but wrangle; so that, whether he has proved or not proved his cause, the second is not to be heard." And yet he who made this dilemma has written against Plato's Commonweal, dissolved sophisms, and exhorted his scholars to learn logic, as enabling them to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... he was arrested, brought from the States by Mr. Carpenter and treated while in his custody, and said that he expected to take his chances on being sent to jail or penitentiary. When his testimony was finished a wrangle took place between opposing counsel as to whether or not prisoners should be admitted to bail. Mr. Duffy opposed in so far as Howarth was concerned, because he was an American, and because once at liberty he would approach the other conspirators and frustrate the ends of justice. Finally ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... passed about the quotation, saying I was willing to take Stuart for it if he had given me the page, but as for "Points of Controversy," I could take nothing on its authority, for I repudiated the book and its author as authority in anything. This provoked a personal wrangle with Miller, who was close to me, after the debate—for the day was over. The excitement was intense as we passed and repassed our compliments. Finally the house refused to hear Mr. M. Even his own brethren rose as ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... the mail bags slung over one thin shoulder, he had made the most of that daily entrance upon the stage of publicity. There was always a haughty aloofness in his eyes that killed any word of greeting upon the lips of these same beholders with whom, a few hours later, he was to sit and wrangle in bitterest intimacy; a certain brisk importance of step which was a palpable rebuke to ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... which exhausted the victors almost as much as it exhausted the vanquished, and left Hindustan so completely plundered as to afford no further incitements to invasion, little other immigration took place; and the effete and worn-out inhabitants were left to wrangle, in their own degenerate way, over the ruined greatness of their fathers. The anarchy and misery to the mass of the population that marked these times have been partly shown to ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... three different points. The paths (indications) of those three that constitute the foundation of Righteousness have each been laid down. Do thou act according to the instructions laid down. Thou shouldst never wrangle about Righteousness and then seek to have those doubts solved into which thou mayst arrive. O chief of the Bharatas, let no doubts like these ever take possession of thy mind! Do thou obey what I say without scruple ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... thoroughly illogical, of course; it left the question whether slaves are population or chattels for theorizers to wrangle over, and for future events to decide. It was easy for James Wilson to show that there was neither rhyme nor reason in it: but he subscribed to it, nevertheless, just as the northern abolitionists, Rufus King and Gouverneur Morris, joined ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Never did rival lawyers, after a wrangle at the bar, meet with more social good humor at a circuit dinner. The hunting season over, all past tricks and maneuvres are forgotten, all feuds and bickerings buried in oblivion. From the middle of June to the middle of September, all trapping is suspended; ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... going into the schoolmaster's house, and I heard a fierce wrangle going on between a man and a woman near the cottages to the west, that lie below the road. While I was listening to them several women came down to listen also from behind the wall, and told me that the people ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... benefit results from such discussion. The interest of the people is quickened, and opportunity is afforded for explaining, defending, and enforcing the truth as it is in Jesus. Sometimes the questioner is neither serious nor reasonable, and then the danger is of the discussion turning into a wrangle, which does more harm than good. Prominent transgressors in this line are the Pundas, specially interested in the mela, who do all in their power to set the people against us. At this first great ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... which he chanced to find himself. With his wife he was overbearing; with his brother he was insolent; with his apprentice he was sullen; and with his associates at the old Falcone he played the demagogue. The reason of these phases was very simple. His wife could not oppose him, Don Paolo would not wrangle with him, Gianbattista imposed upon him by his superior calm and strength of character, and, lastly, his socialist friends applauded him and nattered his vanity. It is impossible for a weak man to appear always the same, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... lightly upstairs to his room, leaving the others, most of whom had been drinking somewhat freely, to wrangle about his proceedings. It ended in two of them ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... crossbow bolt had whizzed past his head when least expected. And it was with a trembling voice that he replied: "Nay, good father Glover, thou takest too much credit for thy grey hairs. Consider, good neighbour, thou art too old for a young martialist to wrangle with. And in the matter of my Maudie, I can trust thee, for I know no one who would be less willing than thou to break the peace ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... time to keep silence," and when men wrangle by the mouth with no certainty that they mean the same thing while using the same word, it perhaps were as well if ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... nice distinction or that. There could be no doubt that Christ had died and risen, and was alive for evermore. There was no place for controversy or opinions when here was a mere simple, indisputable, but most awful fact. Did you want to wrangle about the aspect of the fact, the evidence, the what not? St. Francis had no mission to argue with you. "The pearl of great price—will you have it or not? Whether or not, there are millions sighing for it, crying for it, dying for it. To the poor ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... region, and, after that, abundant meat in many a hut and cave for many a day. The hunters were noisy and excited. A group pounced upon the broken tusk—for a mammoth tusk, or a piece of one, was a prize in a cave dwelling—and there was prospect of a struggle, but grim voices checked the wrangle of those who had seized upon this portion of the spoil and it was laid aside, to be apportioned later. The feast was the thing to be ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... realized, but the governor would not be bothered with any extra work whilst the heat spell lasted, and he had been warned that the "Holy Office" would claim the Englishmen as heretics and blasphemers. This would mean a lengthy wrangle between the military and ecclesiastical authorities, and his sun-dried excellency was not in the mood or condition to preside over heated arguments. The fellows were safe, he said, and would have time to think over their sins, political and religious. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... slavery days. The brutal O'Donnell was governor-general then. He found Cuba in its usual state of sullen tranquillity, and no chance seemed to offer by which he could make a name for himself, so he magnified every village wrangle into an insurrection. It looked well in his reports when he set forth the skill and ease with which he had suppressed the uprisings, and, as he did not scruple to take life in punishment for slight offences, nor to retaliate on a community for the misconduct of a single ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... a furious wrangle over this point; but the prosecuting attorney succeeded in having question ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the poor class, and that his mother got her living by washing linen for strangers. When the sailors heard this they wondered that he should look so handsome, and bethought them how they might keep him with them. They began to wrangle as to who should be his master, but as soon as Bova perceived their intention, he told them not to quarrel for his sake, for that he would serve them ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... woke full of hope and eager to be off. Chryseros brought our wallets and we packed them with everything they were to hold except most of the food. We had a long wrangle over the money, as Chryseros wanted to force on us more silver than I thought it safe ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... French war, 1754-1760, the utter incompatibility between imperial theories on the one hand and colonial political habits on the other, could no longer be disregarded. In the midst of the struggle, the legislatures continued to wrangle with governors over points of privilege; they were slow to vote supplies; they were {27} dilatory in raising troops; they hung back from a jealous fear that their neighbour colonies might fail to do their share; they ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... they smell, they see better than we. To come to speech, they have it questionless, Although we understand them not so well. They bark as good old Saxon as may be, And that in more variety than we. For they have one voice when they are in chase: Another when they wrangle for their meat: Another when we beat them out of doors. That they have reason, this I will allege; They choose those things that are most fit for them, And shun the contrary all that they may.[64] They know what is for their own diet best, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... house of convocation still continued to wrangle with their superiors; and though they joined the upper house in a congratulatory address to the queen on the success of her arms, they resolved to make application to the commons against the union. The queen being apprised of their design, desired the archbishop to prorogue them for three weeks, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... it? What's any lovers' quarrel after it's over?" he snarled, pacing the room angrily. "A silly wrangle over the size of the moon or the depth of a river, maybe—it might as well be, so far as its having any real significance compared to the years of misery that follow them! Never mind the quarrel! So far as I am concerned, I am willing to say there was no quarrel. Pendleton, I must ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... honest old, HONEST old idiot, there are scores of families here in this parish, within a stone's throw, that squabble, wrangle, all but politely tear each other's eyes out, every day of their earthly lives. It's perfectly natural. Where should we poor old busybodies be else. Peace on earth we bring, and it's mainly between husband ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... if he did, perhaps I should not love him: But we sit and talk, and wrangle, and are friends; when we are together, we never hold our tongues; and then we have always a noise of fiddles at our heels; he hunts me merrily, as the hound does the hare; and either this is love, or I ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Fundy to Narragansett Bay.[9] In September, 1623, Gorges arrived at Plymouth attended by an Episcopal minister, William Morell, and a company of settlers, whom he planted at Wessagusset. He remained in New England throughout the winter, and in the effort to exert his authority had a long wrangle with Weston. In the spring of 1624 he received news from his father that discouraged his further stay. It seems that in March, 1624, a committee of Parliament, at the head of which was Sir Edward Coke, had reported the charter of the Council for New England as a national grievance, which so discouraged ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... one Truth in divers forms. But the inner Truth is always the same, and the source from which it comes is the same, even though the external phases may appear to be different and even contradictory. It is foolish for men to wrangle over the question of the superiority of one teacher or one form of teaching to another, for the teacher is always one sent by the Great Brotherhood of Adepts, and in all its important points, in its ethical and moral principles, the teaching ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... full of gesticulation, the noise and confusion was tremendous. I had not seen this for we were treating under fire and all were silent, those who had the best nerves were the speakers. If you want to make peace treat under fire; for me it will become a maxim. However after about two hours' wrangle, the General came up to me and said, "Are you not 'accord' with me? that you do not speak," so much had I gained of his mind that he would not act without me. In short I may now say, the 48 hours were granted. The deputation went to ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury |
