"Wrangling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... us went out to show a couple of classy boys from a big prep school how to register and find a room, and pick out textbooks; and incidentally how to distinguish a crowd of magnificent young student leaders from eleven wrangling bunches of miscellaneous thickheads, who wouldn't like anything better than to rope in a couple of good men to teach them the ways of the world. We were succeeding in this to the queen's taste, having accidentally dropped in on our porch with the pair, when young Crawford ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... to walk with Rachel. As he sauntered about the shop, assisting and directing at the extras and replates, he vaguely forgot her. Word had come from the chief to hold the paper open until nine o'clock. If Paris failed to fall by nine everybody could go home and spend the rest of the night wrangling with his wife or looking at a movie. If it fell by nine there would be ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... She swept into the quiet village life of Beulah like a salt sea breeze. She infused a new spirit into the bleak church "sociables" and made them positively agreeable functions. The choir ceased from wrangling, the Sunday School plucked up courage and flourished like a green bay tree. She managed the deacons, she braced up the missionary societies, she captivated the parish, she cheered the depressed and depressing old ladies and cracked jokes with ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... littleness is not devoid of a certain breadth; and best of all he liked the vast interests at stake, the large questions at issue, the fortunes of states, the fate of dynasties! To come down from the great game, as played by kings and kaisers, to the small traffic of a local government wrangling over a road-bill, or disputing over a harbour, seemed too horrible to confront, and he eagerly begged the Minister to allow him to return to his post, and not risk a hard-earned reputation on a ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... drag, and told you "to stow all that trash"; her childish recollections were of a stifling lean-to with the odor of pigsty and straw-yard, pork for a feast once a week, starvation all the other six days, kicks, slaps, wrangling, and a general atmosphere of beer and wash-tubs; she hated her past, and loved her cigar on the drag. The Zu-Zu is fact; the moralists' pictures ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... opposed, and the wrangling was louder than before. Master Ritter, who had plucked up heart, began to steal warily from the hillside, hoping to escape in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... spoke first—before James could begin his angry accusations. "What were you wrangling about ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... "Wild Bill". This wrangling over German and British gave him a pain in the guts. Couldn't they see, the big stiffs, that they were playing the masters' game? Quarrelling among themselves, when they ought to be waking up the workers, getting ready for the real fight. And wizened-up little Stankewitz broke in again—that ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... men, in whom is the hope of our country, who are to bring fame to our groves and forests, who, alas! even now neglect the chase, may receive thereby a new impulse to despise it, if they see that those who should give examples to others, bring back from the chase only wrangling and quarrels. Have also due regard for my grey hairs, for I have known greater sportsmen than you, and I have often judged between them as an arbitrator. In the Lithuanian forests who has been equal to Rejtan, either in stationing a line of beaters, or in himself encountering ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... otherwise. I am sure I have no ends to serve of my own in what I did,—it could be no advantage to me that had firmly resolved not to marry; but I thought it might be an injury to you to keep you in expectation of what was never likely to be, as I apprehended. Why do I enter into this wrangling discourse? Let your father think me what he pleases, if he ever comes to know me, the rest of my actions shall justify me in this; if he does not, I'll begin to practise on him (what you so often preached to me) to neglect the report of the world, and ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... abruptly to one of the windows, hearing a pitiable wrangling on the theme. My grandfather vowed she had grown wiser, my father protested that she was willing and anxious; Janet was appealed to. In a strangely-sounding underbreath, she said, 'The princess ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... revealer and forerunner respectively. If he is built like Huxley, he will take the secular view, in spite of all that a pious family can do to prevent him. The important thing now is that the Gladstones and Huxleys should no longer waste their time irrelevantly and ridiculously wrangling about the Gadarene swine, and that they should make up their minds as to the soundness of the secular doctrines of Jesus; for it is about these that they may come to blows in ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... deprived him of his arms. The cupidity of these men was aroused by a splendid gold chain which he wore, and one of them snatched it from his neck. Presently, however, forgetting the maxim that there is honour even amongst thieves, the two bandits began wrangling for the possession of the booty, and whilst they were so occupied Hunniades managed to recover his sword, and, engaging them in fight, he ran one through the body, whereupon ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... attoning two most wrangling neighbours, They had no mony, therefore I made even. Come, let's go in and eat, truly ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... in wrangling spent (As Courts must wrangle to decide well). Religion to St. Luke's was sent, And ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... shame were jointly agitating. Seeing that no dependence was to be placed in him for protection, the farmers of the revenue, forming themselves into a wedge, rushed into the void space occasioned by the removal of the people for the purpose of causing disturbance, wrangling at the same time with the people and the tribunes. The affair had now almost proceeded to violence, when Fulvius Flaccus, the consul, addressing the tribunes, said, "Do you not see that you are degraded to the common rank, and that an insurrection will be the result, unless you speedily ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... has all his materials ready, and sees the great snake come gliding, gliding—I turn the situation over to the children. What did he do with the rope, the snare and the horn? They work it out each in his own way. There is a mighty wrangling all around ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... nights I sought my hammock as soon as the daylight faded, and lay there thinking of them all at home. To open my eyes was to look on a mob of crouching figures by the distant fire, wrangling as it seemed—for I could not hear them—over their cards and dice. But—close my eyes, and in a moment I was in Jeanne Falla's great kitchen at Beaumanoir, with Carette perched up on the side of the green-bed, swinging her feet and knitting ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... save him but cutting away the living flesh as I would carve the wing of a bustard; and Dame Idonea says that is just the way King Coeur de Lion died, and the Princess is weeping, and the wound will not stop bleeding; and Hamlyn is gone to Acre for a surgeon, and they are all wrangling, and Dame Idonea boxed my ears at last, and said I was gaping there." The boy absolutely burst into sobs and tears, and at the same moment a growl arose among the archers, of "Curses on the Moslem hounds! Not one shall escape! Death to ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... end the live question would rear its head and come hissing from among the quiet graves; and Dick Wythe, who loved his fight, or Plaintain Dudley, in his ruffled shirt, would fall back suddenly to make way for the wrangling figures of the slaveholder and ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... The wrangling went on amongst these old derelicts sitting on the sunny side of the Doane home for old ladies. Their lives were filled with little jealousies and quarrels over petty details. They lived in the past and exalted it until they themselves had grown to believe that they had ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... which was rejected by a majority of twelve; and this victory was followed with a protest of the vanquished. Notwithstanding this defeat, they prosecuted their scheme of giving advice; and after much wrangling and declamation, the house agreed in an address of remonstrance, advising and beseeching his majesty, That the commanding officer of the British forces should be an Englishman; that English officers might take rank of those ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... offering land on easy terms to rich and poor alike, attracted good colonists in large numbers. Within ten years there were 10,000 people, mostly Quakers, in Pennsylvania and the Delaware counties. Political wrangling, somewhat difficult to understand and scarcely worth unraveling, distracted the colony of brotherly love for many years; but from the beginning the province prospered. The settlers were as thrifty as New England Puritans, and they had ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... home. At noon my father came to see my house now it is done, which is now very neat. He and I and Dr. Williams (who is come to see my wife, whose soare belly is now grown dangerous as she thinks) to the ordinary over against the Exchange, where we dined and had great wrangling with the master of the house when the reckoning was brought to us, he setting down exceeding high every thing. I home again and to Sir W. Batten's, and there sat a good while. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... possible, "Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail." It is a curious coincidence that the name of the principal character of this opera was Constanze, and that she was a model of devotion through all trials. Once away from the wrangling mother-in-law, the young couple enjoyed domestic bliss to the height. Later, mother Weber seems to have reformed and to have become a welcome guest in Mozart's house, where Aloysia herself became also a ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... true, the good and the evil, the lambent light of heaven and the sulphurous shadows of hell meet and blend. Nowhere, yet everywhere, floats the white veil and flaming ensign of the modern Mokanna— and we stand wrangling about the proper cut of a collar; debating whether the Gadarenes, whose swine the outcast devils drowned, were Jews or Gentiles; dogmatizing anent the proper form of baptism; doubting with which hand we should tip the hat; wondering if Joseph's coat were a sack or a swallow-tail—ninety-and-nine ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... hand, and boarding us tied our arms behind us and carried us to their craft. They then tare the veil from my face and forthwith desired to possess me, each saying to other, "I will enjoy this wench." On this wise wrangling and jangling ensued till right soon it turned to battle and bloodshed, when moment by moment and one by one the ravishers fell dead until all were slain save a single pirate, the bravest of the band. Quoth he to me, "Thou shalt fare with ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Ground. Like "the noble Duke of York" in the old catch-song familiar at that day, Sheriff Ten Eyck had marched his seven hundred or more men up to James Breckenridge's door only "to march them down again!" 'Siah Bolderwood's idea had taken all the desire for fight out of the Yorkers, and after some wrangling between the personal attendants of the sheriff and the volunteer army, the whole crew marched away, leaving the farm to the undisputed possession ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... wrangling, Mr. Penrose stepped aside and commenced the climb towards the ledge. The snow lay white and undisturbed on the shelving surface, and there was no sign of recent movements. Looking round, he discovered the mouth of the recess. There it stood, black and forbidding. In another moment ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... interfere. If I did, I should be rather against you than otherwise."—"Sire, my brother and myself had intended to settle in France, but how can we live in a country where our mother cannot visit us?"—"I do not care for that. I do not advise you to come here. Go to England. The English like wrangling politicians. Go there, for in France, I tell you candidly, that I should be rather against you than ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Prudent and Phil Evans, who were not men to waste time in wrangling when nothing could come of it, agreed upon doing something. It was evident that escape was not to be thought of. But if it was impossible for them to again set foot on the terrestrial globe, could they not make known to its inhabitants what had ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... it had been proposed that an amendment to the articles of confederation should endow Congress with the power of levying customs-duties and appointing the collectors; and by the summer of 1786, after endless wrangling, twelve states had consented to the amendment. But, in order that an amendment should be adopted, unanimous consent was necessary. The one delinquent state, which thus blocked the wheels of the confederacy, was New York. She had her little system of duties all nicely arranged ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... figures of the dancers as they moved. This was the most sentimental impression I think I had yet received, for a child is somewhat deaf to the sentimental. In the last, a poet, who had been tragically wrangling with his wife, walked forth on the sea-beach on a tempestuous night and witnessed the horrors of a wreck.[7] Different as they are, all these early favourites have a common note—they have all ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in irrelevant interbranch wrangling is precious time taken from the intelligent initiation and adoption of coherent policies for ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... He waited awhile, hoping they would get tired; but he got tired out first. You see, it comes natural to a spook to sleep in the daytime, but a man wants to sleep nights, and they wouldn't let him sleep nights. They kept on wrangling and quarreling incessantly; they manifested and they dark-seanced as regularly as the old clock on the stairs struck twelve; they rapped and they rang bells and they banged the tambourine and they threw the flaming banjo about the house, and worse ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... from shore. 'Have a care! that case holds liquor— Stop the boat—I'm sick—oh Lord!' 'Sick, ma'am, damme, you'll be sicker Ere you've been an hour on board.' Thus are screaming Men and women, Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks; Here entangling, All are wrangling, Stuck together close as wax.— Such the general noise and racket, Ere we ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the wrangling that went on, Leslie Cairns honestly tried to keep her temper. The straw that broke the particular camel's back in her case, however, was an extended argument between Dulcie Vale and Natalie Weyman regarding the refreshments. These two, with Harriet Stephens, ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... were wrangling somewhere ahead. Casey could hear their raised voices mingled in a confused rumbling in the pent walls of the drift. Casey thought they passed through a doorway, and that Joe closed a heavy door behind them, but ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... snug home he evermore obtained What flowed from love—a holy reverence. Of harsh commands his children ne'er complained; Wrangling and discord both were banished thence. His much loved wife possessed some rare good sense, And seconded his efforts for their good. She never sought in earnest or pretence To lower him before his flesh and blood; While to increase their comforts she ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... be found nowadays who deny the fact of the birth, life, mission, and death of Jesus of Nazareth. But the interpretations read into the fact differ so widely as to result in almost numberless sects, and an endless war of words. All this theological wrangling may be focalized at one point, almost on a single word. Did Jesus of Nazareth differ in kind or in Degree, from the ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... yet touched the cause they knew, And are wrangling over its direful flood, They promise to build me better than new, And stop the drain on my famished blood; But lest they're careful while building the dam They'll scoop out a grave ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... lost all that country road, and now I'm on the fringe of London. And I might have loitered all the morning! Ugh! Thank Heaven, sir, you have not the irritable temperament, that you are not goaded to madness by your endogenous sneers, by the eternal wrangling of an uncomfortable soul and body. I tell you, I lead a cat and dog life—But what IS the use of talking?—It's all of ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... had come over to see our boy. Together we had prepared supper and were waiting for Clyde, who had gone to the post-office. Soon he came, and after the usual friendly wrangling between him and Mrs. Louderer we had supper. Then they began their inevitable game of cribbage, while I sat near the fire with Baby on my lap. Clyde was telling us of a raid on a ranch about seventy-five miles away, in which the thieves had driven off thirty head of fine horses. There ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... have been the product of no other land than Norway, and far less than other authors could he thrive in any but his native soil. In the year 1880, when the rumor spread through the German press that Bjoernson, weary of continual wrangling at home, was about to settle in Germany, he wrote to me:—"In Norway will I live, in Norway will I lash and be lashed, in Norway ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the contrary, you suppose that the same matter may sometimes think, and sometimes not think, according to the various wrangling and configurations it may receive, I will not tell you in this place that matter cannot think; and that one cannot conceive that the parts of a stone, without adding anything to it, may ever know themselves, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... so far as time and earth are concerned, trade endures from first to last and everywhere. God married it to truth with the fiat that men should eat bread in the sweat of their faces. From that moment men have been wrangling in every court of conscience and society to secure decrees of divorce. How manifold and multitudinous the tricks, dodges, and evasions to which men have resorted to be rid of the work which conditions bread. [Laughter and applause.] The great ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the prospect of a new house on the town land tolerably assured; but Oct. 19, 1795, everything was completely upset. On that day a meeting was called "to know the sense of the town whether the former vote in placing said meeting-house should be altered." After some wrangling, it was decided by a vote of forty-four to thirty "to place the new meeting-house at the crotch of the roads, near Capt. William Brown's house" (very near the present junction of Main, Mechanic, and Academy ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... forestry, and the like. Wait till he reduces the staff of the army and the secretaries. I know Delgratz and Kosnovia, and he does not. He will win the people, it is true; but he will alienate the men who can twist the people this way and that to suit their own purposes. Before a month is out he will be wrangling with the Assembly. See if I am not a prophet. Oh, yes, Julius, you and I must go to Delgratz. No hurry; slow but sure. I'll break the journey at Vienna. We must sound Stampoff too. But before I go, I should like to be sure that the girl has ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... until its fountainhead is found in a thread of water streaming from a cleft in the rocks, so a great national movement may sometimes be followed until its starting-point is found in the cell of a monk or the studies of a pair of wrangling professors. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... this constant wrangling, and I keep away from them as much as possible and don't give any cause ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... careless to repay, And usury still watching for its day: Hence perjuries in every wrangling court; And war, the needy bankrupt's last ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... myself to work though I feel unspeakably slack; wrangling with the War Office about doctors, nurses, orderlies and ships for our August battles. A few days ago I sent the following cable and they want to cut ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... of discussion and some wrangling, a bright idea flashed across the brain of Van Ormon's brother. He proposed that their prisoner should be taken to a pool that was some distance down the gorge; that he be tied to a tree by the side of the pool, and left there for ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... when the driver declared he could go no farther, and proceeded to make camp by the roadside, not far from a couple of yurts. A light shone out, and there was the sound of angry voices and wrangling, but I could not find out what was the matter. Nicolai's German always gave out, as the Indian babu said his presence of mind did, "in the nick of time." Finally, the Russians sulkily turned their horses loose and set ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... traffic with the folk for himself. Ye are my sons and I am your mother; wherefore let us abide as we are, lest your brother come back and we be disgraced." But they accepted not her words and passed the night, wrangling with each other. Now it chanced that a Janissary[FN291] of the King's guards was a guest in the house adjoining Judar's and heard them through the open window. So he looked out and listening, heard all the angry ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the smallest trifle slip from his grasp to be given to another, was a matter of no small difficulty in adjusting. If the Dulbahantas did not succeed in skinning me of all my effects, they naturally thought the next tribe would; and a whole day was consumed in wrangling and disputing how much they should get. This ended by my giving one musket, thirteen tobes, and my reserve silk turban; and now I was at liberty to quit ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it; when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it, the Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every day for three days this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling, and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to. The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... chosen it." I pointed that observation with a wink. Mr. Franklin burst out laughing—and we were as merry as crickets, until the next new side of his character turned up in due course. So things went on with my young master and me; and so (while the Sergeant and the gardener were wrangling over the roses) we two spent the interval before the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Abruptly the wrangling knot of men resolved itself into two definite factions. His fellows had turned upon the shrill-voiced man, plainly in some sort of denunciation or accusation. He was the smallest of the lot, and drew back hastily, step after step, offering the knife-edge ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... said, "and some of the crew were pushing the coolies out of the way, when two men jumped down the steps, and a most fiendish row sprang up. That is, there was no dispute or wrangling, but one chap, who, it turned out, was Colonel Costobell, grabbed Ventnor by the shirt front, and threatened to smash his face in if he didn't listen then and there to what he had to say. I really thought about interfering, until ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... picture since the day it first appeared in in my study. I only agreed to letting it in because I knew the alternative was Titherington's hospital nurse. The Dutch bureau, if it is Dutch, is most uncomfortable to write at. There was no use, however, wrangling about details. I brought forward the one strong objection to the plan which occurred to ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... there were three claimants for the throne; namely, Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV; the Electoral Prince of Bavaria; and Charles, son of Leopold I of Germany, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The real stake was the "balance of power" in Europe. At last, after much wrangling and intrigue among the courts, Charles II bequeathed his throne to the Bavarian Prince, whose death, in 1699, left Europe ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... have the filly if he likes," said the Major, "at L32 10s. I don't want to go on wrangling about that. ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... have enjoyed under it, have been from the administration of the government, by presidents elected by the people, of slave holders, from slave states. Whenever the people have elected a president from a non-slaveholding state, commencing with the elder Adams, and down to Mr. Lincoln, confusion, wrangling and strife have been the order of the day, until it culminated in the greatest civil war the world has ever beheld, under the last named gentleman. Why this has been so is not in the line of our subject. We mention it as a matter of history, ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... which a dramatist's mind shapes material for a three hours' traffic of the stage—the willingness to sacrifice situation, expression—any detail, in fact, that clogs the action. Through the years of their acquaintance, Howard and Matthews were continually wrangling good-naturedly about the relation of drama to literature. Apropos of an article by Matthews in The ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... cats and dogs," put in the doctor's son. "I don't believe they have one real pleasant day." And he was right; the Spink crowd were usually wrangling from morn to night and already one of the number had left and ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... to the Greek patriots. He mastered the situation with a statesman's skill and with the perception of a soldier; he endured all the hardships of campaigning, and waited in patience to bring some order to the wrangling factions. If his life had been spared, it is possible that the Greeks then might have thrown off the Turkish yoke; but he succumbed to a malarial fever, brought on by the exposure of a frame weakened by a vegetable diet, and expired at Missolonghi ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... about his food, which the doctor insisted on regulating, that scenes of violence and wrangling now took place, unlike any that had hitherto occurred; for the character of the count was all the more violent for having slumbered. The countess, fortified by the doctor's orders and the obedience of her servants, ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... feet stretched out, bestowed an amiable but languid wink upon me, as much as to say that I knew what Mr. Philip's company was at best. When I came out after my dinner, they were still sitting there, Courtenay yawning, and Tom and Philip wrangling ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... said, "what's all this wrangling about? Row did it begin? That's the extraordinary thing with women; one gets so easily off the track, and runs one doesn't know where. What was I saying? Oh, simply that I couldn't be sure, yet, whether Hollingford would suit me. Let us keep to the ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... famed craftsman began to make harangue among them, to do kindness to his mother, white-armed Hera: "Verily this will be a sorry matter, neither any more endurable, if ye twain thus fight for mortals' sakes, and bring wrangling among the gods; neither will there any more be joy of the goodly feast, seeing that evil triumpheth. So I give counsel to my mother, though herself is wise, to do kindness to our dear father Zeus, that our father ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... "Instead of wrangling over possibilities, we ought to be doing something," said Mrs. Orban. "Eustace, you had better fetch that horse and ride down to father at once. Perhaps he ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... moments the bargaining over a silver bracelet between two beturbaned and berobed Arabs caught the surface of his attention, and as the wrangling became a bedlam of imprecations, and the explosive gestures made physical violence a development apparently of mere seconds, Billy's eyes brightened and he estimated chances. But as he picked his favorite there was one final frenzy of fury, and then—peace and joy, ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... was pity for all that Hattie had borne of bitterness and wrangling. And as a mother gathers a stricken child to her breast, so she drew the other to her. "Oh, Hattie!" she murmured huskily. "Go—go far. Put it all behind you forever! From now on, Hattie, they can't hurt you any more—can't torture you any longer. From now on, happiness, Hattie, happiness!" ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... unchristian carriage to and before their wives.—Wives also should be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands. Why? Because, otherwise, the Word of God will he blasphemed (Titus 2:5). Take heed of an idling, talking, wrangling tongue. It is odious in maids or wives to be like parrots, not bridling the tongue. It is unseemly to see a woman, as much as once in her lifetime, to offer to over-top her husband. I do not intend that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... what shrill wind of speech and wrangling air Blows in our ears a summons from thy lips Winged with what message, or what gift or grace Requiring? none but what his hand may take Here may the foe think hence to reap, nor this Except some doom from Godward ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... on the 6th of November, in the twentieth year of the reign of James I. in which the voters for members of Parliament are directed, "not to choose curious and wrangling lawyers, who may seek reputation ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... besides which Paganism is a fixed system intolerant of freedom. Who, it was argued, would voluntarily forego making his own gods? The privilege was too delightful. Then it was proposed that we resolve ourselves each into a God unto himself. The idea was plausible; it would at least put an end to wrangling, by giving us all an agreeable object to worship, while for mental demands and social purposes generally we could fall back on Philosophy. Had not our fathers tried Philosophy? When had society a better well being than in the halcyon ages of Plato ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... houses to rent would save much wrangling. The agent shows the card with this house's rating, and the tenant learns that some of his wishes are incompatible with the standard, and some would mean a much higher rent than he is willing to pay. Professor ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... loud stunning tide Of human care and crime, With whom the melodies abide Of the everlasting chime; Who carry music in their heart Through dusky lane and wrangling mart Plying their daily task with busier feet, Because their secret souls a ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... and four daily, at Costecalde the gunsmith's, a stout stern pipe-smoker might be seen in a green leather-covered arm-chair in the centre of the shop crammed with cap-poppers, they all on foot and wrangling. This was Tartarin of Tarascon delivering judgement—Nimrod ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... a square, in which the old men lounged all day long, gossiping and wrangling. Fronting the square, and surrounding it, were the four long, low communal houses, eight feet high, sixteen feet deep, and forty to sixty in length. They were wooden frames, supported on pine posts, with roof-tree and rafters of hickory. Their ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... face and a decisive manner, looked after this branch; and the gusto with which he did it was one of Henry's earliest and most instructive amazements. House-repairs were quite evidently his poetry, and he never seemed so happy as when passionately wrangling with a tenant on some question of drains. The words "cesspool" and "wet-trap"—words to which I don't pretend to attach any meaning—seemed to be particular favourites of his. In fact, an hour seldom passed without ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... loud stunning tide Of human care and crime, With whom the melodies abide Of th' everlasting chime; Who carry music in their heart Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, Plying their task with busier feet Because their secret souls a holy ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... perpetual wrangling, and scolding, and mutual reproaches? The roughness and harshness of these emotions disturb and displease us: we suffer by contagion and sympathy; nor can we remain indifferent spectators, even though certain that no pernicious consequences ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... folk down there, and I'd have no fault to find if you were not a little too disputatious. What's the use of wrangling over doctrine? Right or wrong, it will matter very little to any of us in a hundred years. We're on our way to heaven, and, please God, there'll ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... assemble nine Lambeth workmen of higher aggregate intellect than those who responded to the summons; it would have been, on the other hand, the easiest thing to find nine with not a man of them available for anything more than futile wrangling over politics or religion. Egremont would know this some day; he was yet young in ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... enough to see that they had something to urge in their behalf and offered to sell them the whole tract at twenty-five shillings an acre, or to take them as tenants, but they stubbornly refused his offers and after much wrangling announced their intention to stand suit. Ejectment proceedings were accordingly brought by Washington's attorney, Thomas Smith of Carlisle. The case was tried in 1786 before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... loud at times, And changing like a poet's rhymes, Rang the beautiful wild chimes From the Belfry in the market Of the ancient town of Bruges. Then, with deep sonorous clangour, Calmly answering their sweet anger, When the wrangling bells had ended, Slowly struck the clock eleven, And, from out the silent heaven, Silence on the town descended. Silence, silence everywhere, On the earth and in the air, Save that footsteps here and there Of some burgher home returning, By the ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... you, Frank. That cowboy will not soon get over the humiliation of having his lariat give way. He feels very sore about it now," remarked the stockman, casting a side look toward where a couple of his herders were wrangling over something as they ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... Adam, the eldest, has had his inheritance, and Hiram, the youngest, came into possession, which by taking from and adding to, gives a fair average of fifteen years. Now Mother proposes if we will enter into an agreement this morning with no words and no wrangling, to settle on this basis: she will relinquish her third of all other land, and keep only this home farm. She even will allow the fifty lying across the road to be sold and the money put into a general fund for the share of the girls. She will turn into this fund all ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... believe a word. They beat him again, till their arms were tired, and staggered to bed. In the morning, however, the steadiness with which he adhered to his story obtained him some degree of credence; the immediate consequence of which was, that the two brothers, after wrangling a long time on the knotty question, which of them should try his fortune first, drew their swords and began fighting. The noise of the fray alarmed the neighbours who, finding they could not pacify the combatants, sent for ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... ministers from European powers at St. Petersburg were constantly wrangling about precedence and like petty matters of court etiquette. "In all these controversies," writes Mr. Adams, (p. 073) "I have endeavored to consider it as an affair in which I, as an American minister, had no concern; and that my only principle is to dispute upon precedence with ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... preceded the school of Fruit and Progress. Widely as the Epicurean and the Stoic differed on most points, they seem to have quite agreed in their contempt for pursuits so vulgar as to be useful. The philosophy of both was a garrulous, declaiming, canting, wrangling philosophy. Century after century they continued to repeat their hostile war-cries, Virtue and Pleasure; and in the end it appeared that the Epicurean had added as little to the quantity of pleasure as the Stoic to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from St James's Street. Anyhow, you need not have done it. I have felt for some time that you don't really care for me, and I'm not going to play the part of the deceived and ridiculous wife, nor to live an existence of continual wrangling. I'm disappointed, and I must accept ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... Ruckholt, Marybone and The Wells survive; Places by no means to be neglected by the Gallant: for Beauty may lurk beneath the Straw Hat, and Venus often clothes her lovely Limbs in Stuffs. Nay, the very Courts of Law are not excluded; and the Scenes of Wrangling are sometimes the Scenes of Love. In that Hall where Thames sometimes overflowing, washes the Temple of Venus Lucy, the grave Serjeant becomes a Victim to the Fair; and he who so well knows how to defend others, cannot defend himself. Here ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... criticising St. Oswald's and contemning the old-fashioned practices of the Cathedral, which of course Lance considered himself bound to defend, till the very names of Gregorians and Anglicans became terrible to Cherry as the watchwords of a wrangling match. Fulbert, meantime, made no secret of his contempt for both brothers as mere choristers instead of schoolboys, and exalted himself whenever he detected their ignorance of any choice morceau of slang; while their superior knowledge on any other point was ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... position by quoting the names of Paul or Peter or Philip or John; but had any one of these apostles risen from the dead and appeared in the ecclesiastical arena, he would, no doubt, have rebuked all the disputants for their trivial and unholy wrangling. We have here a notable proof of the absurdity of appealing to tradition. Within a hundred years after the death of the last survivor of the Twelve its testimony was most discordant, for the tradition of the Western Churches, as propounded ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... through a magnifying medium, which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea; magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones. I have known many a man pass for a miser, by saving a penny, and wrangling for two-pence, who was undoing himself at the same time, by living above his income, and not attending to essential articles, which were above his portee. The sure characteristic of a sound and strong mind is, to find in everything those certain bounds, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... have none of the thrill of the fellows who have gone into the flying corps or the ambulance service. They have ahead of them a long winter of motoring about the country in all sorts of weather, wrangling with millers and stevedores, checking cargoes and costs, keeping the peace between the Belgians and the German authorities, observing the rules of the game toward everybody concerned, and above all, keeping neutral. It is no small undertaking for a ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson |
