"Pettifogging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Westray's letter once more from beginning to end. It was duller than ever. It reflected its writer; she had always thought him unromantic, and now he seemed to her intolerably prosaic, conceited, pettifogging, utilitarian. To be his wife! She had rather slave as a nursery-governess all her life! And how could she write fiction with such a one for mentor and company? He would expect her to be methodic, to see that eggs were fresh, and beds ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... in his vestments. What come vividly back on my mind are remembrances of my delight in the histories of Joseph and of David; and of my keen appreciation of the chivalrous kindness of Abraham in his dealings with Lot. Like a sudden flash there returns back upon me, my utter scorn of the pettifogging meanness of Jacob, and my sympathetic grief over the heartbreaking lamentation of the cheated Esau, "Hast thou not a blessing for me also, O my father?" And I see, as in a cloud, pictures of the grand phantasmagoria of the Book ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... which he thinks will aid the Union cause. But the country was never more disgusted than it is at present, with men who use politics as a mere trade by which to live. The infamy which has attached to the miserable and imbecile Buchanan, that type of degraded, pettifogging diplomacy, is rapidly extending to his whole tribe—and their name is legion. It is significant that a bank, whose notes bore as vignette a portrait of the ex-honorable ex-President, has been obliged to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... limit!" she reported to her confederates. "For calm self-complacency I've never seen anybody to equal her. The idea of imagining me as a new girl at her wretched pettifogging old school! Oh, it's too precious! She'd patronize the Queen herself! The Poplars must be executing a war-dance for joy to have got rid of her. Probably they'd have subscribed for more than a bracelet to pass ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... exacting moralist, he was never a narrow or pettifogging one. It is true he laid down the rule that a young lady had always the right to break off an engagement, but not so a gentleman, for he has the opportunity, which she has not, of making his own choice,—what no man would have said who was aware of the arts and stratagems which ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns |
