"Puling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wound the mind; But in thy fall what adds the brackish sum More than a blot unto thy martyrdom? Which scorns such wretched suffrages, and stands More by thy single worth than our whole bands. Yet could the puling tribute rescue ought In this sad loss, or wert thou to be brought Back here by tears, I would in any wise Pay down the sum, or quite consume my eyes. Thou fell'st our double ruin; and this rent Forc'd in thy life shak'd both the Church and tent. Learning in others ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... I have laid at your feet my hand, my heart and my flourishing business, and thus—thus I am supplanted by that puling saint, George ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... your humour, and will meet your jest. She should be one about my Katherine's age; But not so old, by some ten years, in gravity. One that would meet my mirth, sometimes outrun it; No puling, pining moppet, as you said, Nor moping maid, that I must still be teaching The freedoms of a wife all her life after: But one, that, having worn the chain before, (And worn it lightly, as report gave out,) Enfranchised from it by her poor fool's death, Took it not so ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... they were; but now, ruddy in the river breeze, neat and clean, alert with energy, happy in their wooden home, with a kind captain and smart officers to teach them, life and stir around, fair prospects ahead, and a British seaman's honest livelihood to be earned instead of the miserable puling beggardom of the streets, or the horrid company of the prison cell; which, that they should lie in the path of any child of our land, adrift on the rough tide of time at ten years old, is a glaring shame to the millions of sovereigns in ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... their cause is black, In puling prose and rhyme, Talk hatefully of love, and tack Hypocrisy to crime; Who smile and smite, engross the gorge Or impotently frown; And call us "rebels" with King George, As if they wore ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the old game of regal tyranny on republican cards. So his head settled it: as for his heart,—his neighbors' houses were in ashes, burned by the Yankees; his son lay dead at Manassas. He died to keep them back, didn't he? "Geordy boy," he used to call him,—worth a dozen puling girls: since he died, the old man had never named his name. Scofield was a Rebel in every bitter drop of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... vociferating in sonorous Russian. There are gossiping women, decked in their caps and many-colored finery. There are smartly-arrayed young girls, chatting merrily with the swains at their side. Unruly children scamper, barefooted and bareheaded, around and under the tables. Puling infants and barking dogs add their discord to the din and confusion. It is a scene one is ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... very skillful. The very ardor in her face was in her favor. Behind her hot eyes lurked cold calculation. She would put the thing through, and show those puling nurses, with their pious eyes and evening prayers, a thing ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "Some puling theoretician!" he muttered to himself, as he walked to the works one winter morning. "Some dandy who can draw cubes and triangles and cannot do anything else except come here—late probably—in an overcoat and comforter. One of those sickly ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... them; And what if you should never know them more!— He is a puny soul who, feeling pain, Finds ease because another feels it too. If e'er I open out this heart of mine It shall be for a nobler end—to teach And not to purchase puling sympathy. —Nay, you ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... her part, altogether deficient in activity. Exclusive of providing me with a sister, who from some accident or other was but a puling, wrangling, rickety young lady, she initiated me in the mysteries and pleasures of the alphabet. The rector had taken some trouble to make his daughters good English scholars; and my mother, though she had retained much of his solemn song, could not only read currently, and articulate ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... wall, a thin curtain swaying before it. At first he took it for the white-washed wall of his attic at home, the lace-curtains at the head of the bed blowing in the wind. Then a slow-winged shadow, passing between him and the ceiling with puling cry, startled him ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... The highest inspirations of poetry are resolvable into three ingredients: the rant of unregulated passion, the whining of exaggerated feeling, and the cant of factitious sentiment; and can, therefore, serve only to ripen a splendid lunatic like Alexander, a puling driveller like Werter, or a morbid dreamer like Wordsworth." In another part of this essay he says: "While the historian and the philosopher are advancing in and accelerating the progress of knowledge, the poet is wallowing in the rubbish of departed ignorance, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... two Sonnets on * * *. I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise—and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions. I detest the Petrarch so much[104], that I would not be the man even to have obtained his Laura, which the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... know of my heart, Anne?" she said. "Till late I did not know it beat, myself. My lord says 'tis a great one and noble, but I know 'tis his own that is so. Have I done honestly by him, Anne, as I told you I would? Have I been fair in my bargain—as fair as an honest man, and not a puling, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... prince or not, he married in his youth a woman of the half-blood, and begot of her a troop of devils. Five sons he had, all great men, knowing not God and fearing none of God's works. And after them came a daughter, a puling slip of a thing, never meant to live, whom they did to death among them with their drinking ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Simon (darting forward) You thought no doubt to spite me! That to this Royal Christening you did not invite me! BUT—(Mrs. Kean: "You must plaster that 'but' on the white wall at the back of the gallery.")— But on this puling brat revenged I'll be! My fiery dragon there shall have her broiled ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... puzzle. She has her meals, her liberty, a good house to live in, and good clothes to wear, as usual. A while since that sufficed to keep her handsome and cheery, and there she sits now a poor, little, pale, puling chit enough. Provoking! Then comes the question, What is to be done? I suppose I must send for advice. Will you have a ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... I know I can never be anything to you but a sort of puling weakling, who must be nursed, and petted, and cared for. I know," he went on, his words coming with a rush in the height of his protesting passion, "if your thoughts, your secret thoughts and feelings, ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... love-song, like a robin redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch, like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... much occupied, and his weakness for tobacco nearly cured—he once or twice attempted some drivel about disinterested friendship and undying gratitude; but I stopped that. If there be one thing for which I profess no sympathy, it is puling sentiment. He apparently did not care to discuss the progress of his affair, which was a relief; it is a dreadful nuisance to have to listen to lovers' talk, and I had enough of that at Wayback, when I could not help myself. At our time of ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... open unto my love, Doe more then loving lynes or words can doe. My letters have bin answerd with disdayne: Her father I have mov'd to gayne my love, But he is frosty in my fervent suite; And now perforce I will obtayne her love Or ease her puling hatred ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... would fain be puny and puling, to have the clear heart that once I had. Oh, hear me! hear me! and pardon ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bringing back this daring innovator to sober history, that it has been thought fit to alter the play of Lear for the stage, as they have altered Romeo and Juliet: they have converted the seraph-like Cordelia into a puling love heroine, and sent her off victorious at the end of the play—exit with drums and colors flying—to be married to Edgar. Now any thing more absurd, more discordant with all our previous impressions, and with the characters as unfolded to us, can hardly be imagined. "I cannot ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... firstly, because he was a nobleman, and, secondly, because he was a gentleman; but, to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable letters and of 'The Castle of Otranto,' he is the 'Ultimus Romanorum,' the author of 'The Mysterious Mother,' a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love-play. He is the father of the first romance, and the last tragedy in our language; and surely worthy of a higher place than any living writer, be he ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... involved the shade of lingering disgust that had possessed him when he had taken the child to church disappeared and a feeling of natural affection took its place. However much the daughter had sinned, the infant was not to blame. It was a helpless, puling, tender thing, demanding his sympathy and his love. Gerhardt felt his heart go out to the little child, and yet he could not yield his position all ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... its dying that it had been baptized in a great hurry, "Henry Leaf Ascott," according to the mother's desire, which in her critical position nobody dared to thwart. Even at the end of fourteen days the "son and heir" was still a puling, sickly, yellow-faced baby. But to the mother it was ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... Behaver in the meeting hous. Such as Smiling and Larfing and Intiseing others to the Same Evil. Such as Larfing or Smiling or puling the hair of his nayber Benoni Simkins in the time of Publick Worship. Such as throwing Sister Penticost Perkins on the Ice, it being Saboth day, between the meeting hous and ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... trainer shot out a clawing, ravenous hand. "I want that money—want it quick!" he spat, taking a step forward. "You want hatred, eh? Well, hatred you'll have, boy. Hatred that I've always given you, you miserable, puling, lily-livered spawn ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... eyeing him shrewdly, "if it is so easy to do why were you undone a minute ago? And puling like a child ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... see a coyote run without thinking of a night I spent on the Cheyenne, when that puling little English lord spent the whole night shivering up a tree, to hear me and Little Breeches snoring on the ground and he thought it was wolves eating us up, because a little while before a coyote yelled in the ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Lucia Orestilla?" exclaimed Catiline, "this puling love-sick girl, this timorous, repentant—I had nearly called thee—maiden! Why, thou fool, what would'st thou with the man farther? Dost think to be ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... this time old Ike had been setting ferst in one chair and then in another chair and puling his wiskers and when father sed this he gave a grone and sed aint there no pertection under the law? and father sed the matter is being vestigated and persecution will folow enny falce step that the villins make. the trubble is they ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... see the light, I shall content myself now with observing that the vigorous and laborious class of life has lately got, from the bon-ton of the humanity of this day, the name of the "laboring poor." We have heard many plans for the relief of the "laboring poor." This puling jargon is not as innocent as it is foolish. In meddling with great affairs, weakness is never innoxious. Hitherto the name of poor (in the sense in which it is used to excite compassion) has not been used for those ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the string by which he was attached to a tent peg, roll head over heels, and walk in a contrary direction, when a similar somersault would be performed; and he whined and wailed just like a child; one might have mistaken it for the puling of some villager's brat. Milford was going to give it pure cows' milk when Fordham advised him not to do so, but to mix it with one half the quantity of water. 'The great mistake people make,' he ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... at the words. The Wangoni did not entirely believe the explanation; and to further their doubts there now arose from the inside of the huts the puling wail of infants which the mothers had not been entirely able ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... rewards in a child's school, to the most deserving. I love you, Hugo Gottfried, it is true. But I wish a thousand times that I did not. Nevertheless—I do! Therefore make your reckoning with that, and put aside puling shams and whimpering subterfuges." ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... was in the kitchen some half hour agone, conveying her mistress a warm draught, or some such puling ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... and they sang four parts: it seemed as though they had set themselves to free their execution of every trace of style that could properly be called choral: a hotch-potch of little melodious effects, little timid puling shades of sound, dying pianissimos, with sudden swelling, roaring crescendos, like some one heating on an empty box: no breadth or balance, a mawkish style: it ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... was a nobleman, and secondly, because he was a gentleman: but, to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable letters, and of "The Castle of Otranto," he is the Ultimus Romanorum, the author of the 'Mysterious Mother,' a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love-play: he is the father of the first romance, and of the last tragedy in our language, and surely worthy of a higher place than any living author, be ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... why I think it is probable she cried for a plaything, and they have given her a husband. Well, well, well, the puling chit shall not be deprived of her plaything: 'tis only exchanging London dolls for American babies.—Apropos, of babies, have you heard what Mrs. Affable's high-flying notions ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... direful retribution shall be taken for our conduct. This has been the cry all through the war. "We should have conquered the South," says an American paper which I read this very day, "but for England." Was there ever such puling heard from men who have an army of a million, and who turn and revile a people who have stood as aloof from their contest as we have from the war of Troy? Or is it an outcry made with malice prepense? And is the song of the New York Times a variation of the Herald tune?—"The ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... kings of Asia, Like a pod of colocasia; Whom the sons of Anak fled, Puling infants ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... with her arms stretched out and, as she did so, his heart was strangely stirred within him by a little puling cry. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... largest possible scale, is that presented in Monna Vanna. It differs from that of Measure for Measure in the fact that there can be no doubt as to the moral aspect of the case. It is quite clear that Giovanna ought to sacrifice herself to save, not one puling Claudio, but a whole city full of men, women, and children. What she does is absolutely right; but the conjuncture is none the less a grotesque and detestable one, which ought to be talked about and thought about ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... view toward which I myself incline. However, mine is a domesticated mania and vexes no one save myself; and even I derive no little amusement from its manifestations. Eh, Monsieur Jourdain may laugh at me for a puling lover!" cried John Bulmer; "but, heavens! if only he could see the unplumbed depths of ludicrousness I discover in my own soul! The mirth of Atlas ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... puling, yelping whelp in her place.... A tall, severe-looking elderly woman entered the verandah by a distant door and approached the ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... muleteers of El Arbi bel Hadj ben Haidah looked with great scorn upon these Bedouins, and their contempt was reciprocated. In the eyes of the Berbers these men were outcasts and "eaters of sand," and in the eyes of the Bedouins the muleteers were puling, town-bred slaves, who dared not say their ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... to a great deal of puling over the circumstances in which we are placed. The great refinement of many poetical gentlemen has rendered them practically unfit for the jostling and ugliness of life, and they record their unfitness at considerable length. The bold and awful poetry of Job's complaint ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recall that one of the butts of his extreme humor was this same Dick, whom he studied with the greatest care for points worthy his humorous appreciation. Dick, in addition to his genuinely lively mental interests, was a most romantic person on one side, a most puling and complaining soul on the other. As a newspaper artist I believe he was only a fairly respectable craftsman, if so much, whereas Peter was much better, although he deferred to Dick in the most ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... beast full of promise,—a beast with the germ of an angel,—but a beast still. A week-old baby gives no more sign of intelligence, of love, or ambition, or hope, or fear, or passion, or purpose, than a week-old monkey, and is not half so frisky and funny. In fact, it is a puling, scowling, wretched, dismal, desperate-looking animal. It is only as it grows old that the beast gives way and the angel-wings bud, and all along through infancy and childhood the beast gives way and gives way and the angel-wings bud and bud; and yet we entertain our angel so unawares that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... R) If the bonds gall you so much, break them. Don't spend your breath in this puling talk. If you are tired of me, go! As far as I am concerned, I set you free. Find some other woman, if you can, who ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch 205 Than on the dome of kings? Is mother Earth A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men 210 The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, that peace Which men ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to spend, and as the object of burglary is to provide the burglar with money to spend, and as in many instances it has achieved this object, therefore the burglar is a public benefactor and the police are ignorant sentimentalists. No highway robber has yet harrowed us with denunciations of the puling moralist who allows his child to suffer all the evils of poverty because certain faddists think it dishonest to garotte an alderman. Thieves and assassins understand quite well that there are paths of acquisition, even of the best things, that are barred to all men of honor. Again, has ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... the Memoires d'Outre-Tombe, expressed a warm wish that he had never written it, and hearty disgust at its puling admirers and imitators. This has been set down to hypocritical insincerity or the sourness of age: I see neither in it. It ought perhaps to be said that he "cut" a good deal of the original version. The confession of Amelie was at first less abrupt and so less effective, but the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a bang, and Sir James flew like a hunted buck along the corridor. He whipped his arms around the lady and kissed her passionately, and then flung on his knees and held out his arms. She put the something in white into them and there was a little puling cry. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... his own instincts in Africa, develops the Southern sociology to a degree which casts entirely into pitiable pettiness the puling despotism of the calaboose and slave market. Witness Dahomey, where all lives, all fortunes, all persons, are cooerdinated in one perfect 'system' of subjugation to one sable Jefferson Davis Gezo, who ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... stay. If only Elinor would play the game, instead of puling and mouthing! In the room across the hall where his desk stood he paced the floor, first angrily, then thoughtfully, his head bent. He saw, and not far away now, himself seated in the city hall, holding the city in the hollow of his hand. From that his dreams ranged far. He saw himself ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the point rather). Nay, if I die, let me die like a man, not like a puling girl. ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... would come first. Course it wouldn't make a hit with a man to have a woman puling around ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... believe me when I tell him what a beneficial effect has been produced upon her by your wholesome restraint. You must know that, although not remarkable for his social virtues, Monsieur Louvois has intervals of puling sensibility, at which times he reproaches himself with the part he took in the comedy of your marriage, and, since Prince Eugene has grown famous, almost repents that he did not accept that fascinating individual for his son-in-law. He is beginning to ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... strong wit and the strong heart that a man must have, or so it is said, to know when to tell the truth, which, with him, was always. He could not stand anything like affectation, or what people were calling aestheticism and decadence. To him, literature was literature and art was art, and not puling sentiment, affected posturing, lilies and sunflowers. The National Observer was the housetop from which he shouted for all who passed to hear that it did not matter twopence what the dabbler wanted to express if he could ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... this be forgotten? Yes, a schism Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, Made great Apollo blush for this his land. Men were thought wise who could not understand His glories: with a puling infant's force They sway'd about upon a ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... free from thee; and thou no more shalt hear My puling pipe to beat against thine ear. Farewell my shackles, though of pearl they be; Such precious thraldom ne'er shall fetter me. He loves his bonds who, when the first are broke, Submits his ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the lamp, pulls the chain. Puling, the gasjet lights up a crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney's broken. Here ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... idiosyncrasies and bizarre contrasts. Its history, population, climate, location, architecture, soil, water, customs, costumes, horses, cattle, all attract the stranger's attention, either by force of intrinsic singularity or of odd juxtapositions. It was a puling infant for a century and a quarter, yet has grown to a pretty vigorous youth in a quarter of a century; its inhabitants are so varied that the 'go slow' directions over its bridges are printed in three languages, and the religious services in its churches held in four; the thermometer, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the British Legation things had seemed more impossible than ever. Orders and counter-orders came from every side; the place was choked with women, missionaries, puling children, and whole hosts of lamb-faced converts, whose presence in such close proximity was intolerable. Heaven only knew how the matter would end. The night before people had been only too glad to rush frantically to a place of safety; with daylight they remembered ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... became slower and slower. At last, from sheer exhaustion, the heavy arms could no longer guard the writhing face and instantly Victor began to rain blow after blow upon eyes and nose and mouth until a few minutes later "The Grizzly of the Athabasca" collapsed entirely, and whimpering and puling, he retracted his words, and then amid the frenzied jeers of the rivermen, he made up his pack and slunk away into the bush—and the fame of Victor Bossuet travelled the length of the three rivers. Thus it was that Victor became ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... Old Man declared. "Bless me, if you're not a Native Son! Nobody but a Native Son would be that fresh. I suppose this is your second voyage, you puling baby?" ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... woodcutter, or by the progression of the lights and shadows and the sun wheeling his wide circuit through the naked heavens. Here shall you see no enemies but winter and rough weather. And if a pang comes to you at all, it will be a pang of healthful hunger. All the puling sorrows, all the carking repentance, all this talk of duty that is no duty, in the great peace, in the pure daylight of these woods, fall away from you like a garment. And if perchance you come forth upon an eminence, where the wind ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the pick of all the young Quakers in Philadelphia; but you should have seen her turn up her pretty nose at them. "'A Quaker indeed!' quoth the little puss; 'I'd as lief marry a broomstick with a turnip for a head! Give me a man who is a man, not a puling woman in breeches!' ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a snarl. "Are ye men or puling babes? Hack yer way through them, if they be trolls, but ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... should kill him, though I never raised my hand against him. He fell at my feet and blubbered; he has kissed these very boots, literally, beseeching me 'not to frighten him.' Do you hear? 'Not to frighten him.' What a thing to say! Why, I offered him money. He's a puling chicken—sickly, epileptic, weak-minded—a child of eight could thrash him. He has no character worth talking about. It's not Smerdyakov, gentlemen. He doesn't care for money; he wouldn't take my presents. Besides, what motive ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the Prophet did him credit at that painful period of his life, it must be allowed that his behaviour on being formally introduced into London Society showed no puling regret, no backward longings after echoing colleges, lost dons and the scouts that are no more. He was quite at his ease, and displayed none of the high-pitched contempt of Piccadilly that is often so amusingly characteristic of the young ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... his conception stood over him like a rosier Aurora for the country. He beheld it in imagination as a new light rising above hugeous London. You turn the sheets of THE DAWN, and it is the manhood of the land addressing you, no longer that alternately puling and insolent cry of the coffers. The health, wealth, comfort, contentment of the greater number are there to be striven for, in contempt of compromise and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fine effect of personal individuality and superiority which is both bracing and uplifting—there is not any particular harm in this: progress can be, and is, accelerated by the hypocrisies and snobbishness, all the minor, unpleasant adjuncts of mediocrity. Snobbishness is a puling infant, but it may grow to a deeply whiskered ambition, and most virtues are, on examination, the amalgam of many vices. But while intellectual poverty may be forgiven and loved, social inequality ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... sure it was a part of Schiller's design to represent in Carlos a process of evolution. Under the influence of manly friendship the puling sentimentalist was to have his fiber toughened into the stuff that great men are made of; and so it was quite in order that he should appear at first as a weakling. But he is too much of a weakling, and the reason is that Schiller ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... for the last hundred years. Now I have found you, we part not till I know what I desire. The vision that sees through the Past, and cleaves through the veil of the Future, is in you at this hour; never before, never to come again. The vision of no puling fantastic girl, of no sick-bed somnambule, but of a strong man, with a vigorous brain. Soar and ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... to comprehend nature, some disappointment was admitted. He who affected by searching to find out and to equal God could not explain the power by which a tree pumps its sap from roots to leaves, or why a baby rabbit rejects the grasses that would harm it, or why a puling infant divines its mother among the motley and multitudinous mass of sibilant saints at a sewing society which is discussing the last wedding and the next divorce. He "who admits only what he understands" would have to look on himself as a conundrum and then give the conundrum up. He ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... a gentleman of? What do you think of that, Sir Captain? How would you like to be saddled with a young wolf- hound cub like that—Sorley Boy's son he is, no other, on my life—that I was fool enough to take wardship of when he was a puling puppy and his father an honest man? What do you think of that? Curse the whole tribe of them, ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... and strove to eat. "I must be strong, for Richard's sake," she murmured. But she soon laid down her knife and fork to muse again. "This Trevethick is a hard, stern man, I see. There is no hope in his mercy. The only path of safety is that which the lawyer pointed out; but will this puling girl have the heart and head to tread it? Will she not faint, as she nearly did just now, and lose her wits when my Richard most requires them? And then, and then?" As if unable to continue such reflections, she rose and rang the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... made the rounds of the tents outside, and he was marvelling. There were men who had fought bravely, who had stood wounds and the surgeon's knife without a murmur; who, weakened and demoralized by fever now, were weak and puling of spirit, and sly and thievish; who would steal the food of the very comrades for whom a little while before they had risked their lives—men who in a fortnight had fallen from a high plane of life to the pitiful level of brutes. Only here and there was an exception. This man, Crittenden, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... practice, namely, of self- revelation and self-delineation. To talk much about oneself with detail, composure, and ease, with no shadow of hypocrisy and no whiff or taint of indecent familiarity, no puling and no posing,—the shores of the sea of literature are strewn with the wrecks and forlorn properties of those who have adventured on this dangerous attempt. But a criticism of Stevenson is happy in this, that from the writer it can pass with perfect trust and perfect fluency ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... answered, looking from one to the other, and putting her hand on Robbie's fair curls, almost as if she were doing him an injustice to say it. "Yes, I think every one would say Elsie was the bonnier baby. Robbie was but a puling, pasty-faced little thing, thin and miserable, not a crowing, bright little thing like the others. He wanted a deal o' care, did Robbie, an' I will say ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... besides, I knew that she must care for me, or she would not have braved so much to save me from danger. I had difficulty in keeping from shouting aloud, so great was my joy. I felt that my strength had come back to me, and I cared no more for the threats of Cap'n Jack than for the anger of a puling child. I knew that Israel Barnicoat was somewhere lying in wait to do me harm, but I was not afraid. I saw this, too: Richard Tresidder would desire to have as little as possible said about my visit to Pennington, especially as he ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... 'Don't you think I know on which side my bread is buttered yet, aunt?' he asked; 'though I am near fifteen years of age, and half through Homer? but you must allow that Bernard Low is an abominably disagreeable fellow, and one that one should like to duck in a horse-pond—a whining, puling, mother-spoiled brat; however, I will see that he shan't be quizzed to his face, and I suppose that's all ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... life moving against her side was enough. She didn't look into the future, nor did she think of what fate the years held in store for her daughter, but content, lost in emotive contemplation, she watched the blind movements of hands and the vague staring of blue eyes. This puling pulp that was more intimately and intensely herself than herself developed strange yearnings in her, and she often trembled with pride in being the instrument through which so much mystery was worked; to talk to herself of the dark dawn of creation, and ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... continued Wacousta, chafing with the recollection, "wherefore do I, like a vain and puling schoolboy, enter into this abasing contrast of personal advantages? The proud eagle soars not more above the craven kite, than did my soul, in all that was manly and generous, above that of yon false governor; and who should have prized those qualities, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... in the upper districts of Quang-tung are peculiarly wanting in facial attractiveness; in some of the villages on the Upper Pi-kiang the entire population, from puling infants to decrepit old stagers whose hoary cues are real pig-tails in respect to size, are hideously ugly. They seem to be simple, primitive people, bent on satisfying their curiosity; but in the pursuit ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... he cried, "I will! 'Tis a weakness, as you imply! I shall close my heart, vanquish my feelings! No word more of love! I defy your beauty, your proud face, your splendid eyes! I shall die free of your image. Go where you will, madam. It sha'n't be a puling lover that the British hang. A snap o' the finger for your all-conquering charms!—why do you ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... can prove them, and Wyck turns out the villain you say, think for a moment what the result will be. I am no ordinary girl full of puling sentiment. I love or I hate, and if my love is trampled on, there is a dangerous woman to be faced who will thirst for revenge. So be careful," and her voice took a stern, ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... together and parallel with each other, the partitions between the holes being broken down by using what is known as a broach. Thus a wide hole or groove is formed in which powder is inserted, either by ramming it directly in the hole, or by puling it in a canister, shaped somewhat like the Lewis hole trench. A complex Lewis hole is the combination of 3 drill holes, while a compound Lewis hole contains 4 holes. Lewising is confined almost entirely to granite. In some cases a series of Lewis holes is put in along the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... has the poor to claim? What boots to me your corn and wine, Your busy toil, your vaunted fame, The senate where your speakers shine? Once, when your homes, by war o'erswept, Saw strangers battening on your land, Like any puling fool, I wept! The aged wretch was nourished ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the ambition of monarchs, who put forward their beardless progeny to do the deeds of men, and to suffer with men's fortitude, when they are more fit to be puling in a nurse's arms, or unravelling silk skeins ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various |
