"Puling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 he ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... should cross the threshold of that terrible house. But one day, Cathy and Ellen Dean met Heathcliff on the moors, and he half persuaded, half forced them to come home and see his son, grown a most despicable, puling, ailing creature, half-violent, half-terrified. Cathy's kind little heart did not see the faults, she only saw that her cousin was ill, unhappy, in need of her; she was easily entrapped, one winter, when her father and Ellen Dean ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... '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 you ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... Owen, the caitiff son of a brave father, who gave him to my care to train in knightly ways. But 'tis a puling fool, more fitting ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... 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 ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... know of courage? Look here, girl: another word to daunt the spirit of my grandsons, and I'll have thee scourged down the mountain-side! On! At him, Ebbo! That's my gallant young knight! Out of the way, girl, with thy whining looks! What, Friedel, be a man, and aid thy brother! Has she made thee a puling woman already?" And Kunigunde laid an ungentle grasp upon Friedmund, who was clinging to his mother, hiding his face in her gown. He struggled against the clutch, and would not ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... observe the matter, the Berber 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 right hands ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... A. W. Ward pertinently says, his marvelously vivid reproduction of manners is unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries. "The age lives in his men and women, his country gulls and town gulls, his imposters and skeldering captains, his court ladies and would-be court ladies, his puling poetasters and whining Puritans, and, above all, in the whole ragamuffin rout of his Bartholomew Fair. Its pastimes, fashionable and unfashionable, its games and vapors and jeering, its high-polite courtships and its pulpit-shows, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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. ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... instance, and yet more notably in The Last Ride Together) deals with it in a way that is at once novel and fundamental. There is no talk, among his lovers, of "blighted hearts," no whining and puling, no contemptible professions of contempt for the woman who has had the ill-taste to refuse some wondrous-conceited lover, but a noble manly resignation, a profound and still grateful sorrow which has no touch in it of reproach, no tone of disloyalty, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... mother, on 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... caressive beast,—a 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... whining, puling fool! Hussey, you have not a drop of my blood in you. What, you are ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... 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, were put into words, I know what they would say of me, must say of me. Do I need to ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... that is coming home to see his girl, you simply can't kill him. Achilles was a summer rose compared with him. Nature and mankind have not sufficient materials in hand as yet to kill that man. Science has but the strength of a puling babe against his invulnerability. You can waste your time on earthquakes and shipwrecks, volcanic eruptions, floods, explosions, railway accidents, and such like sort of things, if you are foolish enough to do so; but it is no good your imagining ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young 20 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 25 dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money: and now ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... are but the shadow of an Emperour, Not really effecting what you are, A slothfull Epicure, a puling louer, That now en'e trembles at the name of warre, Obliuion all thy former acts do couer, Most willing to remoue you I will dye, The sunne of honour now is scarce a starre, Vertue at first was ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... will be no small addition to his present state of bliss to discover almost the realization of suggestions made sixty years ago, before the Browns of this period were conceived, and while the Rolphs were puling infants. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... into 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
... and spent half my life in making 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 ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... feel, this little 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; ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... "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 ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... bitterly cold day in February at the end of a long row of prisoners, waiting their turn to appear before the magistrate, stood the woman wretched and ill, with a puling bit of ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... 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 neck ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... by our kitchen blaze) discourse most eloquent music in your justification. You just nicked my palate. For, with all due decorum and leave may it be spoken, my worship hath taken physic for his body to-day, and being low and puling, requireth to be pampered. Foh! how beautiful and strong those buttered onions come to my nose! For you must know we extract a divine spirit of gravy from those materials which, duly compounded with a consistence of bread and cream (y'clept bread-sauce), each to each giving double ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... 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, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Hades swallow him, for all that! I will have nothing to do with him. He is too bony. But where shall I begin in this case? A dreadful thing has happened. If he has broken the bones of such a man as Croton, beyond a doubt the soul of Vinicius is puling above that cursed house now, awaiting his burial. By Castor! but he is a patrician, a friend of Caesar, a relative of Petronius, a man known in all Rome, a military tribune. His death cannot pass without punishment. Suppose I were to go to the pretorian camp, or the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... surroundings CHEPSTOWE described himself as penetrated with raptures of fierce joy at having shaken himself free from the world and its puling insincerities to dwell amid "Unpitying shapes of death's dread twin despair," where "Rapine and slaughter raged, and none rebuked." Another reviewer observed that "The soul of ARCHER's, the tavern-brawler's glorious victim, KIT MARLOWE, has taken again a habitation of clay. She speaks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... and would do nothing but walk to the end of 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 said, 'who try to rear ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... subdued, then the turn of the old country will come, and a 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 conduct of ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the kings of Asia, Like a pod of colocasia; Whom the sons of Anak fled, Puling infants ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... way to Strides Cottage again! Nearer and nearer now, that moment that must come, and put an end to all this puling hesitation. She could not help the thought that rose in her mind:—"This that I do—this reuniting of two souls long parted by a living death—may it not be what Death does every day for many a world-worn survivor of a half-forgotten ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... 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
... in 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
... run out at the gate! At this bitter sight Maimie stopped blankly, as if all her lapful of darling treasures were suddenly spilled, and then for very disdain she could not sob; in a swell of protest against all puling cowards she ran to St. Govor's Well ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... 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 had he for murdering the old man? Why, he's very likely his son, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of a crab, backward.... 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 driveler like Werter, or a morbid dreamer like Wordsworth. It can never make a philosopher, nor a statesman, nor in any class of life a useful or rational man. It cannot claim the slightest share in any one of the comforts and utilities of life, of which we have witnessed so many and so rapid advances.... ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... he admonished. His tone was not particularly pleasant. "Peel her off! Yah! You puling infants! You cheap, trading-stamp crooks!" He raked off the money. "Be tran-tranquil! You doddering idiots, I'd shoot your heads off for two bits I Try to rob a countryman, will you? Why, gentle shepherds all, I've been on to such curves as yours ever since Hec was a pup! You and ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... firmly, as he seemed to shake himself together, "I see it now. It's all right, Miss Linton; and it's better to be a brick of a boy than a weak, puling noodle of a man, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... conclusions of my thoughts. There are no gods! There is no rational guidance of the universe. It has arisen self-evolved, by chance; and if a god created it, he laid down eternal laws and has left them to govern its course without mercy or grace, and without troubling himself about the puling of men who creep about on the face of the earth like the ants on that of a pumpkin. And well for us that it should be so! Better a thousand times is it to be the servant of an iron law, than the slave of a capricious master who takes ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was in the kitchen some half hour agone, conveying her mistress a warm draught, or some such puling diet," said the page. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that's well said; what's the news from London, Sirrah? My young mistress keeps such a puling for her love. ...
— A Yorkshire Tragedy • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... that he (or she) has had and forgotten, and try them over again. How blank and meaningless they seem! What glamour of infatuation was it which made that nonsense beautiful? One wonders that such puling and trash could ever have made one happy. And yet there were dates when you kissed those silly letters with rapture—lived upon six absurd lines for a week, and until the reactionary period came, when you were restless and miserable until you got a ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... same thing which the Greeks defended against the Persians, the Romans against the Carthaginians and Egyptians, the Franks against Islam: namely, the chivalrous European way of thinking, which is ever being threatened by brutal force and puling baseness. We stand once more at a watershed of ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... in sudden action, shaking this folly off with fierce impatience, heaping abusive epithets upon his own head, arraigning himself as a drivelling sentimentalist; and what shame could equal that of a puling sentimentality? ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... possession of me and pull me about. Fifthly, and lastly, I had an interview with the Countess, had I? Well, is it wrong for a man to bid good-bye to a friend? I ask you, what upon earth do you mean by such a charge as that? Do you take me for a puling infant?" ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... determined to change his sphere of action, and travelled into Swabia and Switzerland. In the latter country he met with the celebrated Father Gassner, who, like Valentine Greatraks, amused himself by casting out devils, and healing the sick by merely laying hands upon them. At his approach puling girls fell into convulsions, and the hypochondriac fancied themselves cured. His house was daily besieged by the lame, the blind, and the hysteric. Mesmer at once acknowledged the efficacy of his cures, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... 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; ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... blanched and broken down. And the reason of it all? That's the 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 ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... system, and, in the name of common sense, study the Koran, or some less ascetic tome. Don't be gulled by a plausible slave, who wants nothing more than to multiply professors of his theory. Why don't you read the Bible, you miserable, puling poltroon, before you hug it as a treasure? Why don't you read it, and learn out of the mouth of the founder of Christianity, that there is one sin for which there is no forgiveness—blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, hey?—and that sin I myself have heard you commit ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... just 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. ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... court thy sprightly eyes, With the base-viol plac'd between my thighs; I cannot lisp, nor to some fiddle sing, Nor run upon a high-stretch'd minikin; I cannot whine in puling elegies, Entombing Cupid with sad obsequies; I am not fashion'd for these amorous times, To court thy beauty with lascivious rhymes; I cannot dally, caper, dance, and sing, Oiling my saint with supple sonneting; I cannot cross my arms, or sigh "Ay me, Ay me, forlorn!" egregious foppery! ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... grouse in a gale of wind with No. 8 shot, which you had brought out by mistake. You may object that you never, as a matter of fact, did this execution, never having even shot at all with No. 8. Tush! you are puling. If you are going to let a conscientious accuracy stand in your way like this, you had better become dumb when sporting talk is flying about. Of course you must not exaggerate too much. Only bumptious fools do that, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... 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 ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... reckon that 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
... 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, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Liz suddenly ceased her gesticulations, lifted her black brows in unutterable surprise, opened her mouth, and became a listening statue? Did she too recognise tones which recalled other days—and the puling cries of infancy? It might have been so. Certain it is that when the shout was repeated she broke down in an effort to reply, and burst into mingled laughter and tears, at the same time waving her free ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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
... plague on the whimsies of sickly folk! What am I to do? What not? Why, here's the fair sky, and here you lie With your couch in a sunny spot. For this you were puling whenever you spoke, Craving to lie outside, And now you'll be sure ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... I'll—(One of the afflicted shrieks. Giles turns upon them.) Why, devil take ye, ye lying hussies, ye have done this! Ye should be whipped through the town at the tail of a cart, every one of ye. Ye ill-favored little jades, puling because no man will have ye, and putting each other up to this d— mischief for lack of something better. Out ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Christopher Smith, Sir Henry ——, Horace, esq., his 'Horace in London' ——, Mrs. Spencer. See 'Florence.' ——, Miss (afterwards Mrs. Oscar Byrne), dancer Smyrna, Lord Byron's stay at Smythe, Professor Socrates Sonnets, 'the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions,' Sorelli, his translation of Grillparzer's 'Sappho' Sotheby, William, esq., his tragedies his 'Ivan' accepted for Drury Lane Theatre similarity of a passage in 'Ivan' to one in the 'Corsair' a 'row' about ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... (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 ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... which was merged in the Grecian Empire. The Roman Empire came last. [How Law can be considered to be the characteristic of all or any part of this period, I am at a loss to discover. Neither do I see any indication of puling Infancy here.] These four great Empires of the world had run their course when our SAVIOUR CHRIST was born. GOD sent His own Eternal SON into the world; and lo, a change passed over the whole fabric ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... 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 ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... spectacle, a sort of orderly carnival refined to taste. There would, of course, be the big thrill in it—Osborn. It would be wonderful to have him coming home to her successful little dinners every evening. People didn't want a great deal, after all; all the discontented, puling, peevish, wanting people one met must be great fools; they had made their beds and made them wrong; the great thing, the simple secret, was to make them right. A husband and wife must pull together, in everything. Pulling together ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... 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 of ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... MacDougall 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 he's had ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... 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 rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal soul'd! The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll'd Its gathering waves—ye felt it not. The blue Bared its eternal bosom, ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... my reward for the august fortune my brain has wrought for thee? By the bones of my father, this puling sentiment of thine but ill accords ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... all 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 swayed about upon a rocking horse And thought it Pegasus. Ah, dismal-souled! The winds of heaven blew, the ocean rolled Its gathering waves—ye felt it not. The blue Bowed its eternal bosom, and the dew Of summer ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 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 blows upon you large and fresh, and the pines knock ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... simply 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 his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • 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 will be ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... 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, slippery woman." ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... there is your way, and the only effectual way. We really must not call the Kaiser and Von Bernhardi disciples of the mythical Neech when they have either overlooked or shrunk from such a glaring "biological necessity." A pair of puling pious sentimentalists if you like. But Supermen! Nonsense. O, my brother journalists, if you revile the Prussians, call them sheep led by snobs, call them beggars on horseback, call them sausage eaters, depict them in the good old English fashion in spectacles and comforter, seedy ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... 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, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... replied the vicomte. "Only the women have what you call a finer ambition. The men are puling as in France. The Company seeks riches without working; the military seek batons without war; and these Jesuits . . . Bah! What are they trying to do? To rule the pope, and through him, the world. My faith, I can barely keep from laughing at some of the stories ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... may devour my limbs; That I may die, like the late puling Francis[5], Under the barber's hands, imposthumes choak me,— If while alive, I cease to chew their ruin; Alphonso Corso, Grillon, priest, together: To hang them in effigy,—nay, to tread, Drag, stamp, and grind them, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... to blame for leading Tony into scrapes which resulted in his being chilled, frightened, or (most frequently) sick. But when Miss Jessamine said that Tony Johnson was delicate, she meant that he was more puling, less manly, and less healthily brought up than Jackanapes, who, when they got into mischief together, was certainly not to blame because his friend could not get wet, sit a kicking donkey, ride in the giddy-go-round, bear the noise of a cracker, or smoke ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... and secondly, because he was a gentleman; but, to say nothing of the composition of his incomparable letters, and of the Castle of Otranto[1765], he is the "Ultimus Romanorum," the author of the Mysterious Mother[1768], 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 writer, be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... 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 Jeffreys. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... and is a tall, good-looking fellow; but I should not have thought him the stuff to make a dragoon. He has always been puling and delicate, unfit for school, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him. Time and again, as I drearily waited, I was on the verge of giving him to the driver. Once, when two little girls—evidently the wharfinger's daughters—went by, my hand reached out to the door to open it so that I might call to them and present them with the puling ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... a puling, yelping whelp in her place.... A tall, severe-looking elderly woman entered the verandah by a distant door and approached the savage, miserable soldier. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... if you like, look upon me as insane; it is the 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 could not do ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... how now, I say? What, you puling, peevish thing, you untoward baggage, will you not be ruled by your father? Have I taken care to bring you up to this, and will you do as you list? Away, I say; hang, starve, beg; begone, pack, I say; out of my sight! ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... 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 "labouring poor." We have heard many plans for the relief of the "labouring 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 who can, but ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... 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 persuasive manner and seemed to believe at times, though I knew he did not, that Dick represented ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... 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 ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... to fulfil it. We are the heralds who go before Germania's Austrian bridegroom, and everywhere illuminate the heavens with the torches of our triumphs. If the torches now and then come too near some piece of humanity and set it on fire, what is that to us? Germany is our enemy, and if we have a puling compassion on our enemy, we become traitors to our own cause. That's all. But what is the use of this strife and these recriminations?" asked he, suddenly breaking into a smile. "I have only come to ask your excellency when ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... of the civil war the army had become paramount. He could sometimes speak of this army with the natural pride of a soldier, with the full consciousness of the power it possessed, and had conferred on him; and yet, at other times, he would talk of this terrible force in the puling strain, in more than the drawl and drivel of the conventicle. As Lord High Protector, addressing his first parliament, he says:—"I had the approbation of the officers of the army, in the three nations of England, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... under the lamp, pulls the chain. Puling, the gasjet lights up a crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney's broken. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... in laughing whispers upon every discard, upon every bet. Now and then, in their whisperings, Cooley's hair touched hers; sometimes she laid her hand on his the more conveniently to look at his cards. Mellin began to be enraged. Did she think that puling milksop had as much as a shadow of the daring, the devilry, the carelessness of consequences which lay within Robert Russ Mellin? "Consequences?" What were they? There were no such things! She would not look at him—well, he would make ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... left of whom I must say something here, and more immediately. The poor, puling little babe, born in misery and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... a fond mother," said D'Aulney, resuming his walk; "but, there are few husbands who choose to be neglected for a puling infant." ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... the one[13] on the death of his mother have, perhaps, never been surpassed. Here is no affectation of sentimentality, no morbid and puling complaints, but the dignified and chastened expression of sorrow, which a mind, constituted as Johnson's, must have experienced on the departure of a mother. A heart, tender and susceptible of pathetic emotion, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... tributes, and your courts, and your body-guards! Bah! You'd have a gibbet if you could, wouldn't you? You with your rebellion and your tinpot honours! A puling baby could conspire as well as you. And all the world laughing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 not express ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... in a puling whimper. Sometimes his terror rose to the throat and his entreaties became shrieks. He died a dozen deaths while his foe watched him with a chill stillness more menacing than ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 for some ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... heavily down on the table. "Next thing you will be begging that we take her. Since the good Lord in His mercy has refrained from giving us any mouths to feed, we will not fly in His face for those who do not concern us. And the puling thing would die on the journey and have to be left behind to feed the wolves. Come! come! ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... I've solved the problem that gives man immortality! All the epochs that have existed since God first formed the world are mine to play with! I have seen myself as a puling infant, and as a greybeard. I have made myself immortal, because, with this machine, I can set back the clock of time. I have found a land where I am ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... for the fault of a woman, I might have been wearing it now? You start with incredulity. I say, why not? Had there been a gallant chief to lead my countrymen, instead or puling knaves who bent the knee to King Richard II., they might have been freemen; had there been a resolute leader to meet the murderous ruffian Oliver Cromwell, we should have shaken off the English for ever. But there was no Barry in the field against the usurper; on the contrary, my ancestor, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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,) ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Hume angrily. "Well, I didn't come to talk. There's going to be something besides a puling string ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... sea-change that takes place at the Stroke Of Midnight on the date of the person's 21st birthday; no magic wand is waved over his scalp to convert him in a moment of time from a puling infant to a mature adult. The growth of child to adult is as gradual as the increase of his stature, which varies from one ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... pitching and tumbling about in a way which made it seem wonderful that wood and iron could hold together. It wasn't exactly under such circumstances that the wife even of a boatswain's mate would have chosen to bring a puling infant into the world. The doctor thought that mother would have died, and, as there was no cow on board, that I should have shared her fate, but she got through it and nursed me, and I throve amazingly, so that in six months I was as big as most children of a year or more old. ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... nuptial felicitations as they stood there side by side, so with a heavy heart he crept up to his own apartment, where, at least, without stint, he could indulge his thoughts. After the brilliance of the salon, the single light in his room seemed puling and weak, so he crossed over and extinguished it. In doing so, he found himself near the window, which, opening to the floor, door wise, looked along the roof of the stone porch. A cooling sweep of moonlight fell on Carter's face and ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... suspended in the desert air, 160 Or to my trembling side unnerved sink down, Palsied, forsooth, by Candour's half-made frown? When Justice bids me on, shall I delay Because insipid Candour bars my way? When she, of all alike the puling friend, Would disappoint my satire's noblest end; When she to villains would a sanction give, And shelter those who are not fit to live; When she would screen the guilty from a blush, And bids me spare whom Reason bids me crush, 170 All leagues with Candour proudly I resign; She cannot be for ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... likely thing to happen . . . the families were old friends . . . there would be great festivities in the Glen . . . perhaps he would be asked to propose the bride's health . . . It really seemed a providence that Saunderson should come along the road when he was playing the fool like a puling boy, for if any man could give a douche to love-sickness it was the minister ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... mother for institutions and things traditional held to him. But as he gazed on the squawking Penton, lying stretched out on a board while the village dentist-doctor dragged at a tooth, he had a sudden conception of man's equality and his likeness to the beast. Even bank-managers were poor, puling cowards in the face of pain, or under the ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... observe that you are willing to let us have a little of your culture at your own price, but we shall not want it; we shall have our own culture, and it will be a much bigger and finer thing than the puling reveries of hedonists; it will be like the sea, not like the scattered ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... all, And don your helmes amaine: Deathe's couriers, Fame and Honor, call Us to the field againe. No shrewish teares shall fill our eye When the sword-hilt's in our hand; Heart-whole we'll part and no whit sighe For the fayrest of the land; Let piping swaine, and craven wight, Thus weepe and puling crye, Our business is like men to fight, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... thousand crimes and debaucheries—and old Colonel Rumbald; whose fate, I must allow, caused me a little sorrow (even though he had flung a sharp cleaver at my head), for he was very much more of a man than that puling treacherous hound my Lord Howard, who was taken hiding in his shirt, up his own chimney, and turned traitor to his friends. Holloway too—a merchant of Bristol, and a friend of Mr. Ferguson—was executed, and several in Edinburgh, of the Scottish plotters ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... out of the shop, scarcely heeding the voice of Mr. Mossrose, who said, "I'll take forty per shent" (and went back to his duty cursing himself for a soft-hearted fool for giving up so much of his rights to a puling woman). Morgiana, I say, tottered out of the shop, and went up Conduit Street, weeping, weeping with all her eyes. She was quite faint, for she had taken nothing that morning but the glass of water which the pastry-cook ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... meanwhile, live in Gray's Inn Lane aforesaid, with a maid-servant and a nurse, whose hands are very full, and in a most provoking and unnatural state of happiness. They have never once thought of crying about their dinner, like the wretchedly puling and Snobbish womankind of my favourite Snob Aubrey, of 'Ten Thousand a Year;' but, on the contrary, accept such humble victuals as fate awards them with a most perfect and thankful good grace—nay, actually have a ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... preacher's keep it's only fair that I should get some of the good that comes to him hereafter; that's how it looks to me; so I don't trouble my head much about the ins and the outs of getting saved or damned. I've never puled in this world, thank God, and let come what will, I ain't going to begin puling in the next. But to go back to whar I started from, it all makes in the end for that pretty little chap over yonder in the dining-room. Rather puny for his years now, but as sound as a nut, and he'll ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... paralytic puling of Carlisle... Lord, rhymester, petit-maitre, pamphleteer. Byron, English ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Lord Kew, shaking away his hand, "be a man, Jack, and have no more of this puling. It's not a baby, that must have its toy, and cries because it can't get it. Spare the poor girl this pain, for her own sake, and balk yourself of the pleasure of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... choice bits with; then in a trice They make a feast less great than nice. But all this while his eye is served, We must not think his ear was sterved; But that there was in place to stir His spleen, the chirring grasshopper, The merry cricket, puling fly, The piping gnat for minstrelsy. And now, we must imagine first, The elves present, to quench his thirst, A pure seed-pearl of infant dew, Brought and besweeten'd in a blue And pregnant violet; which done, His kitling eyes ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... without 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
... the evil are come to by those animals which are not yet depraved. You, too, have laid down the same position, and these are your own words. How many errors are there in them! For by reference to which kind of pleasure will a puling infant judge of the chief good; pleasure in stability or pleasure in motion?—since, if the gods so will, we are learning how to speak from Epicurus. If it is from pleasure as a state, then certainly nature desires to be exempt from evil herself; which we grant; if it is from pleasure in motion, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... I never 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 bushes——" ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 are verry ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... 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
... can. Watch me," he cried arrogantly. "Henry, I want the advantage of my strength in this world and I'm not going to go puling around, golden-ruling and bending my back to give the weak and worthless a ride. Let 'em walk. Let 'em fall. Let 'em rot for all I care. I'm not afraid of their God. There is no God. There is nature. Up to the place where man puts on trousers it's a battle of thews ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... 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 ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... six-figure issue, while my last novel, a sincere piece of literature, hung fire, so to speak, and never got beyond the publisher's preliminary forecast of a thousand copies. Was I not angry? Far from it. I was no puling undergraduate with a thin broad-margined book of verse to sell. The public was at perfect liberty to buy what it pleased. If they wanted my work, the work I loved and toiled to make as perfect as ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... moustaches—probably the only men on earth whom money causes to weep and pluck their beards in pretended sorrow when in the throes of their commercial emotion. If paid enough money they do not hesitate to use the onion freely to produce the real thing in tears. Next followed a dozen of mere puling mutes, of no caste or distinction whatever but that lent by a big brass badge on the breast of each. Then came four rickety carriages of the Columbus era; they hadn't a soul in them, but their cloth upholstered seats had ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... behind him on the bank of the brook. Sam, for his part, turned upon Dick with a ferocious oath, and a fresh demand for the money. Of the whining, puling, weeping Raven they took no notice whatever. No notice! Ah, ha, Messrs. Long Legs and Fiery Nose, you are making the mistake ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak Peace, harmony and love.... 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 The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, that ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... door. Directly she knocked, she heard two or three windows thrown up in neighbouring houses, from which the bodies of unkempt women projected, to cast interested glances in Mavis's direction. As she waited, she could hear the faint puling of a baby within the house. Next, she was conscious that a lath of a Venetian blind was pulled aside and that someone was spying upon her from the aperture. She waited further, the while two of the curious women who leaned from the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... investigation the fines were remitted, and the offenders were only admonished. In Wareham, in 1772, William Estes acknowledged himself "Gilty of Racking Hay on the Lord's Day" and was fined ten shillings; and in 1774 another Wareham citizen, "for a breach of the Sabbath in puling apples," was fined five shillings. A Dunstable soldier, for "wetting a piece of an old hat to put in his shoe" to protect his foot—for doing this piece of heavy work on the Lord's Day, was fined, and paid ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... streaked with gray, flat- backed, flat-breasted, sat beside the rude bed, silent, motionless, awaiting an end that she had so often watched in the sullen ferocity that is of beast rather than of man. And on her lap lay a little, pink, puling thing that whimpered and twisted weakly—a little, naked, thing ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... bounds. Not only does the human instinct for happiness, bent on self-protection by ignoring, keep working in its favor, but higher inner ideals have weighty words to say. The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a way out of the difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... lake. The girl climbed on an old willow and bent over the water. Zbyszko followed her example; and for a long time they remained quiet, seeing nothing in front of them, on account of the fog; hearing nothing but the mournful puling of lapwings. Finally the wind blew, rustled the osiers and the yellow leaves of the willows, and disclosed the waters of the lake which were slightly ruffled by ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... them, have been misled into discovering in Whitman "the poet of Democracy." Others maintain that he is the greatest of American poets, or, indeed, of all modern poets; that he is "cosmic," or universal, and that he has put an end forever to puling rhymes and lines chopped up into metrical feet. Whether Whitman's poetry is formally poetry at all or merely the raw material of poetry, the chaotic and amorphous impression which it makes on readers of conservative tastes results from his effort to take up into his verse ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... how many and many a weary year has dragged by since then! Young, happy, and beloved I was in those long-departed days. They said that I was beautiful. The mirror now reflects a haggard old woman, with ashen lips and face of deadly pallor. But do not fancy that you are listening to a mere puling lament. It is not the flight of years that has brought me to be this wreck of my former self: had it been so I could have borne the loss cheerfully, patiently, as the common lot of all; but it was no natural progress of decay which has robbed me of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... been so long?" It was as if she implied that these minutes without him were an eternity of ennui. He grew more and more conceited. He was already despising Don Juan as a puling boy. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... sacerdotal vestments, lifting the monstrance in the vaulted choir censed by the beating wings of half-seen Cherubim. And she would tremble awestruck as if she were the mother of a god, this poor sick work-woman whose puling child lay beside her drooping in the ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... How say you, pretty soul, is't come to pass, yea or no? I think I have pull'd your peacock's plumes somewhat low. And yet you be so stout as though you felt no grief; But I know, ere it be long, you will come puling to me for relief. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Nicholas, the barber of the same town, would say, that none of them could compare with the Knight of the Sun; and that if any one came near him, it was certainly Don Galaor, the brother of Amadis de Gaul; for he was a man of a most commodious temper, neither was he so finical nor such a puling, whining lover as his brother; and as for courage, he was not a jot ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... coldly, indicating with his finger the trampled cloth, "is not the banner of Scotland, but only that of the Seneschal Stewarts. The King of Scots is but a puling brat, and they who usurp his name are murderous hounds whose necks I shall presently ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... but if he were a Christian—nay, a man—his heart and head too would tell him that the Animosities are mortal, but the Humanities live for ever—and that Leigh Hunt has more talent in his little finger than the puling prig, who has taken upon himself to lecture Christopher North in a scrawl crawling with forgotten falsehoods. Mr. Hunt's London Journal, may dear James, is not only beyond all comparison, but out of all sight, the most entertaining and instructive of all the cheap periodicals; and when laid, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... long line of Royal sons no longer counts. Czardom with all it meant has gone for ever. The man, whose word a few weeks ago meant glory or shame, life or death, is to-day an exile, a prisoner. His word no more than the cry of a puling child! And to-morrow? God may speak again, and then Kaiserism will fall with ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... hunger always at the door take care that, for all but a very few among the people, the discipline of danger and perpetual effort shall not be wanting. You do not find the pitman, the dustman, or the bargee puling for bayonet exercise to make them hard, and if our nervous gentlemen were all serving the State in those capacities, they might even approach their addition sums in "Dreadnoughts" without a tremor. Besides, as Professor James added ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... garrets, Whose dreams are rich in ports and clarets, Who, in your lofty paradise, See aldermanic banquets rise— And though the duns around you troop, Still float in seas of turtle soup. I here forsake the tuneful trade, Where none but lordlings now are paid, Or where some northern rogue sits puling, (The curse of universal schooling)— A ploughman to his country lost, An author to his printer's cost— A slave to every man who'll buy him, A knave to every man who'll try him— Yet let him take the pen, at once The laurel ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... Garrison felt repulsion fingering his heart. Then the former 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 ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... bestowed, like the 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 ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... good as he cood. i wanted to rite Nipper under it but old Francis wood paist time out of me if he found out who rote it. you aught to hear Pricil play and sing. he sings do your best for one another making life a plesent dream, help a poor and weried brother puling hard agenst the streem, and the old organ goes boom ya, boom ya, boom ya ya ya, that is a prety song for a feller to sing whitch never will give the fellers the core of his apple but always eats it hisself. well this afternoon i put on my best close and my plad ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... magnificent burst of editorial eloquence:—"The work is essentially American. It is the type, the representative, THE AGGREGATE OUTBURST OF THE GREAT AMERICAN HEART, so well expressed, so admirably revealing the sentiment of our whole people—with the exception of some puling lovers he speaks of-—that it will find sympathy in the mind of every true son of the soil." The work thus heralded over the Republic with such perfect e pluribus unum concord is entitled English Items; and the embodiment of the "aggregate ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... of the sunne, and how to despise all hazards. Remove from him all nicenesse and quaintnesse in clothing, in lying, in eating, and in drinking: fashion him to all things, that he prove not a faire and wanton-puling boy, but a lustie and vigorous boy: When I was a child, being a man, and now am old, I have ever judged and believed the same. But amongst other things, I could never away with this kind of discipline used in most of our Colleges. It had peradventure been lesse hurtfull, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... back to Sulby, but the excitement of her absence was eclipsed for the time by the turmoil of Caesar's trouble. Standing in the dark on the top of the midden, he was shouting to the dairy door in a voice of thunder, which went off at the end of his beard like the puling of a cat. The mill-wheel was going same as a "whirlingig"—was there nobody to "hould the brake?" The stable roof was stripped, and the mare was tearing herself to pieces in a roaring "pit of hell"—was there never a shoulder for the door? ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... drew closer, the malign grin widening on his furrowed face,—"Thou shalt learn enough trash here to stock thee with idiot-songs for a century. Thou shalt gather up such fragments of stupidity, as shall provide thee with food for all the puling love-sick girls of a nation! Dost thou write follies also? ... thou shalt not write them here, thou shalt not even think them!—for here Sah-luma,—the great, the unrivalled Sah-luma,—is sole Lord of the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... redound to their credit if true, that when a seaman died, and was reported to them, they exclaimed: "Poor fellow! bring me his bag, and mind everything belonging to him is put into it." This they considered their perquisite. Surely this is wrong and robbery! Ah, Mr. Hume! why were you a puling, helpless babe at that time? Had you been a man and known it, you would have called for reformation and been ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... now his Body had unexpectedly risen and claimed yet another hour. And, beyond even this ... some devilish whim had betrayed him to-night into offering his time for the service and uses of the landlady's daughter in the puling matter ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... with one leg in the grave and the other on their own piazzas, are heard on sunny mornings exciting themselves with the maddest abuse of each other's doctor. There are large boarding-houses, fifty or more of them, each of which has its contingent of puling valetudinarians. The healthy inmates have the privilege of listening to the symptoms, set forth with that full and conscientious detail not unusual with invalids describing their own complaints. Or the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various |
