"Shrewish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gave way under him,—and after that she became the mistress of Riverview in earnest, ruling my grandfather with a rod of iron, for though bold enough with men, and especially with the men of his own family, he would succumb in a moment to a woman's shrewish temper. ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... blunt for a lover; but, being glad to get Katharine married, he answered that he would give her twenty thousand crowns for her dowry, and half his estate at his death. So this odd match was quickly agreed on and Baptista went to apprise his shrewish daughter of her lover's addresses, and sent her in to Petruchio to listen to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Ellis were at the head of a highly respectable and industrious coloured family. They had three children. Esther, the eldest, was a girl of considerable beauty, and amiable temper. Caroline, the second child, was plain in person, and of rather shrewish disposition; she was a most indefatigable housewife, and was never so happy as when in possession of a dust or scrubbing brush; she would have regarded a place where she could have lived in a perpetual state of house cleaning, as an earthly paradise. Between her and Master Charlie continued warfare ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... incoherence has here done less than usual to deform the proportions and deface the impression of his design. Indeed, the connection of the two serious plots in the first part is a rare example of dexterous and happy simplicity in composition: the comic underplot of the patient man and shrewish wife is more loosely attached by a slighter thread of relation to these two main stories, but is so amusing in its light and facile play of inventive merriment and harmless mischief as to need no further ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... friends of Arthur," and decked upon the keystone with the image of the Lady, whose form is set in ripples of stone and crossed by mystic fish, while her drapery weeps from her sides as water flowing away. The most charming part of the character-painting is where the shrewish Lynette, as her estimate of the scullion-knight gradually rises in view of his mighty deeds, evinces her kindlier mood, not directly in speech, but by catches of love-songs breaking out of the midst of her scornful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... mari, and the peace of Loch Leven and the island hermitage would have been the sweeter for the din outside. A woman, a Queen, a Stuart, could not attain, and perhaps ought not to have attained, this epicureanism. Mary Stuart had her chance, and missed it; perhaps, after all, her shrewish female gaoler ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... EPHESUS. Good Signior Angelo, you must excuse us all. My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours: Say that I linger'd with you at your shop To see the making of her carcanet, And that to-morrow you will bring it home. But here's a villain that would face me down. He met me on the mart; and that I beat him, And charg'd him with a thousand marks in ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... short dresses, and I can't remember that I've ever had anything but misery from you in my life. It's damnable the things I've stood and yet I've always forgotten them afterwards, and remembered only the times you were soft and gentle and had ceased to be shrewish. Nobody on earth can be softer than you, Molly, when you want to, and it's your softness, after all, that has held me in spite of your treatment. Why, your mouth was like a flower when I kissed you, and ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... brave gallants all, And don your helms amain; Deathe's couriers, Fame and Honour, call Up to the field againe; No shrewish tear shall fill our eye When the sword hilt's in our hand; Heart-whole we'll parte and no whit sighe For the fayrest of the land. Let piping swaine and craven wight, Thus weepe and puling aye; Our business is like to men to fighte And like to ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... which he was soon to enter, he should require all his time, all his faculties. For this reason, he determined to accept Mr. Eastman's offer of board and lodging at his house, albeit his wife was shrewish and generally disagreeable. He no longer permitted the gay throng in Broadway to move his nerves or excite his senses. And thus all these secondary impulses and emotions and sentiments yielded to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... conversation and love-making put a stop to, the servants gave her her way. In this they but followed the example of their betters, of whom we know that it is not to the most virtuous they submit or to the most learned, but to those who, being crossed, can conduct themselves in a manner so disagreeable, shrewish or violent, that life is a burden until they have their will. This the child Clorinda had the infant wit to discover early, and having once discovered it, she never ceased to take advantage of her knowledge. Having found in ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Angelo, you must excuse us all; My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours: Say that I linger'd with you at your shop To see the making of her carcanet, And that to-morrow you will bring it home. 5 But here's a villain that would face me down He met me on the mart, and that I beat him, And charged him with a thousand marks in gold, And that I did ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... the taxi driver that domestic difficulties were responsible for the breaking up of the Congdon household found here a painful corroboration. He chivalrously took sides at once with the unhappy Alice; no matter how shrewish the absconding wife might be, only a brute of a husband would fling such a message at her head. Archie hated discord; the very thought of it was abhorrent. He had never had a care in his life beyond his health, and quarrels of every ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... a shrewish young woman with an ill-tempered face, a waist that could scarcely be called slender, a thin figure, and colorless, fair hair, in spite of a certain little air that she had, was by no means easy to marry. ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... height of the prophet's 'wife, but neither so lusty nor so vigorous in appearance, She was but indifferently dressed, and though her features had evidently been handsome in her younger days, yet there was now a thin, shrewish expression about the nose, and a sharpness about the compressed lips, and those curves which bounded in her mouth, that betokened much firmness if not obstinancy in her character, joined to a look which might ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... with violence; a thick-set man with a bald head and a red face, followed by a shrewish, thin woman with pinched lips, appeared on ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... and who is to hinder, if you please, good Master Fuller?" asked the young woman in a somewhat shrewish voice. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... gentle mother. But when he married the governess before that second winter's snow had mantled the hallowed grave, her soul rebelled in indignation and dismay. For a year her heart had held out against him, and softened only when she saw that he was breaking under the self-imposed burden,—a shrewish second wife. However, Mrs. Sanford "held the fort," as has been said, and Marion, high-spirited, sensitive, refined, and loving, was entering on her ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... impossible; there is no way of doing it. In the early years I was frightened with you, and now I am ashamed.... That's how my best years have been wasted. When I fought with you I ruined my temper, grew shrewish, coarse, timid, mistrustful.... Oh, but what's the use of talking! As though you wanted to understand! Go upstairs, and God be ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... says a thin, shrewish woman, with a kind of triumphant scowl at her better half; "but you would have ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... not to fancy yourself come out,' said Juliana, the second sister, who had a good tall figure, and features and complexion not far from beauty, but marred by a certain shrewish tone and air. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remember my grandfather, Othello,—or "Uncle Tallow,"—a brown man, strong-voiced and redolent with tobacco, who sat stiffly in a great high chair because his hip was broken. He was probably a bit lazy and given to wassail. At any rate, grandmother had a shrewish tongue and often berated him. This grandmother was Sarah—"Aunt Sally"—a stern, tall, Dutch-African woman, beak-nosed, but beautiful-eyed and golden-skinned. Ten or more children were theirs, of whom the youngest ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois |
