"Touchy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always opprobriously, often happily in the way of hitting off a salient peculiarity; but they were not in the least aware that they were themselves the best nicknamed people in the service. And they would not have liked it had they known it, for they were both exceedingly touchy. They held no feelings of another sacred, but their own supreme. Mrs. Guthrie Brimston was ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... touchy lately about advice, particularly from any fellow of his own standing; and after the checks he had recently received, a coolness had sprung up between him and nearly all the study-boys, which made him more than ever inclined ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... [analogous to 'pissed off'] Said of system administrators who have become annoyed, upset, or touchy owing to suspicions that their sites have been or are going to be victimized by crackers, or used for inappropriate, technically illegal, or even overtly criminal activities. For example, having unreadable files in your home directory ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... afraid," he said frankly. "You see, I've felt rather touchy about the thing. I want people to know that you and I have agreed on making Terry the heir to the ranch. I don't want anyone to suspect that we differed. I suppose I talked too much about the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Ghost question divides us with the Gulf of Jehannum. The gardener of this house is a Copt, such a nice fellow, and he and Omar chaff one another about religion with the utmost good humour; indeed they are seldom touchy with the Moslems. There is a pretty little man called Michail, a Copt, vakeel to M. Mounier. I wish I could draw him to show a perfect specimen of the ancient Egyptian race; his blood must be quite unmixed. He came here yesterday to speak to ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... there was nothing in that, except that she might have told him; but then, again, she never did tell him anything. She was more silent, more touchy, every day. He wished to God the house were finished, and they were in it, away from London. Town did not suit her; her nerves were not strong enough. That nonsense of the separate room had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... two peasants from the Central South, both with bad sciatica, slower in look, with a mournful, rather monkeyish expression in their eyes, as if puzzled by their sufferings. Here is a true Frenchman, a Territorial, from Roanne, riddled with rheumatism, quick and gay, and suffering, touchy and affectionate, not tall, brown-faced, brown-eyed, rather fair, with clean jaw and features, and eyes with a soul in them, looking a little up; forty-eight—the oldest of them all—they call him Grandpre. And here is a printer from Lyon with shell-shock; ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... so shaken and beaten upon and icily drenched that rattling finials and tiles were torn from ancient gables and whirled abroad. Rheumatic pains were driven into the joints of the elderly. Mr. Brown took to his bed in the lodge, and Mr. Traill was touchy in ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... again—weighing them down with clean stones that they might not follow the kites—it was with secret delight, for there is no wholesome woman who does not rejoice in a boy and regard his most vexatious mischief with charity. And old Major MacLeod, the keenest of golfers and the most touchy of Celts, declared that this condemned old Island was not dead yet when it could turn out such a gang of sturdy young ruffians. And it was instead of such a mighty ploy that Mr. Byles proposed to take the ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... inclination. Temporary affliction will at once show in the writing. A preoccupied mind, full of trouble, cares little whether the letter then written is legible or not; hence the writing is erratic, uncertain, and the confusion of mind is clearly exhibited in every line. Irritable and touchy persons slope the nourishes only, such as the cross of the letter "t" and the upper parts of the capital letters. When the capital letters stand alone in front of the words and the final letters also are isolated, it betokens great creative power and ideality, such ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... secure payment from a friend of Borrow's, and the banker's wife said to him: "Oh Mr. Borrow, I have read your books with so much pleasure!" the great man exclaimed: "Pray, what books do you mean, madam? Do you mean my account books?" How touchy he was, Mr. Walling shows, by his story of Borrow in Cornwall neglecting a lady all one evening because she bore the name of the man his father had knocked down at Menheniot Fair. Several stories of his crushing remarks prove nothing but that he was ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... succeeded in winning general esteem by an exquisite tact; the sensitive warnings of which enabled her to follow the delicate line along which she might satisfy the exactions of this mixed society, without humiliating the touchy pride of the parvenus, or shocking that of ...
— The Recruit • Honore de Balzac
... rest, Haynes represents the New Witness much more than a reviewer does, being both on the board and the staff; and he has put your view in the paper—I cannot help thinking with a more convincing logic. Don't you sometimes find it convenient, even in my case, that your friends are less touchy than you are? ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... think it was a man's belief concerning a dogma that would fix his place in eternity. This was because we believed that God was a grumpy, grouchy old gentleman, stupid, touchy and dictatorial. A really good man would not damn you even if you didn't like him, but ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... touchy about psycho-analysis; she always got angry if people said it was foolish in any way. She was like that; she could see no weak points in anything she took up; it came from being vain, and not having a brain. She said one of the things angry people ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... equable serenity the pettiness of the German princes, the phlegm of the Dutch, the ignorant opposition of his officers, the libels of his political opponents. There was a touch of irony in the simple expedients by which he sometimes solved problems which had baffled cabinets. The touchy pride of the king of Prussia in his new royal dignity, when he rose from being a simple Elector of Brandenburg to a throne, made him one of the most vexatious among the allies; but all difficulty with him ceased when Marlborough rose at a state banquet and glutted his vanity ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... were touchy on the subject of their ages, their father was no less so on that of his memory, as Miss Calista well knew when she made the ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... consciousness of having now taken the first step on the dreary journey which was henceforth to separate my life from Miss Fairlie's seemed to have blunted my sensibility to every consideration connected with myself. I had done with my poor man's touchy pride—I had done with all my little artist vanities. No insolence of Mr. Fairlie's, if he chose to be ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... could get through twenty nights without its breast-plate being unbuckled, and forty-eight hours on a handful of rice. On the contrary, Tartarin's body was a stout honest bully of a body, very fat, very weighty, most sensual and fond of coddling, highly touchy, full of low-class appetite and homely requirements—the short, paunchy body on stumps of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Dick, a little embarrassed by his companion's warmth. "No harm is done. I am not touchy, praise ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that. Don't be so touchy all the time—always standing there as if to say: 'Who's going to do anything for me, good or bad?' Strike about ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... but I tell you that Brenton is just a little touchy and apt to take offence. I have found him so on several occasions. Now, as you have practically taken charge of this case, why don't you go and ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... a box of phosphorus in his leather-breeches; and in the dead of night the half-illuminated beast steals his magic potion into a cleft in a barn, and half a country is grinning with new fires. Farmer Graystock said something to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in flames. What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to perceive that something is wrong in the social system!-what a hellish faculty ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... husband's mind off himself," Mrs. Apwall would whisper at parting. "He isn't half so touchy when you've cheered him up ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... changed from mirthfulness to irritation by his rough manner. 'I don't want your company, you great bragging thing! You are so touchy there's no bearing with you. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... again, back to the old difficulty, only worse. Idleness descended on us again. We grew touchy on little things, as a misplaced plate, a shortage of firewood, too deep a draught at the nearly empty bucket. The noise of bickering became as constant as the noise of the surf. If we valued peace, we kept our mouths shut. The way a man spat, or ate, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... were inside the carriage, Jeanne and her father, in spite of Julien's brutal behavior of the morning which still weighed on their minds, began to laugh at the gestures and intonations of the Brisevilles. The baron imitated the husband, and Jeanne the wife. But the baroness, a little touchy in these particulars, said: "You are wrong to ridicule them thus; they are people of excellent family." They were silent out of respect for little mother, but nevertheless, from time to time, Jeanne and her father began again. The baroness could not forbear smiling in her turn, but she ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... ideas into your head, and don't make absurd scenes of jealousy. You know whom you have to do with; Marguerite isn't a saint. She likes you, you are very fond of her; let the rest alone. You amaze me when I see you so touchy; you have the most charming mistress in Paris. She receives you in the greatest style, she is covered with diamonds, she needn't cost you a penny, unless you like, and you are not satisfied. My dear fellow, you ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... a Prussian to a Frenchman. The only Prussian I ever knew who was an agreeable man was Bismarck. All others with whom I have been thrown—and I have lived for years in Germany—were proud as Scotchmen, cold as New Englanders, and touchy as only Prussians can be. I once had a friend among them. His name was Buckenbrock. Inadvertently I called him Butterbrod. We have never spoken since. A Prussian lieutenant is the most offensive specimen of humanity that ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... tea, etc., covered in the refrigerator, and, if you can, see that this is cleaned every day. But this might cause the cook to feel aggrieved, so I put it as a suggestion merely. But if the refrigerator has a smell, and the cook seems touchy, the milk, etc., better be kept upstairs on some sheltered window-ledge, ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... at the speaker. "You hadn't ought to 'a' let me say it," he replied. "How did I know he was so touchy?" His gaze left Cowan and lingered in turn on each of the others. "Some of you ought to 'a' told me. I wouldn't 'a' said it only for what I said just before, an' I didn't want him to think I was challenging him to no duel in the brush. So I says so, an' then he goes ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... extreme form the paranoic is rare just as is the extremely trusting person of saintly type. But in minor form every group and every institution has its paranoic, hostile, suspicious, "touchy," quick to believe something is being put over on him and quick to attribute his failure to others. In that last is a cardinal point in the compass of character. Some attribute their failure to others, and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... coat; he wore large solid gold buckles in his shoes, and knee—buckles of the same. His voice was small and squeaking, and when heated in argument, or crossed by any member of family,—and he was very touchy—it became so shrill and indistinct that it pierced the ear without being in the least intelligible. In those paroxysms he did not walk, but sprung from place to place like a grasshopper, with unlooked—for agility, avoiding the chairs and tables and other movables with great dexterity. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... downright traditions; but in this case she was not in the least anxious to make a personal score. She saw that if she told Considine she would be firing the train to an explosion that might end in nothing but useless wreckage. Considine, for instance, admittedly touchy on the subject of Gabrielle, might refuse to believe her and show her the door. Arthur would be forced to leave Lapton; and she thought too highly of Considine's influence on him to run the risk of a relapse. On the other hand ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... himself and his raw pride into his overcoat, turned the fur collar up around his head, and went down a staircase. He was sneaking and he knew it and no paltering self-assurance that he was handling a touchy situation with necessary tact helped his feelings in the least. He stepped into a taxicab and was glad because the breath of previous passengers that morning had frosted the windows. That consolation was merely a back-fire in the rest ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... some time ago. And both of them were so touchy, if anybody seemed to speak about it, that folks got in the way of letting it alone. First Aunt Emma wouldn't speak to her sister because she'd married the man she'd wanted, and then when Aunt Emma made out so well farmin' and got so ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... said curtly. Father is so ridiculously touchy. One would think he expects to live for ever. Presently ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... fellow can get into ever. I was little better than sick myself; and, while the others went off after eggs and game, I stayed to keep the fire going and take care of Wade. No small stint I had of it too; for he was peevish and touchy as a young badger. I knew he ought to take something hot of the herb-tea sort, and so started off and gathered a dipperful of the tea-plant leaves. Then, getting a lump of ice, I melted it, and made a strong ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... concern himself with. Tom did not lack these, but he was none the less keenly sensitive upon the point of Margaret's propriety and good name. 'Twas the extraordinary love and pride he had centred upon her, that made him so observant and so touchy in the case. He brooded upon her actions, worried himself with conjectures, underwent such torments as jealous lovers know, such pangs as Hamlet felt in his uncertainty regarding the integrity of ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... evil of thinking too much about the party you belong to. It makes a man touchy; and then he fancies when another is merely, it may be, analysing a difference, or insisting strongly on some great truth, that he is talking against ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... week later we were installed there, and for nearly two years we lived there. At the risk of offending an adorable but somewhat touchy sex, convinced that man, left to himself, is capable of little more than putting himself to bed, and that only in a rough-and-ready fashion, truth compels me to record the fact that without female assistance or supervision ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... was blind to this contention. For his own part, he humoured Bridget or smiled at her asperities, as suited him; and it is probable that if he had been appealed to, he would have adopted his old favourite's side, and censured Leslie as touchy, inconsiderate, perhaps a little spiteful. But he never was made umpire, for Leslie had all the disadvantage of a noble temper in an unseemly struggle. Bridget plagued Leslie, but Leslie would not injure Bridget,—no, not for the world. The imperious old ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... was so formidable that the council gave up the consideration of the menacing message they had been about to send, and instead agreed upon a letter of amnesty, as likely to succeed better with a people of so "peevish and touchy" ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... something about General BEAUREGARD which he should not have said. The General is getting red. I hate it, when men begin to talk about the American War. Any other war they are welcome to: the Danish War, the war of 1866, the war of 1870, the glorious affair of Majuba. But Americans are touchy about their war, not easy to please them whatever you say. Much best to say nothing. CRIMPTON is laughing at American novels. He does not know that the Professor is an American novelist. What am I to do? I try to kick him ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... said Swampy, hurriedly. "But since you're so blasted touchy and suspicious about it, you take this job an' I'll take the next that turns ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... which touched her in an intimate and disturbing manner. She had felt the will-o'-the-wisp flame which burned in him in his great moments. It was possible for her to smile at Donnegan; it was possible even to pity him for his fragility, his touchy pride about his size; to criticize his fondness for taking the center of the stage even in a cheap little mining camp like this and strutting about, the center of all attention. Yet there were qualities in him which escaped her, a possibility of metallic ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... measurement for the battery. The hill was crowned with a ring of Scotch firs, casting a quiet shade upon the warlike haste of the Captain. If Admiral Darling smiled, it was to the landscape and the offing, for he knew that Stubbard was of rather touchy fibre, and relished no jokes unless of home production. His slow, solid face was enough to show this, and the squareness of his outline, and the forward thrust of his knees as he walked, and the larkspur impress of his lingering heels. And he seldom ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... ill-natured Miss Kitty Cat," Spot exclaimed. "She has a big family of kittens. And she's terribly touchy about anybody's coming near them. Although she's keeping them in my basket, she hasn't even invited me to have a look at them.... I only hope," he added, "they won't grow up to ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... make his voice calm, adult, reasonable—"you happened to have hit on rather a touchy point with her. Those trees are dioecious, you know, like us, and she isn't mated. And, well, she has rather a lot of ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... wrote for the Sangamon Journal a humorous criticism of State Auditor Shields, a vain and "touchy" little man. This was in the form of a story and signed by "Rebecca of the Lost Townships." The article created considerable amusement and might have passed unnoticed by the conceited little auditor ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... TO KNOW. That's a sign of the American people that they DO want to know, and it's the sign of George P. Flack," the young man pursued with a rising spirit, "that he's going to help them. But I'll make the touchy folks crowd in THEMSELVES with their information, and as I tell you, Miss Francie, it's a job in which you can ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... "Whatever is the matter?" And she has no sooner heard about the touchy tusk than she says, "Oh, pooh! Just say there isn't any such thing as toothache. Pain, you know, is only a false mental photograph, an error of the ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... of the mountain fastness and have Emma sit up and 'con-centrate' all night. If she can move a house and lot with her con-centration stunt, she surely should be able to move that touchy mountain savage further away from us," suggested Hippy to the discomfiture of Emma and the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... said. He then brought out my key ring, although unable to take the keys off because of having but one hand. "If you're as touchy as all that, and don't care for the real story, I'm through. ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... doing around that devil-island. What kinds of laws they're breaking out there nobody knows. They may be doing anything from shooting fish to catching chicken-halibut or baby barracuda. We don't know what. But we do know they're mighty touchy on who cruises round El Diablo. When our boats get around that infernal island something ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... matter upon which Mr. Crow was especially touchy. That was corn. If anybody talked about corn-robbers, or even said much about corn as a food, Mr. Crow always lost his temper. And if anybody showed much liking for corn, or meddled in the cornfield, then old Mr. ...
— The Tale of Grandfather Mole • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Miss Murray, she would not so often go wandering in the fields with a book in her hand. However, I don't want to vex you,' added she, seeing, I suppose, that my cheeks burned and my hand trembled with some unamiable emotion. 'Do, pray, try not to be so touchy— there's no speaking to you else. And tell me if you know where Rosalie is gone: and why she likes ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... his knife at times, I confess. Besides, his family has suffered at the hands of the whiskey runners. He is a chief and he owes it to these devils that he is out of a job just now. You may imagine he is somewhat touchy on the point of ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... Hazlitt's touchy and difficult temper suspended this inintimacy in later years, though to the last Lamb regarded him as 'one of the finest and wisest spirits breathing'; but for a while it was unclouded. At the Lambs', moreover, Hazlitt made acquaintance with a Dr. Stoddart, owner of some property at Winterslow ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... always. Many a ship on the Spanish Main I've had to leave unboarded through want of a brother-in-law. They're touchy about it somehow. Unless the captain's brother-in-law comes ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... and if your father had the power to take from me my position and my honor—the fact that I have an irreproachable child, that is something he cannot take from me. And any one else—hey? Young man, on this point I am touchy. Do you understand? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... herself. What had she done? She couldn't recall anything. She remembered she had said something about the way his hair looked with the moon shining on it; perhaps he had taken offence at that; the remark was entirely complimentary, but sometimes people are touchy about such things; still that was not the least like Cousin Will. She must have said or done something though—what could it be? Oh what a pitiful memory that could not recollect an injury done to one's best friend! She tossed ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... animals so well, he doesn't like to be meddled with in his management of them. I daresay he told you that, if they didn't know better, he had to teach them better! They are troublesome little wretches.—Yes, I confess he is a little touchy ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... all gamblers, he is hopelessly improvident. He is a sportsman as soon as he can walk upon his feet without the aid of the supporting adan;[6] he is in love as a permanent arrangement, and will go to any length, and run any risk, in order to satisfy his desires; and, as he is exceedingly touchy, and quick to take offence, he frequently seems to be in the condition which is known as 'spoiling for a fight.' He is apt to 'buck' about the brave deeds of himself and his countrymen, in an untamed ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... a clever nor a tactful young man, although quite good-natured. He did not intend to offend, and never understood why he sometimes did so. Bessie was "touchy," as he often declared, but she bore no malice. So long as she had the young man dangling around, so long as she could dress for him, put on her long mauve ribbons for him, do up her hair for him in a chignon ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... officers and their families, meeting at evening on the door-steps or in front of their houses, or stepping in familiarly; the rough-hewn first lieutenant, with no ideas beyond the service; the doctor, priding himself on his cultivation and refinement, pretending to elegance, sensitive, touchy; the sailing-master, an old salt, of the somewhat modernized Tom Bowline pattern, tossed about by fifty years of stormy surges, and at last swept into this quiet nook, where he tells yarns of his cruises and duels, repeats his own epitaph, drinks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... remember him as Everard Constable, a touchy, ill-conditioned, cantankerous brute if ever there was one, who does not care a straw for anyone but himself. I can't think what she sees in him. But an Earl's an Earl. I always forget that. I have lived so much apart from the world and its sordid motives and love ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... permit him to receive without resentment any reflections against the South or the people of his family, while he could stand any amount of personal joshing without growing in the least touchy or angry. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Parliament. Then we probably review the household troops— With the usual "Shalloo humps!" and "Shalloo hoops!" Or receive with ceremonial and state An interesting Eastern potentate. After that we generally Go and dress our private valet— (It's a rather nervous duty—he's a touchy little man)— Write some letters literary For our private secretary— He is shaky in his spelling, so we help him if we can. Then, in view of cravings inner, We go down and order dinner; Then we polish the Regalia and the Coronation Plate— Spend an hour in titivating ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the job was done took me into the parlour an' gave me a jugful of cider over and above the sixpence charged. I believe she'd have made it a shillin', too, only when I told her she lived in a very pretty house, and asked if she owned it or rented it, she turned very stiff in her manner. Touchy as tinder she was; and if that comes of being a lady, I'm glad ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... this brazenness had prevented him from thinking clearly. He was getting "touchy" about his uncle's political record of late and had had occasion to defend it with some heat during certain discussions among friends; there had been several newspaper attacks which he had resented greatly also. His uncle's reputation as a public man he had been Quixotic enough to take ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... scarecrowy and ghost-like already. Please, driver, take Captain Bertram's things up to the house. He heard you speak, Loftie. These Northbury people are as touchy as if they were somebodies. Oh, Loftus, you will be disappointed. Mother has ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... taken off for your pains," said Ernestine, walking over to the glass, and smiling at her own unruffled image. "Olive's a touchy goose, but I didn't mean to hurt her feelings, and I'm sorry for it; so that's the best I can do ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... memory for the numbers and names of their children; and the only complaint that even his valets had against him was that he remained his own barber and evinced a certain reluctance in casting his suits until they had begun to show a suspicion of wear. In outward relations he was a kind, touchy, companionable soul; inwardly he was one who suffered acutely from lack of companionship and conversation, not because he had not plenty of people to talk to, but because so many things came into his head that he must not say, while the correct substitutes for them only ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... was going to keep you warm? Quit your squirming, Touchy. I won't bite. Ready, George. Up to the Palisade Inn, and let out some ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... make a dreadful mistake, and ask Mr and Mrs Bracely. That would be jam for Georgie, and he could easily imagine himself saying to Lucia, "My dear, I thought you must have known that she had married Mr Shuttleworth and kept her maiden name! How tarsome for you! They are so touchy about that ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... touchy ladies here, and so superior," Diana urged, when he demurred; "and you know I am never safe for two minutes with that type. I should be driven into saying appalling things, and our reputation might be ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... some Northerners fancy is a proof of equality and independence, we never met with, and duels and street quarrels are almost unknown. We detected none of the touchy sensitiveness of the punctilious Spanish hidalgos. Their compliments and promises are without end; and, made in the magnificent and ceremonious language of Spain,[24] are overwhelming to a stranger. Thus a fair Quitonian sends by her servant the following message to another ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... only hasten tea by taking the preparation of it into her own hands, and so offending Dixon, who was emerging out of her sorrow for her late mistress into a very touchy, irritable state. But Martha, like all who came in contact with Margaret—even Dixon herself, in the long run—felt it a pleasure and an honour to forward any of her wishes; and her readiness, and Margaret's sweet forbearance, soon ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Russell's many feminine incumbrances to a dance. Tip had steadily refused to accept the obligation, and had endured very patiently a vast amount of hectoring from Russell, who was then as now a trifle snobbish and unsteady; but had finally been forced (or so we regarded it, at that hot and touchy period) to accept what was practically a challenge, and we were actually on tiptoe for a duel. Feeling ran high about it, and there might have been a very disagreeable scandal had not Tip's clear common sense and persuasive ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... if such a one had thought it a shade too authoritatively expressed, he would, if he had lived in town, gone out to the crowded street, gone down to his club, and in half an hour have entirely forgotten the little disagreeable impression. But a touchy man, dwelling in the country, gets the irritative letter by the morning's post, is worried by it all the forenoon, and goes out and broods on the offence through all his solitary afternoon walk,—a walk in which he does not see a face, perhaps, and ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... in the first moment of rebuff to be touchy, allowed his natural goodness of heart to prevail. He leaned forward, and said, not without pathos: "Old man, we are all your friends here. Something's the matter. Tell us what ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... since the quarrel between the two lords, Harry yet saw that Lord Castlewood was watching his guest very narrowly; and caught signs of distrust and smothered rage (as Harry thought) which foreboded no good. On the point of honour Esmond knew how touchy his patron was; and watched him almost as a physician watches a patient, and it seemed to him that this one was slow to take the disease, though he could not throw off the poison when once it had mingled with his blood. We ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... formerly fat man—if I am not correct. But do not ask a fat woman unless, as in the case of possible fire at a theater, you already have looked about you and chosen the nearest exit. Taken as a sex, women are more likely to be touchy upon this detail where it applies to themselves ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... are so touchy on all points relating to Sibylla, that one hesitates to speak," continued Jan. "I was going to say, unless he fears the shock to Sibylla; and would let her be prepared for ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... child, why be so touchy? Were you bitten? Well, you know, this morning one of my fellows brings in a miserable wretch he had found on the road by Black Horse Spinney. The thing was half-dead with wet and cold. He had been lying there all night—so he said, and it's the one thing I believe ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... white and pinched, while his eyes were unnaturally large. No man dreamed for a moment of resenting his savage personalities, but as soon as the meal was over they made haste to get away. 'Don't go. You're just getting amusing, you fellows. I hope I haven't said anything that annoyed you. You're such touchy devils.' Then, changing the note into one of almost abject entreaty, Hummil added, 'I say, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... "This is touchy stuff," Malone said. "We're going to have to take a lot of care in handling it. And I don't want you throwing raids all over the place ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... didn't know you were so touchy about him," cried the girl. "Is it for his sake or your own that you are so careful? You're stupid not to let him amuse you, since you've spoiled ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... guise or another but always with the same harsh voice and the same frowning eyes, bossing some job in a manner which would cost him his boss-ship right off the reel in these times when union labor is so touchy. And what is the moral to be drawn from this narrative? I know that all my life I have been trying to get away from work, feeling that I was intended for leisure, though never finding time somehow to take it up seriously. But what was the use of ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... began to poison for vengeance that retribution fell upon her. Her fondness for the bottle started to get her into trouble. It made her touchy. Up to 1841 she had poisoned for the pleasure of it, masking her secret turpitude with an outward show of piety, of being helpful in time of trouble. By the time she arrived in Rennes, in 1848, after seven years during which her murderous proclivities seem to have slept, her character as ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... is a keen revival of interest but more resistance to open family discussion than in the pre-adolescent age. Maturing children are touchy, sensitive, self-conscious, modest, seclusive. They run to cover at too intimate a topic, especially in the hands of adults who are inclined to strike a wrong note; to be preachy and teachy and inquisitive and, in terms of the young adolescents themselves, ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... do. Just think of the trouble it would cause. Imagine the state of mind of the lilies if I were to show a preference for roses. There's always been a little jealousy there, and they're all frightfully touchy. The artistic temperament, you know. Why, I daren't even sleep in the same flower ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... you," he repeated. "Do as you choose. If you deem his life a precious thing, cherish it. When did you learn a taste for insolence, Etienne? Time was when you were touchy on that score." ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... understood it. Perhaps I am touchy; I don't think I am ungrateful. They have always made you ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have had very thin legs and small eyes, for which he doubtless had to find excuses, and he was wont to indulge in very conspicuous dress and rings and was accustomed to arrange his hair carefully.[4] Diogenes the Cynic exhibited the impudence of a touchy soul. His tub was his distinction. Tennyson in beginning his "Maud" could not forget his chagrin over losing his patrimony years before as the result of an unhappy investment in the Patent Decorative Carving Company. These ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... in his melancholy fashion that if he and I came face to face in war, he would be sure to remember my words and to cut me up in the best style, since he could not bear to think of me languishing on a bed of sickness without my wife Kaatje to nurse me (they knew I was touchy about Kaatje). Then we shook hands and parted. Kaatje, hung round with paraphernalia like the White Knight in "Alice through the Looking-glass," clinging to a cooking-pot and weeping tears of terror, faced the foaming flood upon the mare, ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... spent ammunition had accumulated at several inches distance, and at length the hole entirely disappeared, the earth in its vicinity presenting an apparently level surface—an armed peace, in truth, with the two touchy curved calipers on duty, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... was sent out to Madras as an elderly nobleman selected for the job, and as a stranger to his colleagues, who moreover were particularly given to factious disputes. It is not unlikely too that Lord Pigot himself had become touchy and overbearing in his declining years. Any way, he quarrelled with his Councillors almost immediately, and within six or seven months there had been some very angry scenes. He had been accustomed to being obeyed, and ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... brute, made me feel sick. But she wasn't a ship you could afford to fight shy of. Besides, the most genuine excuse could not be given without mortally offending Apse & Sons. The firm, and I believe the whole family down to the old unmarried aunts in Lancashire, had grown desperately touchy about that accursed ship's character. This was the case for answering 'Ready now' from your very death-bed if you wished to die in their good graces. And that's precisely what I did answer—by wire, to have it over ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... thing he was jealous, careful and touchy. His book, his almost completed work on Warsaw. It was to be a book of books, so clear, so accurate, so full of new f acts that it would be a treasure among the literary treasures of his time. Professor Morris believed in the book with the conviction ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... woman who was warm-hearted, sensitive and thoughtful, Edith had a singularly happy disposition. First, she was good-tempered; not touchy, not easily offended about trifles. Such vanity as she had was not in an uneasy condition; she cared very little for general admiration, and had no feeling for competition. She was without ambition to be superior to others. Then, though she saw more deeply into things than the generality of ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... I of such eventual acquittal, seeing that my judges are my own countrymen. I think, indeed, Englishmen the most suspicious and touchy of mankind; I think them unreasonable and unjust in their seasons of excitement; but I had rather be an Englishman (as in fact I am) than belong to any other race under heaven. They are as generous, as they are hasty ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... opposing the stage as an institution. His enemies were quick to point this out. He also weakened his argument by finding bawdry where there was none, overlooking the many unquestionably off-color passages in the Restoration plays. Furthermore he was extremely touchy about the clergy, arguing violently that no priest should ever be satirized. In short, Collier weakened a strong position by ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... adverse, baffling, contrary, perverse; petulant, peevish, cynical, surly, unamiable, inaffable, crabbed, crusty, captious, fractious, churlish, vixenish, querulous, fretful, choleric, touchy, waspish, morose, sullen, ill-natured, irascible acrimonious, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... have honest Hutchins: taciturn, a little touchy perhaps, grown grey in the service of the company, and manifesting quite a bulldog-like ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... said the old man gently, "I think that you are repeating what you have heard older people say. You are pretending to be touchy; but you are not really. Stop being so tiresome, and tell me instead what part of the church you want to see. To take you to it will be a ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... you try it, and see whether you will be touchy. You have worked hard at your profession, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... as the law gives a feller a right to do it. 'Tisn't a bit o' use to think how a man can be too nice in his feelings when a hundred or two's to be made on nigger property what's delicate, t'aint! A feller feels sore once in a while, a' cos his conscience is a little touchy now and then; but it won't do to give way to it-conscience don't bring cash. When ye launches out in the nigger-trading business ye must feel vengeance agin the brutes, and think how it's only trade; how it's perfectly legal-and how it's encouraged by the Governor's ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... why is he so touchy?" Blackett was asking himself at the same moment. "We seem fated to quarrel, Fairburn's family and ours. Whose is the pride now, I wonder! Fairburn thinks a deal of his independence, as he calls it; I ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... become one of the focal points of his New York life. He liked the cheery, informal atmosphere of the house whose old-fashioned austerity was tempered with a dash of modern frivolity; he liked the people he met there, people too assured of their own social position to be touchy upon slight points of social precedence. Most of all, he liked Beatrix Dane, herself. In the gay, chattering multitude among whom she moved, her own steadfast quietness stood out in bold relief, and it answered to certain traits of his own Puritanism. It was not that she was dull, or overfreighted ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... finding her dazzlingly beautiful. He enfolded her in his arms with joy unspeakable, and so the honeymoon began. Short dream of bliss; she became capricious at once, and seven devils at least seemed to have nestled in her lovely bosom. Sid was touchy himself, and not the man to bear with such humors. Every day she sat at his bountiful board, and, instead of partaking the food which he set before her, she would daintily and mincingly pick out a few grains of rice with the point of a bodkin. Sid asked her ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
