"Curmudgeon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wretch sat back and shook his head during the entire session, and just before adjournment said, as he took his hat to go, that p'r'aps'twas orl right and on the squar'; maybe thar war'n't any shenannigan, but he war dubersome—yes, he war dubersome. The old curmudgeon repeated this until I was ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... ye. Ye'er boys'd be joods an' ashamed iv ye, an' ye'd support ye'er daughters' husbands. Ye'd rackrint ye'er tinants an' lie about ye'er taxes. Ye'd go back to Ireland on a visit, an' put on airs with ye'er cousin Mike. Ye'd be a mane, close-fisted, onscrupulous ol' curmudgeon; an', whin ye'd die, it'd take half ye'er fortune f'r rayqueems to put ye r-right. I don't want ye iver to speak to me whin ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... delicious excitement. She was a daughter of the camp, and had no fears whatever. She was a conspirator; she was trusted with a tremendous secret; she was to help the beautiful and enormous O'Toole to a rich and beautiful wife; she was to outwit an old curmudgeon of an uncle; she was to succour a maiden heart-broken and imprisoned. Jenny was quite uplifted. Never had a maid-servant been born to so high a destiny. Her only difficulty was to keep silence, and when ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... story told of Professor Josiah Royce, who once rang up six fares on the register when he wished to stop a Boston street-car. When the conductor protested, the philosopher called him "up-start," "curmudgeon" and "nincompoop," and showed the fallacy of his claim that thirty cents had been lost, since nobody had found it. Moreover, he offered to prove his proposition by algebraic equation, if one of the gentlemen present had chalk and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... year! But the man did refuse. The man wrote back to say that he did not understand this kind of thing at all, and that he wanted his money at once. George Hotspur sent the man his money, not without many curses on the illiberality of such a curmudgeon. Was it not cruel that a fellow would not give him so trifling an assistance when he wanted it so badly? All the world seemed to conspire to hurt him just at this most critical moment of his life! In many of his hardest emergencies for ready money he had gone to Mrs. ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... the hand and pressing it to the heart he had thus defended from the suspicion of being pumice, "yes,—that I should have trusted that dunderheaded, rascally curmudgeon Peck; that I should have let him call it 'The Capitalist,' despite all ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gentle Tom. "Dic asked him to loan me enough money to pay my overdraft—said he would go on the note—but he refused point blank; said the twenty-three hundred dollars he loaned father and Uncle Jim Fisher was all the money he had. The miserly old curmudgeon!" ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... that took possession of his features. At length, he hawked up, with incredible straining, the interjection, "Ah!" that seemed to have stuck some time in his windpipe; and thus gave vent to his indignation: "Have I come alongside of you at last, you old stinking curmudgeon? You lie, you lousy hulk! ye lie! you did all in your power to founder me when I was a stripling; and as for being graceless and wicked, and keeping bad company, you tell a d—d lie again, you thief! there was not a more peaceable ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... profusion of acknowledgments; and scarcely had she gone, when a young fellow, who I learned had lately come into possession of a handsome property by the death of an uncle, came to request me not to meddle with the deceased, who he assured me was a shocking old curmudgeon, who never spent his money like a gentleman. A douceur from the young chap secured the repose of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... was much too nice-looking; I imagine the other Mr. Lester is an awful old curmudgeon. He has got his property unjustly, I consider—the eldest son ought to ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... pretty kettle of fish; pickle, stew, imbroglio, mess, ado; false position. set fast, stand, standstill; deadlock, dead set. fix, horns of a dilemma, cul de sac [Fr.]; hitch; stumbling block &c (hindrance) 706. [difficult person] crab; curmudgeon. V. be difficult &c adj.; run one hard, go against the grain, try one's patience, put one out; put to one's shifts, put to one's wit's end; go hard with one, try one; pose, perplex &c (uncertain) 475; bother, nonplus, gravel, bring to a deadlock; be impossible ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget |
