"Irritating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those Green Flies which are the pest of this Distressful Country. I refuse to believe that. There never was, never will, never can, never shall be any Green in my eye. But whatever it is, mote or beam, it is awfully irritating. Do look into it; it is not in the white, or perhaps I should say—for I am a brunette of olive complexion, you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... of spirit was subjected to a sore pecuniary trial. It was the opening of Lord North's administration, a time of great political excitement. The public mind was agitated by the question of American taxation, and other questions of like irritating tendency. Junius and Wilkes and other powerful writers were attacking the administration with all their force; Grub Street was stirred up to its lowest depths; inflammatory talent of all kinds was in full activity, and the kingdom ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... subscribe a test, acknowledging the supremacy of the British Parliament. This bill was warmly opposed in both houses, on the grounds of confounding the innocent with the guilty—of destroying a trade which perhaps could never be recovered—and of cruelly starving whole provinces, and thus irritating the Americans to withhold debts due to the British merchants. In support of the bill it was argued, that as the Americans had resolved not to trade with England, it was but fair to prevent their trading ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... resented a certain irritating air of superiority that Ernest and his friends assumed and began a series of petty annoyances, bumping into them or crossing from the side just in front while they were racing. The boys contented themselves at first with warning ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... "Yes, perhaps so. If he hasn't changed for the worse. But it'll be rather irritating if he talks about nothing but Irene still. Oh, that's impossible! ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... him permanently as an insufferable idiot. Even Farraday lost ground in his esteem, for, though guilty of no banalities, he had a way of silently hovering over the baby-carriage which Stefan found mysteriously irritating. Jamie alone of their masculine friends seemed to adopt a comprehensible attitude, for he backed away in hasty alarm whenever the infant, in arms or carriage, bore down upon him. On several occasions when the Farraday household invaded the Byrdsnest ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... you done, mio padre?" cried she, addressing herself to her father, as soon as Don Rafael had gone; "you have wounded his pride by your irritating words, at the very moment when, out of regard for us, he has renounced the vengeance which he had sworn on the grave of his father! It may be that the words of oblivion and reconciliation were upon his lips; and you have hindered him from speaking them now and for ever. Ah! mio padre! ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... expect to be welcomed with snuff," said Alice, as she sneezed again. This time Ruth joined her. There was an irritating odor ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... adapt itself, with wonderful elasticity, to the discontents of all parties; not comprehensive enough for the ultra-Abolitionists, it was stigmatized by the Democrats as unconstitutional and oppressive; while moderate politicians agreed that, beyond irritating feelings already bitter enough, it would be practically invalid as an offensive measure. We shall see, hereafter, how these prognostications ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Aberdeen; and that of Hebrew and Oriental Languages to the Rev. E. Black, of the University of Edinburgh. Difficulties resulting from the Charter prevented these appointments from being actually made at that time. Because of irritating delays, the somewhat hopeless situation brought about by the refusal of the Home Government to permit the increase of Professorships, and numerous other differences of opinion, trouble was now growing between the Governors and the Crown. At a meeting of the former held on November 14, ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... Loudoun women to the Confederate cause was most irritating to a certain class of Federal officers in the armies that invaded Northern Virginia. They seemed to think that through their military prowess they had conquered entrance into Southern society, but the women ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... I watched eagerly the course of events, until at last all mail facilities were cut off, and I was left to endure the horrors of suspense as well as the irritating consciousness that, although sojourning in the home of my childhood, I was an alien, an acknowledged "Rebel," and as such an object of suspicion and dislike to all save my immediate family. Even these, with the exception of my precious mother, were bitterly opposed to the South and Secession. ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... The process of cowing her had gone on from childhood, and now she was under a reign of terror. She did not yet know that she could resist her mother. And then she lived in mortal fear of her mother's heart-disease. By irritating her she might kill her. This dread of matricide her mother held always over her. In vain she watched for a chance. It did not come. Once, when her mother's head was turned, she glanced at August. But he was at that moment listening ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... pupil Grosdidier; then Blanc, then Moreau (Gaston), then Moreau (Ernest), then Malepert; then another, and another, who babbled with the same intelligence and volubility, with the same piping voice, this cruel and wonderful fable. It was as irritating and monotonous as a fine rain. All the pupils in the "ninth preparatory" were disgusted for fifteen years, at least, with this most ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... address of the Chadgrove brothers won the hearty admiration of the rustics, but it also brought them more than once into rivalry and collision with some of Mortimer's gentlemen-at-arms, who were not best pleased to be overmatched by mere striplings. It was also galling and irritating to them to note the popularity of these lads with the rustics. Any success of theirs was rewarded by loud shouting and applause, whilst no demonstration of satisfaction followed any feat performed by those wearing the livery of Mortimer. And if the lads scored a triumph over ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... over the Pampas of Patagonia, and who had learned every art and craft of savage life by living among the wild Hoodoos of the Himalayas. This Air-and-Grass-man, as he may be called, is generally supposed to write the story... He was "I" all through. And he had an irritating modesty in speaking of his own prowess. Instead of saying straight out that he was the strongest and bravest man in the world, he implied ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... be kept in view that the hanging about at this court and all the perplexing and irritating negotiations had always one end in view—that of reaching the Nile, where it pours out of the N'yanza as I was long certain ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... Book,' which contains the whole of the correspondence immediately preceding the war, will at once show the patient efforts put forth by the London Cabinet to maintain peace. There are no irritating words used, and the last despatch of importance before the outbreak of hostilities, dealing with the insinuations just alluded to, is not only most courteous and conciliatory in tone, but it states that the Queen's Government ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... were extremely irritating to Bob, but he could not well avoid them, and to have declined to accept the gift which she had made especially for him in anticipation of his coming, would have caused her keen disappointment. So he accepted them and donned them, to ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... for when the tide had run clean out, only pools and reaches, connecting by shallow runnels the volume of the natural stream, remained for the hippopotami to sport about in; and my manoeuvring in these confined places became so irritating, that a large female came rapidly under water to the stern of the canoe, and gave it such a sudden and violent cant with her head or withers, that that end of the vessel shot up in the air, and sent me sprawling ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... dignity he damned at me with his bell. Now, I do not like to see a bicycle wobble under a load of years, and steer into the irascible. As years increase tempers shorten, and bicycles, even the best of bicycles, are seductively irritating. ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... gained if they could settle once for all, by a solemn compact, the matters which had, during several generations, been in controversy between Parliament and the Crown. They therefore most judiciously abstained from mixing up the irritating and perplexing question of what ought to be the law with the plain question of what was the law. As to the claims set forth in the Declaration of Right, there was little room for debate, Whigs and Tories were generally agreed as to the illegality of the dispensing power and of taxation imposed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in high estimation for this purpose; juice used as an ointment for sores and for sore nipples, and in connection with other herbs for cancer. Dispensatory: The juice of all of the genus has the property of "powerfully irritating the skin when applied to it," while nearly all are powerful emetics and cathartics. This species "has been highly commended as a remedy in dysentery after due depletion, diarrhea, ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... the alien's voice—by now he had heard it often enough so that it was merely irritating in its thin dryness, like old parchments being rubbed together. He watched the stylus as ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... who has been upon a walking or a boating tour, living in the open air, with the body in constant exercise and the mind in fallow, knows true ease and quiet. The irritating action of the brain is set at rest; we think in a plain, unfeverish temper; little things seem big enough, and great things no longer portentous; and the world is ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had better go to another goldsmith. Without further provocation he retorted that I was a donkey; whereupon I said that he was not speaking the truth; that I was a better man than he in every respect, but that if he kept on irritating me I would give him harder kicks than any donkey could. He related the matter to the Cardinal, and painted me as black as the devil in hell. Two days afterwards I shot a wild pigeon in a cleft high up behind the palace. The bird was brooding ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... will only read it to a few of us, and do not on any account give, or permit to be taken, any copy of the ballad. If I could be of any service to Dr. M'Gill, I would do it, though it should be at a much greater expense than irritating a few bigoted priests, but I am afraid serving him in his present embarras is a task too hard for me. I have enemies enow, God knows, though I do not wantonly add to the number. Still, as I think there is some merit in two or three of the thoughts, I send it to you as a small, but sincere testimony ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the night-porter, and after some brief explanation, Pierrette got out, wished us a merry "Bon jour!" and disappeared. Then, with the Count mounted at my side, I backed out into the roadway, and we were soon speeding along that switchback of a road with dozens of dangerous turns and irritating tram-lines that leads past Eze into the tiny Principality of His Royal Highness Prince Rouge et Noir—the paradise of ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... trying to throw off the irritating effect of his mother's pin-pricks. As was his usual custom when he was a little depressed, he went home and sat down in front of his wife's portrait. He often sat there for an hour when she was out, looking at it. Any one watching him would have thought he was in a state of ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... course, the two speak, as it were, in the same language. The rough miner, or "puddler," the untrained, undeveloped "tiger-man," heated by a quart or two above his usual measure, comes home and kicks his irritating and injudicious wife to death. He is a murderer. And Gilles de Raiz was a murderer. But you see the gulf that separates the two? The "word," if I may so speak, is accidentally the same in each case, but the "meaning" is utterly different. It is flagrant "Hobson ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... genuine utterance. To this Richard had worked himself in fretting over his position; he was the real sufferer, though decency compelled him to pretend it was not so. He had come to think of Emma almost angrily; she was a clog on him, and all the more irritating because he knew that his brute strength, if only he might exert it, could sweep her into nothingness at a blow. The quietness with which Alice accepted his revelation encouraged him in self-defence. He talked on for several minutes, walking about and swaying his ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... changes were convulsing the Cabinet, irritating the great nobles, and exciting the apprehensions of all those who desired the welfare of the nation, the young sovereigns, whom they more immediately concerned, were either ignorant or careless of their consequences. The girl-Queen, surrounded by her Spanish attendants, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... They consisted in the anomalous restrictions on the coasting trade, the unjustifiable difference in the duties on Spanish and island produce, the high duty on flour from the United States, the export duties, the extravagant expenditure in the administration, irritating monopolies, and countless abuses, vexatious ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... adjusting his glasses, Dr. Armstrong eyed Miss Durant with a quality of imperturbability at once irritating and embarrassing. "I beg your pardon for the hasty remark I just made," he apologised. "Not having my second sight at command, I did not realise I was speaking to so young a girl, and therefore I allowed myself ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... had been more frequent to-day than usual, Helen thought. Perhaps the rain had made people cross. Whatever it was, the hurried woman had been more hurried, and the insolent woman more unbearable. There had been, too, an irritating repetition of the woman who was "just looking," and of her sister who "did n't know"; "was n't quite sure"; but "guessed that would n't do." Consequently Helen's list of sales had been short in ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... little, and nourish the heart more, you would be less of a philosopher, and more of a—" The Parson had the word "Christian" at the tip of his tongue: he suppressed a word that, so spoken, would have been exceedingly irritating, and substituted, with inelegant antithesis, "and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... immediately charged with the government of the province, and finally, from the royal authority and whole English dominion. "With an arrogant and self-sufficient manner, constantly identifying himself with the authority of which he was merely the representative, and constantly indulging in irritating personal allusions, he entirely lost sight of the courtesy and respect due to a co-ordinate branch of the government, and made himself ridiculous, while he was ruining the interests of the sovereign whom he was most anxious to serve. Even Hutchinson, as we learn from the third volume of his ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... with a sort of homesickness those years of poverty, of real misery, the cold nights in his wretched bed, the irritating meals—Heaven knows what was in them—eaten in a bar-room near the Teatro Real; the discussions in the corner of a cafe, under the hostile glances of the waiters who were provoked that a dozen long-haired youths should occupy several tables and order all together only ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had never got her letter? He had been in London without telling her. He had forgotten her. Perhaps he was deceiving her? And he was making love obviously to that sickening, irritating red-haired fool (so Edith thought of ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... comfort. Unlike a temperate climate, where mere attendance becomes a luxury, the pursuit of game in a tropical country is attended with immense fatigue and exhaustion. The intense heat of the sun, the dense and suffocating exhalations from swampy districts, the constant and irritating attacks from insects, all form drawbacks to sport that can only be lessened by excellent servants and by the most perfect arrangements for shelter and supplies. I have tried all methods of travelling, and I generally manage to combine ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... infrequently happened, something about Judith's attitude had been irritating her father, and he now said with some severity, "Then it's a case where Sylvia's loving heart can do more good than your anger, though you evidently think it very fine of you ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... doctor and myself were sitting; another snapped off a tree-trunk like—well, as a 4.2 does snap off a tree-trunk. Most ominous sign of all—when the seven shots had been fired, three ugly-looking holes ringed themselves round the colonel's hut. Next, a Hun aeroplane, with irritating sauciness, circled above our camp, not more than five hundred feet up. Our "Archies" made a lot of noise, and enjoyed their customary success: the Hun airman sailed calmly back ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... trials. They were not so much implacable as impracticable in their dealings with others in misfortune. To them, virtue, honor, loyalty, all human sentiments consisted solely in the payment of their bills. Irritable and irritating, without feelings, and sordid in their economy, the brother and sister bore a dreadful reputation among the other merchants of the rue Saint-Denis. Had it not been for their connection with Provins, where they went three or four times a year, when they could close the shop for ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... herself scarcely knew: it was an accident that on this occasion his absence had been marked for her. Selina had had her reasons for wishing not to go up to town while her husband was still at Mellows, and she cherished the irritating belief that he stayed at home on purpose to watch her—to keep her from going away. It was her theory that she herself was perpetually at home—that few women were more domestic, more glued to the fireside and absorbed in the duties belonging to it; and unreasonable as she ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... horses crowded nearer to the man, and the woman clung tighter to him as he wrapped her more closely in the protecting cloth. He felt suffocated, stifled, his lungs bursting, his throat burning, while every breath he drew was laden with the irritating sand. It penetrated through all the openings of his clothing, down his collar, inside his shirt, into his boots. The heat was terrific, unbearable, the darkness intense. Wargrave began to wonder if his first ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... was not sentimental, and any exhibition of feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear—what was it that showed in the expression of his face at these ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... if well-aired, I should no more object to your putting on clean underwear than to your changing your dress. Most especially would I advise a frequent change of napkins, in order to remove those which are soiled from their irritating contact with the body. A full bath during menstruation would, for most people, be unadvisable, but the cleansing of the private parts is imperative. For this, tepid water, with good soap, may be used daily or oftener. Other parts of the body may be rubbed with a wet cloth, followed by vigorous, ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... States were also sunk in the torpor of the Middle Ages; but in the northern districts of Bologna and Ferrara, known as the "Legations," the inhabitants still remembered the time of their independence, and chafed under the irritating restraints of Papal rule. This was seen when the leaven of French revolutionary thought began to ferment in Italian towns. Two young men of Bologna were so enamoured of the new ideas, as to raise an Italian tricolour flag, green, white, and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... restless, her hands were restless too and she kept snapping the catch of her hand-bag with an irritating click as ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... faculty of putting something extremely irritating in her voice. It was honey smooth, and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... made him truckle down, he found him less distasteful work, but always so ungraciously that it was impossible to be grateful to him for it: Christophe had to be ground down by necessity before he would ever go to Hecht again. In any case he preferred to earn his money by such work, however irritating it might be, than accept it as a gift from Hecht, as it was once more offered to him:—and, indeed, Hecht meant it kindly: but Christophe had been conscious of Hecht's original intention to humiliate him: he was forced to accept his conditions, but nothing would induce him to accept ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... firmly convinced that I owe any modest success I may have attained and all my annual income to his beneficent efforts on my behalf. And the worst of it is, that he has a kind of top-heavy and overwhelming good-nature about him. He honestly means to be kind and genial where he only succeeds in irritating his perverse acquaintances. Was BULMER always thus? When he began on his small salary, did he patronise the office-boy? When he had learnt to spell, did he devote his first epistolary efforts to the pompous patronage ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... of Carrara. There are men to whom silliness is an absolute freezing mixture; to whose hearts a plain, sensible woman at once appeals as a woman, while no amount of beauty can serve as sweet oblivious antidote to counteract the nausea produced by folly. Malcolm had found Clementina irritating, and the more irritating that she was so beautiful. But at the first sound from her lips that indicated genuine and truthful thought, the atmosphere had begun to change; and at the first troubled gleam in her eyes, revealing that she ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... have been to him to arrive at the right answer of a sum or a problem by tampering with the processes. Such a man, with strong affections and keen perception of all forms of beauty, and with the deepest desire to be reverent towards all that had a right to reverence, would find himself in the most irritating state of opposition and impatience with much that passed as religion round him. Principles not attempted to be understood and carried into practice, smooth self-complacency among those who looked down on a blind and unspiritual ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... Misprints are very irritating to most authors, but some can afford to make fun of the trouble; thus Hood's amusing lines are probably founded upon some blunder that ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... BRETT YOUNG'S manner of presenting The Tragic Bride (SECKER) is not free from affectation, and this is the more irritating because his literary style is in itself admirably unpretentious. But having recorded this complaint I gladly go on to declare that his tale of Gabrielle Hewish has both charm and distinction. I protest my belief in Gabrielle both ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... amiable and sympathetic, kind and thoughtful, never irritating, crossing, or censuring the king; wonderfully judicious, modest, self-possessed, and calm, she was irreproachable in conduct and morals, tolerating no improper advances. Although the characteristics and general deportment of Mme. de Montespan were entirely different from those ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... of pain, only a mild irritating smarting and no more. The Chinaman laid down the knife and took up ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... accommodation in the very interests of truth itself. Fanatic is a name of such ill repute, exactly because one who deserves to be called by it injures good causes by refusing timely and harmless concession; by irritating prejudices that a wiser way of urging his own opinion might have turned aside; by making no allowances, respecting no motives, and recognising none of those qualifying principles, which are nothing less than necessary to make his ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... A severe and unjust review of "Marmion," by Jeffrey, appeared in 1808, accusing Scott of a mercenary spirit in writing for money (though Jeffrey himself was writing for money in the same article), and further irritating Scott by asserting that he "had neglected Scottish feelings and Scottish characters." "Constable," writes Scott to his brother Thomas, in November 1808, "or rather that Bear, his partner [Mr. Hunter], has behaved by me of late not very civilly, and I owe Jeffrey a flap with ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... was in the position of a man striking at an adversary whose construction was of India-rubber. He struck home, but left no bruise and drew no blood, which was an irritating thing. He ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the two shells; the large pearls almost loose in that part called the beard.' Now, these may be the effect merely of an excess in the supply of calcareous matter, of which the oyster wishes to get rid; or, they may be formed by an effusion of pearl, to cover some irritating and extraneous body." The reality of the latter theory is strengthened, if not proved by the Chinese forcing the swan muscle to make pearls by throwing into its shell, when open, five or six minute mother-of-pearl beads, which, being left for a year, are found covered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... advisers among his theological, as he had among his legal, friends; and had he allowed them equal influence with him; he would not, I suspect, have written this irritating and too egometical paragraph. But Baxter would have disbelieved a prophet who had foretold that almost the whole orthodoxy of the Non-conformists would he retained and preserved by the Independent congregations ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Australian Eucalyptus Globulus Oil "Kangaroo" Brand Recommended by the highest medical authorities for sick-room and household use as a general Antiseptic, Disinfectant and Deodorant. It is non-poisonous and non-irritating. Used the world over. Take no substitute but see that you get our ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... patient of defeat. In more recent times there had been a number of disputes, the more angry because they were between brethren. There had been disputes about boundaries, in which England believed herself to have been overreached by your negotiators, or, what was still more irritating, to have been overborne because her main power was not here. There had been disputes about the Right of Search, in which we had to taste the bitterness, now not unknown to you, of those whose sincerity in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... German Minister, certainly does not lack men. We encountered them everywhere. Travelling first class gives one more or less privacy in Holland, so that it was decidedly irritating to have a listener make for our compartment, while adjoining first-class compartments were entirely empty. If the intrusion resulted in our going to another compartment, an ever-ready Kamerad would ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... bucket of water over my horse's legs. "You'd better look out for your elephant; those drunken Bretons are irritating him," I said. "Mahouts are born, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Could she not have divined it was only his fear of what she might say! And now it was all over! She had washed her hands of him with the sending of that manuscript and letter, and he would pass out of her memory as a foolish, conceited ingrate,—perhaps a figure as wearily irritating and stupid to her as the cousin she had known. He mechanically lifted his eyes to the distant hotel; the glow was still in the western sky, but the blue lamp was already shining in the window. His cheek flushed quickly, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... displeased they pushed people to the utmost extremity, and they were incapable of showing any gratitude for services done them. Thus they were alike hated by the Court, by the Fronde, and by the populace, and nobody could live with them long. All France impatiently suffered their irritating conduct, and especially ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Lord Fawn a long time to write his letter, but at last he wrote it. The delay must not be taken as throwing any slur on his character as a correspondent or a man of business, for many irritating causes sprang up sufficient to justify him in pleading that it arose from circumstances beyond his own control. It is, moreover, felt by us all that the time which may fairly be taken in the performance of any task depends, not on the amount of work, but on the performance of it when ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... inventor the bitterest animosity; a feeling which he took no pains to conceal. Many of his letters to him at that time, and for many years afterward, were couched in studiously insulting language, which must have been in the highest degree irritating to a sensitive artistic temperament like ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... again. In a word, it was the season of setting fire to the prairies. As he advanced he began to perceive great clouds of smoke at a distance, rising by degrees, and spreading over the whole face of the country. The atmosphere became dry and surcharged with murky vapor, parching to the skin, and irritating to the eyes. When travelling among the hills, they could scarcely discern objects at the distance of a few paces; indeed, the least exertion of the vision was painful. There was evidently some vast conflagration in the direction toward which they ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... the Government," adding his opinion that "the present English Government has thus far given us no just cause of offence[346]." Meanwhile the Government, just at the moment when the Declaration of Paris negotiation had reached an inglorious conclusion, especially irritating to Earl Russell, was suddenly plunged into a sharp controversy with the United States by an incident growing out of Russell's first instructions to Lyons in regard to that negotiation and which, though ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... accompaniment which Don Giovanni plays while he sings "Deh Vieni." Filomena, knowing nothing about Mozart, used her mandoline for the delivery of a melody which she performed with great skill, though it was but a silly tune and sounded sillier than it was because of the irritating tremolo. It was like her embroidery—very well done but not worth doing. She had been taught the mandoline by the nuns, who had also taught her needlework. I expected the corporal to accompany her on the guitar; he admitted that he was passionately devoted to music, ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... kidnapped us, and for his present conduct towards an unprotected female. He even threatened him with exposure as soon as we reached the shores of America. Peter, his friend, in vain urged him to refrain from irritating the captain; but the hot-headed youth heeded not the advice, and stood by his point, till the captain, who uttered not one word, bit his lip, and, hurrying to his cabin, returned with a cocked pistol in each hand. The mate, who was a good-hearted kind of lad, was, at the moment, persuading ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... Weimar, who was my good friend, to the Duchess of Gotha, who did not know me, and to the Jews of Berlin. And he departed secretly, leaving for Count Waldstein a letter at once tender, proud, honest and irritating. Waldstein laughed and said he would return. Casanova waited in ante-chambers; no one would place him either as governor, librarian or chamberlain. He said everywhere that the Germans were thorough beasts. The excellent and very amiable Duke ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and not my enemy, Mavriky Nikolaevitch, that such overtures only aggravate the insult. He feels it impossible to be insulted by me!... He feels it no disgrace to walk away from me at the barrier! What does he take me for, after that, do you think?... And you, you, my second, too! You're simply irritating me that I ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... preserved an urbane tranquillity which gave him on all occasions the full possession of his extraordinary faculties, enabled him to concentrate them instantly upon whatever was submitted to his attention, however suddenly—and to conquer without irritating or mortifying even the most eager and sensitive opponent. He never suffered himself to be in a hurry, or fidgeted; however sudden and serious the emergency which frighted others from their propriety, he retained and exhibited complete composure; surveying his position ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... It was undignified and irritating; for in this uninteresting competition the precious moments were flying, and my interview leading ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... lightening of its gloom as he spoke, but there was a firing-up of the black eyes, and the woman with the knitting felt that—for whatever reason—he was purposely irritating his father. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... and cocoa—in fact, in all our cooking processes where milk is required—will also immeasurably aid in sugar conservation. The substitutes mentioned are all available in large amounts. Honey is especially valuable for children, as it consists of the more simple sugars which are less irritating than cane sugar, and there is no danger of acid stomach ...
— Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them (1918) • C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss
... learned from her that woman is always woman under any clime or epoch. The greater strength of her physique lessened, perhaps, the vine-like tendency, yet she clung sufficiently to satisfy the needs of his masculinity; and she displayed the feminine unreason, at once so charming and irritating, with sufficient coquetry to freshen her love. Her greatest charm, however, lay in the dominant quality of brooding motherhood, the birthright of primal women and the very essence of femininity. After one of those sweet silences, she would ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... customs of legalistic orthodoxy. But it was also felt that mysticism went dangerously near to a denial of the absolute Unity of God. It was more difficult to attack it on its theoretical than on its practical side, however. The Jewish mystic did sometimes adopt a most irritating policy of deliberately altering customs as though for the very pleasure of change. Now in most religious controversies discipline counts for more than belief. As Salimbene asserts of his own day: 'It was far less dangerous to debate in the schools whether God really existed, than to wear publicly ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... monotony of that suffering, touch their wound to procure a sharper pang. Anne of Austria was nearly fainting; her eyes, open but meaningless, ceased to see for several seconds; she stretched out her arms towards her other son, who supported and embraced her without fear of irritating ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... times, to take some part in this work. She was eager to teach the women better methods, but at last the patriarch told her to let them alone, as she was only irritating them. Unlike the men, who almost worshipped the revolvers, and would have handled them, and even quickly learned to shoot, if Stern had allowed, the women clung sternly to their ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... military to disperse them; but the utmost care is taken to prevent any fatal circumstances from attending these acts of needful hostility, and orders are uniformly issued never to fire upon the natives, unless any particularly irritating act should render such a measure expedient. They are amazingly expert at throwing the spear, and will launch it with unerring aim to a distance of thirty to sixty yards. I myself have seen a lad hurl his spear at a hawk-eagle (a bird which, with wings expanded, measures from seven to ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... out of place to give here a closer description of the training of the officers and men of the new navy, drawn from personal experience. To do this without the irritating egoism of the personal narrative it will be necessary, as often in future pages, to adopt the ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... and leave the question of possibility of development under such wholesale tyranny to the judgment of the public. It is difficult to conceive how any persons can expect that Europeans, especially Englishmen, will become landowners and settle in Cyprus when subjected to such unfair and irritating restrictions. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... given as soon as the symptoms of colic manifest themselves, has frequently afforded relief. At any rate, the irritating substances may be expelled from the alimentary canal before the pains will subside. All local remedies will be ineffectual, and consequently the purgative should be given in large doses until a copious ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... gentleman who has a wife, towards four others who have not got one, and he abused that privilege so far as to kiss Fly in our presence, when he put her on his knee after meals, and by other prerogatives, which were as humiliating as they were irritating. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... on down the ledge and Shefford plodded thoughtfully after him. The others followed. A jutting corner of wall again hid the canyon. The Indian was working round to circle the huge amphitheater. It was slow, irritating, strenuous toil, for the way was on a steep slant, rough and loose and dragging. The rocks were as hard and jagged as lava. And the cactus further hindered progress. When at last the long half-circle had been accomplished the golden and rosy lights ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... systems of ideas; as a psychological fact of long standing we know that other elements may be injected into that system so as to change it, or that one system may be destroyed and another system built up to take its place. This is the secret of cures of this nature—of mental troubles—the irritating factor, the thorn ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... this in no spirit of bravado," continued the other with irritating insolence, "but so that you may remember my words and this warning when I am gone." Then, with a final fling of defiance: "This is the first time you have seen me, M. Coquenil, and you will probably never see me again, but you will hear ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... his cell, when the terror had become unbearable, Vasily Kashirin attempted to pray. Of all that had surrounded his childhood days in his father's house under the guise of religion only a repulsive, bitter and irritating sediment remained; but faith there was none. But once, perhaps in his earliest childhood, he had heard a few words which had filled him with palpitating emotion and which remained during all his life enwrapped with tender poetry. ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... to grease sore and chafed parts. A little may be inserted into the nostrils for a cold. Camphorated vaseline is especially good for this. In case of an irritating cough that keeps a child from sleeping, a little plain pure vaseline may be put in the mouth, and it ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... way Badger could not tell whether the professor's gaze was fixed on him or on Agnew. Professor Barton had fiercely penetrating eyes, anyway, and the peculiar manner in which he looked at students in the classroom had always been especially irritating to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... flesh, a little above the ankle-bones—of discomfort, rather, in comparison with the anguish throbbing and biting across her shoulder-blades. Some one—it may have been in unthinking mercy—had drawn down the sackcloth over her stripes, and the coarse stuff, irritating the raw, was ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... in the steamer chair and turned a trifle pale. Then she laughed, that irritating little laugh of hers, and said, "Really I did not think it had gone so far as that. I'll bid you ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... to a murmur, during which Sam took breath, casting a bold gaze upon the bystanders. Then again, this man, who could not read, was as gentle, polished, select in his language, as a well-informed person—at other moments modest, measured, attentive, going step by step over the irritating parts of the argument, courteous to his judges. Once only he gave way to a burst of passion. The attorney-general had proved in his speech that Sam Needy had assassinated the director without any violence on his part, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... the tactual silence of the country is always most welcome after the din of town and the irritating concussions of the train. How noiseless and undisturbing are the demolition, the repairs and the alterations, of nature! With no sound of hammer or saw or stone severed from stone, but a music of rustles ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... the man who sees what has to be done, and does it—and says nothing about it." Scott agreed. And if you were "sledging with the Owner" you had to keep your eyes wide open for the little things which cropped up, and do them quickly, and say nothing about them. There is nothing so irritating as the man who is always coming in and informing all and sundry that he has repaired his sledge, or built a wall, or filled the cooker, or ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... that not a very long time ago—to speak of political society with a certain distaste, as a necessary evil, an irritating but inevitable restriction upon the "natural" sovereignty and entire self-government of the individual. That was the dream of the egotist. It was a theory in which men were seen to strut in the proud ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... existence of Black Roger Audemard became with him a sort of indefinite reality. Black Roger was a long way off. Marie-Anne and Bateese were very near. He began thinking of her as Marie-Anne. He liked the name. It was the Boulain part of it that worked in him with an irritating insistence. ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... their families because of its often startling contrast to their life in the services. There was even evidence that some of the off-base segregation, especially overseas, had been introduced through the efforts of white servicemen. Particularly irritating to the committee were restrictions placed on black participation in civil rights demonstrations protesting such off-base conditions. The committee ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... couldn't have cared less if they never did move. It was nice that old Holati Tate had made an almost indecently vast fortune out of his first-discovery rights to the things, because she was really very fond of the Commissioner when he wasn't being irritating. But in some obscure way she found the plasmoids themselves and the idea of unlimited plastic life which they embodied rather appalling. However, she was in a minority there. Practically everybody else seemed to feel that ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... supplemented Hall, remembering the rivalry of the traders. Again he did deliberate thinking. If he should place McDevitt it would be a small but irritating way to annoy Burroughs. He was not above seeking even infinitesimal means of stinging, and this chance encounter might lead to something more to his set purpose. So he went on: "Get you a job, eh? Se-ve-ri-al others want sinecures." He grew facetious as his thought took shape. "I'm ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... and irritating cranks. I have met scores of them. They are intense, but shortsighted. Some are delightfully ingenuous, with the lovable simplicity of the child. Others are of a morbid and carping disposition, with an inordinate sense of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Tim was in one of his sour, irritating moods. He served the ball and resolved to pay no attention to the catcher. By and by ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... just see Zara's profile all the time when she put up those irritating, longhandled glasses of hers, now gave her opinion of the bride-elect to Lord Charles Montfitchet, her neighbor on the ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... yards were seized and its flag fired upon, it is inconceivable that the man who then had such courage of his opinions entertained any further doubt as to his future course; though it may well be that he did not imperil his personal liberty and safety by any irritating avowal of his purpose. In a reception given to him, when he thus revisited the place which should no longer be his home, he recalled those days and said: "I was told by a brother officer that the State had seceded, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... often, and her scheme of obtaining subsistence for herself and child had become so offensively apparent, that she had about exhausted the patience of all the kith and kin on whom she had the remotest claim. Her presence was all the more unwelcome by reason of the faculty for irritating the men of the various households which she invaded. Even the most phlegmatic or the best-natured lost their self-control, and as their wives declared, "felt like flying all to pieces" at her incessant rocking, gossiping, questioning, and, what was worse still, lecturing. ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... smile irritating. "I ought to know," she added sharply, "for I've lived in the house with him ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... than because he can sit a horse or brew beer! In that happy time the true writer will be neither an atom the more regarded nor disregarded; he will only be less troubled with birthday books, requests for autographs, and such-like irritating attentions. From that time, also, it may be, the number of writers will begin to diminish; for then, it is to be hoped, men will begin to see that it is better to do the inferior thing well than the superior thing after a middling fashion. The man who would not rather be a good ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... may often, perhaps usually, be ugly, but at least there is no conventional prettiness, there is no smug veneer of an artificial good taste which refuses to call a spade a spade, and which deliberately turns away from those things in life which are irritating to its sense ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... condemned by the German courts to fifteen months' imprisonment for playing off an innocent little joke on four German officers, and did his share of fighting with the French in the early part of the War, is the darling of the Boulevards. They adore his supreme skill in thrusting the irritating lancet of his humour into bulging excrescences on the flank of that monstrous pachyderm of Europe, the German. Professor Knatschke (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), aptly translated by Professor R.L. CREWE, is a joyous rag. It purports to be the correspondence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... until the crash of the Ballantyne firm told her for the first time that they were sharers in the ruin. A psychologist might trace this strange twist of his mind in the numerous elfish Fenella-like characters who flit about and keep their irritating secret through the long chapters of so many ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... impossible soup made of seaweed. After which there are little fish dried in sugar, crabs in sugar, beans in sugar, and fruits in vinegar and pepper. All this is atrocious, but above all unexpected and unimaginable. The little women make me eat, laughing much, with that perpetual, irritating laugh which is peculiar to Japan—they make me eat, according to their fashion, with dainty chop-sticks, fingered with affected grace. I am becoming accustomed to their faces. The whole effect is refined—a refinement so entirely different from our own that at first sight I understand nothing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and saw the wall beyond. It was uncanny. But another strange thing about him was the impossibility of telling whether he was serious. There was a mockery in that queer glance, a sardonic smile upon the mouth, which made you hesitate how to take his outrageous utterances. It was irritating to be uncertain whether, while you were laughing at him, he was not really enjoying an elaborate joke at ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... assumed that Halet was simply going out of her way to be irritating, as usual. Looking back on the incident, however, it occurred to her that the chatter between her aunt and the newscast woman had sounded oddly stilted—almost like something the ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... her with his most irritating smile, as he sat down at the kitchen table, "I don't find I git thru any more work by tumblin' out o' bed 't sun-up 'n I dew 'f I lay a spell 'n' let the univarse git het up 'n' runnin' a leetle mite. 'Slow 'n' easy goes fur in a day' 's my motto. ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to him, back of Chesterfield, touches his hair.) Try not to be so irritating, Bobbie dear; just because you don't happen to appreciate good literature, it's very small and narrow to ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... mud-bespattered cobble-stones on either side. Of course we are followed through these fearful thoroughfares by a surging and vociferous crowd of people such as a Central Asian city alone can produce; but I can this time happily afford to smile at these usually irritating accompaniments to my arrival in a populous city, for ten minutes after entering the gate finds me shaking hands with Mr. Gray, the genial telegraphist of the Afghan Boundary Commission. With a well-guarded gate between our cosey quarters and the shouting mob outside, the evening ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... journey from Yaroslav to Nizhni is beautiful, but I had seen it before. Moreover, it was very hot in the cabin and the wind lashed in our faces on deck. The passengers were an uneducated set, whose presence was irritating. At Nizhni we were met by N., Tolstoy's friend. The heat, the dry wind, the noise of the fair and the conversation of N. suddenly made me feel so suffocated, so ill at ease, and so sick, that I took my portmanteau and ignominiously ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the thing happened which was to prove both a promise and a despair. Joel Latham felt a hardness at his heel, an irritating lump inside his ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... reason I drink no wine, is because I can practise abstinence, but not temperance." Yes: in all things, abstinence is easier than temperance; for a little enjoyment has invariably the effect of awaking the sense of enjoyment, irritating it, and setting it on edge. I, therefore, recollecting my own case, have allowed for no wine-parties. Let our friend, the abstraction we are speaking of, give breakfast-parties, if he chooses to give any; and certainly to give none at all, unless he were dedicated ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... young composer was unsuccessful in his attempts to break through the barren and irritating drudgery of a schoolmaster's life. At last a wealthy young dilettante, Franz von Schober, who had become an admirer of Schubert's songs, persuaded his mother to offer him a fixed home in her house. The ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... entered by another door. He intercepted the glance, and returned it to John with one of contemptuous defiant anger. It did not help to soothe Richard that John looked unusually handsome. There was a fire and persuasion in his face, a tenderness and grace in his manner, that was very irritating, and Richard could neither control his hands nor his tongue. He began at once to feel for his pistol. "Why is John Millard here?" he asked of ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... medicines most frequently needed in the minor ailments of children, and a wise mother will not undertake herself the management of serious diseases. Of all aperients castor oil is perhaps the safest, the least irritating, the most generally applicable; it acts on the bowels and does nothing more. The idea that it tends specially to produce constipation afterwards is unfounded; it does not do so more than other aperients. All aperients quicken for ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... entered at this moment Ringfield's young and untried heart, his vanity was deeply wounded, and the thought that Miss Clairville could allow Edmund Crabbe to caress her was like irritating poison in his veins. Yet he was in this respect unfair and over-severe; the fact being that Pauline very soon observed, on coming into closer contact with the guide, the traces of liquor, and she then adroitly kept him at a distance, for in that moment of disenchantment Ringfield's ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... you?" and she turned to find something in Browning that bore on the subject. She was the only person he ever met who could look up passages and quotations to show him in the middle of the conversation, and yet not be irritating to distraction. She did it constantly, with such a serious enthusiasm that he grew fond of watching her golden hair bent over a book, brow wrinkled ever so little at hunting ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... lords, that I do not oppose the ministry for the sake of obstructing the publick counsels, or of irritating those whom I despair to defeat; and that I am not afraid of trusting my conduct to the impartial examination of posterity, I shall beg leave to enter, with my protest, the reasons which have influenced me in this day's deliberation, that they be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... striking and pernicious. The results have been such as to establish conclusively the great principle that all local inflammatory mischief and general febrile disturbances which follow severe injuries are due to the irritating and poisonous influence of decomposing blood or sloughs. For these evils are entirely avoided by the antiseptic treatment, so that limbs which would otherwise be unhesitatingly condemned to amputation may be retained, with confidence of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... Henderson, who devoted himself to her, made the lack unnoticed. The talk ran, as usual, on the opera, Wagner, a Christmas party at Lenox, at Tuxedo, somebody's engagement, some lucky hit in the Exchange, the irritating personalities of the newspapers, the last English season, the marriage of the Duchess of Bolinbroke, a confidential disclosure of who would be in the Cabinet and who would have missions, a jocular remark across the table about a "corner" ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... offered me money for myself, but I refused. You see I am not—well, I am not a servant. But afterward she gave me a hundred jacobusses for the poor, and I thanked her. I am very sorry that I was angry the day of the fight, but you know the great persons who come here from Whitehall are very irritating, and ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... attended or followed with little danger; but in the extracting of the food, no matter how carefully performed, some small portion is liable to drop into the abdominal cavity; and this, in consequence of its indigested condition, resists absorption or expulsion, undergoes an irritating decomposition, and may very probably originate some serious inflammatory disorder. Any animal which has suffered a very bad case of impaction of the paunch, ought, immediately after complete restoration to health, to be sent to ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... there is no pretense of sanitation, cleanliness or domestic privacy. The whole family herds together around the smoking fire, thus early beginning the destruction of their eyesight by the never-ceasing and irritating smoke. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... me. Then, still raging, I sat on the edge of the berth and put on the obnoxious tan shoes. The porter, called to his duties, made little excursions back to me, to offer assistance and to chuckle at my discomfiture. He stood by, outwardly decorous, but with little irritating grins of amusement around his mouth, when I finally emerged with the red tie in ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... financial obligations to Great Britain, which whether just or not must have an air of hardness, and with the habitual presence in Ireland of a British army under the direction of the British Executive, lay an ample foundation for the most irritating of conflicts. ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... comprehension, or charitableness, or anything else that was precious; and it was because she looked for more that she was for ever feeling disappointed. She would take them as they were, being happy in what they did give her, and ignoring what was less excellent. She herself was irritating, she was sure, and often she saw did produce an irritating effect on the Chosen. Of sundry minor failings, so minor that she was ashamed of having noticed them, but which had yet done much towards making the days difficult, she tried not to think. Indeed, they could hardly ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... therefore, took the desperate resolution to get himself banished. This he could not do except he committed the crime of murder, and an opportunity soon offered itself.[A] The victim was a young girl, a servant in the same house with himself. She was of a taunting, irritating disposition, and disputes were constantly occurring between them—he resolved she should be the sacrifice to his home-sickness, and accordingly in the next provocation he received from her, he gave her a blow which killed her. He was imprisoned, tried by military law, and his judges not ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... was blockaded eight hundred years by the deer, and its environs, now so rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to support the gamekeepers." [Footnote: The following details from Bonnemere will serve to give a more complete idea of the vexatious and irritating nature of the game laws of France. The officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling up of thistles and weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before St. John's day (24th June), in order that the nests of game birds might not be disturbed. It was unlawful to ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... perhaps, the essence of the love token, is not its history, and I shall hazard a guess as to why that is not written. The reason is that it is not only the cherished token of a woman's love, but is also the irritating reminder of her equality with man. At the altar she unhesitatingly swears to love eternally—an oath sometimes beyond her power to keep; but in increasing numbers she refuses to make the promise of obedience—a promise always possible to fulfill. With the freedom that in this generation ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... capable of locomotion and able to crawl out of the blood-vessels Not infrequently they are found to take into their bodies small objects with which they come in contact. One of their duties is thus to engulf minute irritating bodies which may be in the tissues, and to carry them away for excretion. They thus act as scavengers These corpuscles certainly have some agency in warding off the attacks of pathogenic bacteria Very commonly they ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... the owner's hair turned white in a single night, or of shame by mentioning a sudden rush of scarlet to the cheeks, is as lamentable as may be. But! But with the universal use of cosmetics and the consequent secernment of soul and surface, upon which, at the risk of irritating a reader, I must again insist, all those old properties that went to bolster up the ordinary novel—the trembling lips, the flashing eyes, the determined curve of the chin, the nervous trick of ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... blood was coursing feverishly through her veins, her spirit had been made reckless by the wilful violence that she was doing her conscience, and also by her deep and growing dissatisfaction with herself, that was like an irritating wound. She was therefore prepared to resent any interruption to the whirl of excitement, which gave her a kind of pleasure in the place of the happiness that was impossible to one ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... culture led out of the ruts of routine, away from plagiarism and from disorder and anarchy, one word upon the most distasteful and effectual blight to which art is subject—the loss of naturalness, viz., affectation. Can anything be more irritating than an affected actor or singer, caterers to ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... girl rose. She was tall and slender, like Jane. She had a pasty complexion and weak, reddish eyes. Her expression was somewhat plaintive and distressed—irritating, too, in ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... green. Old Sir Nicholas, though his convictions had survived the tempest of unrest and trouble that had swept over England, and he had remained a convinced and a stubborn Catholic, yet his spiritual system was sore and inflamed within him. To his simple and obstinate soul it was an irritating puzzle as to how any man could pass from the old to a new faith, and he had been known to lay his whip across the back of a servant who had professed a desire to try ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... returns and brings in the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces. Let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all the day. Bring us to our resting beds weary and content and ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... Until a profession respects itself, it cannot very well ask for the world's respect, and until it can respect itself on the basis of scientific principles indubitably established, its respect for itself will be little more than the irritating self-esteem of the goody-goody order which is so ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... time he was speaking he was performing the operation known as "washing the hands with invisible soap," a trick which always has an irritating effect upon my nerves. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... Acting on the Lungs.—These have for their type carbonic acid gas and coal gas. The fumes of ammonia are intensely irritating, and may give rise to laryngitis, bronchitis, and even pneumonia. Nitric acid fumes sometimes produce no serious symptoms for an hour or more, but there may then be coughing, difficulty of breathing, and tightness in the lower part of the throat, followed ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... attention, I should punish any neglect with the utmost severity. I then adverted to the natives, and interdicted all intercourse with them, excepting with my permission. That as I attributed many of the acts of violence that had been committed on the river to this irritating source, so I would strike the name of any man who should disobey my orders in this respect off the strength of the party from that moment, and prevent his receiving a farthing of pay; or whoever I should discover encouraging any of the natives, but more particularly the native women, to ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... and humor; very naturally, therefore, he listened to his friend with varying feelings; one moment indignant, then uncertain how to take him. The superior airs assumed had been offensive to him in the beginning; soon they became irritating, and at last an acute smart. Anger lies close by this point in all of us; and that the satirist evoked in another way. To the Jew of the Herodian period patriotism was a savage passion scarcely hidden under his common humor, and so related to his history, religion, and God that ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... it better not to dwell on the subject, for fear of irritating the chief; but I recalled to my memory the handful of Spaniards who conquered the well-trained armies of the Inca Atahualpa, and had little hope for the success of his descendant, Tupac Amaru, with his host of undisciplined ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... spiritualistic believers who had to pay their entrance fees; here a little, naive, ten-year-old girl among her toys in the kitchen of her parents' modest white cottage in a lovely country village! I never felt a more uncanny, nerve-irritating atmosphere than in Palladino's squalid quarters, and I do not remember more idyllic, peaceful surroundings than when I sat between Beulah and her sister through bright sunny mornings in their mother's home with their cat beside them and the pet lamb coming into the room from the meadow. There ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... fortitude; nor can soldiers readily submit while in such a country to the deprivation of food. It is not, therefore, surprising that among a few of the troops some indications of a mutiny appeared. It is much more astonishing that the great body of the army bore a circumstance so irritating, and to them so unaccountable, without ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the fatalist, if he had a sensible soul, would commisserate the prejudices of his fellow-man— would lament over his wanderings—would seek to undeceive him—would try by gentleness to lead him into the right path, without ever irritating himself against his weakness, without ever insulting his misery. Indeed, what right have we to hate or despise man for his opinions? His ignorance, his prejudices, his imbecility, his vices, his passions, his weakness, are they not the inevitable consequence of vicious institutions? Is he not sufficiently ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... with the desire to give some irritating people a very hard knock—witness the barbed dedication with which the normally peaceful theatre-announcement columns have bristled some little time past; and I think I dare say that we were interested ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... want him now,' he answered, with one of his irritating sniggers, and I fully understood the significance of his words. I try to do the Turtons no injustice, reminding myself that, to begin with, they were far from rich, and that they had lost the forty pounds or more which should have been paid for the last term's board ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... him altogether, I believe, if he had been in any manner apologetic to me; but he wasn't that. He kept reassuring me in a way I found irritating. Mostly, however, his solicitude was for Aunt Susan ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... importance to allay by increased efficiency, independence, and organisation. Nationalisation of the schools is necessary, if a real highway of education is to be established: it must be obtained without irritating conditions which make freedom, experiment, and progress too often impossible. The task before the teaching profession is to retain full scope for initiative and experiment, whilst working loyally under a public body. This should be specially the work of the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... and saw the figurehead; it seemed to be simpering at him with an irritating smile. There was something of bland triumph in that grin. In the upset of his feelings there was personal and provoking aggravation in the expression of the figurehead. He swore at it as if it were something ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... have spoke to the Baron before I had assumed my title would have only provoked a premature and irritating discussion on the subject of the change of name, when, as Earl of Glennaquoich, I had only to propose to him to carry his d-d bear and bootjack PARTY PER PALE, or in a scutcheon of pretence, or in a separate shield perhaps—any way that ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... that some of the jelly-fishes possess the power of stinging. Only a few of the larger species, however, seem to be thus endowed; and the name sea-nettle is by no means applicable to the class as a whole. The poisonous fluid which produces the irritating effect on the skin, and no doubt paralyses the creatures upon which the jelly-fish feeds, is secreted by the arms. By means of its poison-bearing tentacles, the soft, gelatinous medusa is more than a match for the armed crustacean and the scale-clad fish. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various |
