|
|
|
More "Meddling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are asking a man deeply and deservedly cynical about your intentions and your knowledge. He has seen wheat fail all his life, he has seen grass succeed. Grass has saved him, and now he is asked to turn his back on it. Little wonder that he curses you for a meddling fool. "Prove it!" he says—and you cannot. You could if you had it in your power to show him that your guarantee of a fair price for wheat was "good as the Bank." Thus, the first item of instruction to the farmer consists in the definite ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... years the elder of his cousin, Ensor Doone, and was making suit to gain severance of the cumbersome joint tenancy by any fair apportionment, when suddenly this blow fell on them by wiles and woman's meddling; and instead of dividing the land, they were divided ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Maxime, "you are a serious man now, a legislator! As for me, the mere meddling in electoral matters in the interests of other ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... then tried to teach the king the use of the compass. To make a stand for it, I turned a drum on its head, when all the courtiers flew at me as if to prevent an outrage, and the king laughed. I found that, as the instrument was supposed to be a magic charm of very wonderful powers, my meddling with it and treating it as an ordinary movable was considered a kind ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... and with a touch of his rough forelock, looked sheepish, and said, "Please ma'am, he was meddling with our lobster-pot." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shows the folly of boys like you meddling with what you don't understand," said he, sourly, and in a more crabbed tone than he had ever ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... supplied us with milk, and treated us very kindly. We had some adventures, nevertheless. One day as we were passing by a tuft of small trees, a rhinoceros charged upon my horse, which very narrowly escaped by wheeling short round and getting behind him; the beast then made off without meddling with us any more. Every day we used to shoot some animal or other, for provision: sometimes it was a gnu, something between an antelope and a bull; at other times it was one of ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... step on my account. I never sought out the court; I was sent for thither. I staid there nearly ten years without obtruding myself, without taking a single step on my own behalf, without asking the smallest favor, without meddling in any matter, and confining myself to answering conscientiously in all matters about which I was spoken to. I was dismissed; all I have to do is to remain at peace in my own place. I doubt not ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... them. To venture criticism of parental laches or of the conduct of the young, to admonish or advise different manners and conduct from that which the inclination of the young seems to suggest, would be to run the risk of being regarded as officious or meddling, and thereby of inviting insult. Parents whose children are known to be of the class pictured are themselves timid and indisposed to insist upon obedience from them, for fear of offending them and ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... then, to suppose that a man merely equipped with professional scholarship, or contented with moral conformities, can minister to the sorrow and the mystery, the mingled shame and glory of a human being? This is why the average theologue, in his first parish, is like the well-meaning but meddling engineer endeavoring with clumsy tools and insensitive fingers to adjust the delicate and complicated mechanism of a Genevan watch. And here is one of the real reasons why we deprecate men entering our calling, without both the culture of a liberal education and the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... was Wolsey who had counselled him to seek a divorce from Rome and promised him success in his suit. And in this counsel Wolsey stood alone. Even Clement had urged the King to carry out his original purpose when it was too late. All that the Pope sought was to be freed from the necessity of meddling in the matter at all. It was Wolsey who had forced papal intervention on him, as he had forced it on Henry, and the failure of his plans was fatal to him. From the close of the legatine court Henry would see him no more, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... grandfather had used it for years. It had the advantage that it could be used inside a gravity field, where a Lawlor drive could not. It had the other advantage that commercial spacecraft could not mount such gadgets for defense, because the insurance companies objected to meddling with ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... I am going to wave the olive branch, to-morrow," she answered, laughing. "If he ignores it, I'll try it again in some other form. I only wanted to make sure that you approved of my meddling." She put her hand through Theodora's arm and together they paced up and down the broad piazza. Above them, the stars were dotting the still, dark air, and the ragged outline of The Savins showed itself faintly through the great trees. "His ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. Because time softens its outlines and rounds the sharp angles of its cornices, shall a fellow take a pickaxe to help time? Let me tell you what comes of meddling with things that can take care of themselves.—A friend of mine had a watch given him, when he was a boy,—a "bull's eye," with a loose silver case that came off like an oyster-shell from its contents; you know them,—the cases that you ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... impossible for any object to get into the ear itself; the depth of the external passage is only about one inch in an adult. At this point the passage is completely closed by the drum membrane. Most of the harm is done by ignorant meddling, not by the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave trade. In every proposed extension of the powers of Congress, that State has expressly and watchfully excepted that of meddling with the importation of negroes. If the States be all left at liberty on this subject, South Carolina may perhaps, by degrees, do of herself what is wished, as Virginia and Maryland already have done. Adjourned. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... had the repugnance of the healthy minded man of affairs from any form of meddling with what he vaguely thought of as the occult; but in that remote, grim solitude he ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... deed, they cannot let be this foolish meddling with matters too high for them. If the woman would but conform and go to church, I hear, her womanish fantasies should very like be overlooked. Good lack I can a man not believe as he list, yet hold his tongue and ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... A part of the O.T. Prague 1517-19; the Acts and Epistles, Vilna 1525. Skorina, in one of his prefaces, found it necessary to excuse his meddling with holy things by the example of St. Luke, who, he says, was of the same profession. The dialect of this translation is the White Russian; and the book of Job contains the first specimen ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... night, four or five years before, Pair had surprised this gentleman publicly pummelling her in the Rue Gay-Lussac. He hastened to remonstrate; and the husband went off, hiccoughing of his outraged rights, and calling the universe to witness that he would have the law of the meddling stranger. Pair picked the girl up (she was scarcely eighteen then, and had only been married a sixmonth), he picked her up from where she had fallen, half fainting, on the pavement, carried her to his lodgings, which were at hand, and ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... him more disastrously than if he had been his bitterest foe! Ah! if he could be face to face with him once more—if only for five minutes—he would be restrained by no false delicacy: he would tell him fairly and plainly what a meddling, blundering old fool he was. But Fakrash had taken his flight for ever: there were no means of calling him back—nothing to be done now but go to bed and sleep—if ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... plot had been laid on foot of which I knew nothing. A disturbance had been purposely created between the Bedawin and the Druzes, which enabled the Turkish Government to attack the Druzes in the Hauran. The Wali let Richard go in order to accuse him of meddling. The fact was, the Wali had intended a little campaign against the Druzes, and was endeavouring, by means known only to the unspeakable Turk, to stir up sedition among them, in order to have an excuse for slaughtering them; ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... of a King, might soon exhaust a bank, and ruin all the holders of notes, that is to say, overthrow the realm. M. le Duc d'Orleans agreed to this; but at the same time maintained that a King would have so much interest in never meddling or allowing minister, mistress, or favourite to meddle with the bank, that this capital inconvenience was never to be feared. Upon that we for a long time disputed without convincing each other, so that when, some few days afterwards, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... to do with ideas? Some of them would make an end of your dad's money-bags. Leave off meddling with what you don't understand. Go back to your trotting horses and your girls, and then you'll be sure at least of doing no harm to anybody, and ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... understand. On the 1st of July—yes—but I have the date here—came a telegram to the hotel to have rooms for Lady de Lyonnais and Mr. Egremont ready by the evening. The whole place knew it, and some meddling person burst on Alice with the news, roughly and coarsely given, that they were coming to call her to account for her goings on. Captain Egremont found her crying in the utmost terror, and—she really hardly knew what he said to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passions of man's fretful race Have never ceased to eddy round its base, Not injured more by touch of meddling hands Than a lone obelisk ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... blockheads, shall have here no place; At council set as foils on Danby's[56] score, To make that great false jewel shine the more; Who all that while was thought exceeding wise, Only for taking pains and telling lies. But there's no meddling with such nauseous men; 80 Their very names have tired my lazy pen: 'Tis time to quit their company, and choose Some fitter subject ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of 'em is—go away from me, Michael!—one of 'em is, I say, why don't you leave our girls alone? They've got their own priests to make fools of themselves over, without any sneak of a Protestant parson coming meddling round them. You're a married man into the bargain; and you've got in your house this minute a piano that my sister bought and paid for. Oh, I've seen the entry in Thurston's books! You have the cheek to talk to me about ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... correct or respectable, but an infinity, inexhaustible like Nature. He is to paint, as Turner said, only his impressions, and this precisely because they are not his, but stand outside of his will. To further this, to get the direct action of the artist's instinct, clear of the meddling and patching of forethought and afterthought, is no doubt the aim of the seemingly careless, formless handling now in vogue,—the dash which Harding says makes all the difference between what is good and what is intolerable in water-colors,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... wholesome lesson to me to beware of meddling with the ways of strange peoples in a strange land. By dint of following Meer Jaffier's wise and prudent directions I got over the rest of my journey without hindrance, and as day was breaking at the end of the following ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... had it in my power I obtained redress for the oppressed. I very soon, therefore became an object of suspicion and dread amongst the petty tyrants of that district; and by them I was denominated "a busy meddling fellow;" but as a set off to this, I received the thanks, the blessings of the poor, and the love of my servants, whom I looked upon as my friends and neighbours. I had as much work done for my money as any man; I paid my servants ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... be your teacher: Sweet is the lore which Nature brings. Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things. We murder to dissect. Enough of Science and of Art: Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... of women and child workers strikes the average employer as a gross interference with his constitutional rights. Where he can he evades. Where he cannot he is apt to grow purple over the impertinence of meddling reformers who ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... her lost provinces, she is fighting to recover her self-respect and her national independence; she is fighting to shake off this nightmare that has been on her soul for over a generation, [cheers,] a France with Germany constantly meddling, bullying, and interfering. And that is what would happen if Russia were trampled upon, France broken, Britain disarmed. We should be left without any means to defend ourselves. We might have a navy that would enable us, perhaps, to resent insult from Nicaragua, [laughter,] we might have ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "You take three little chaps, and have 'em meddling with your nails, and sticking scraps of iron into the coals, and it makes a man cross—or it frets me, and I ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... things easily is an easy way to ruin. Language is in a certain sense every one's business; but it is especially the business, as their appellation denotes, of men of letters; and a primary duty of their high vocation is to be jealous of any careless or impertinent meddling with, or mishandling of, those little glistening, marvelous tools wherewith such amazing structures and temples have been built and are ever a-building. Culture, demanding and creating diversity and subtlety of mental ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... history is almost impossible. But after all just concessions have been made, two indisputable facts confront the student: first, the universal antagonism to the order, of the church that gave birth to it, as well as of the states that have suffered from its meddling in political affairs; and second, the complete failure of the order's most cherished schemes. France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Great Britain and other nations, have been compelled in sheer self-defence to expel it from their territories. ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... Associated Press when they went to Chicago the next day. In the interview, Barclay said that economic conditions were being disturbed by half-baked politicians, and that values would shrink and the worst panic in the history of the country would follow unless the socialistic meddling with ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... without instruments, if indeed it were she; and if it were but one of the false callings of the Evil Forces, or more cunning monsters, or as was sometimes thought concerning these callings, the House of Silence, meddling with our souls, then would they have no power to say the Master-Word; for this had been ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... archdeacon, giving so rough a pull at his nightcap as almost to bring it over his nose; "why not!—that pestilent, interfering upstart, John Bold;—the most vulgar young person I ever met! Do you know that he is meddling with your father's affairs in a most uncalled-for—most—" And being at a loss for an epithet sufficiently injurious, he finished his expressions of horror by muttering, "Good heavens!" in a manner that had been found very efficacious in clerical meetings ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... his powers; he began finally to really interfere with me, to call me off of important tasks and humiliate me with futile assignments, and I realized that I was threatened with failure through his meddling. This may sound trivial to you"—the speaker raised his eyes to his audience—"but, take my word for it, there were many instances of the kind over there. Jealousy, intrigue, malevolence, petty spite, drove more than one earnest, patriotic ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... how she could ever have looked with approval on her rash act. She wondered what demon of interference and meddling had possessed her, to make her blunder into people's lives, upsetting them. She wondered that she was allowed to go around loose. She was nothing more nor less than a menace to society. Here was an estimable young man, obviously the ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... of what they now spend upon their poor and criminal classes, and do for these far more than Christian Government officials, however excellent, ever hope to do. They are invariably so bound to avoid any meddling with religion that they cannot bring to bear upon those most in need of it, the heavenly light and love and power, in which we place all our confidence for dealing ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others better than those who are engaged ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Reine, "have they not told you anything, then? That is wrong. Well, at the risk of meddling in what does not concern me, I think it is better to put you in possession of the facts: Your deceased cousin never was married, but he had a child all the same—Claudet is his son, and he intended that he should be his heir also. Every one around ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... long, before she began to cry. Her mother, who had been wondering who could have been meddling with her pill-box, came in. "Have you been swallowing these ...
— The Nursery, June 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... he told himself, "all my study and travel and observation tells me a woman's natural position in society is in a safely guarded home; and the evil consequences of meddling with this position must show themselves, sooner or later. Humanity is of one general quality everywhere,—and that not so high as she apparently believes. Changes in social ideals are more or less dangerous and indicate decadence, often, rather than advance. Yet the atmosphere tonight ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... researches which may lead to such an issue. To enter thus upon the discussion of questions which have been mixed up with religion, and made to contribute their support to piety, seems to the idle spectator, or to the person who is absorbed in defending religion, a mere useless and troublesome meddling, dictated by the pride of intellectual triumph, or by the moral cowardice which seeks unworthily to ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... he replied. "But it will not be wise to stay here long. I was recognised this afternoon by that meddling old imbecile ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... a call mixing himself up with them. This was not insinuated in the earlier uses of the word. On the contrary three of our earlier translations of the Bible have, "Meddle with your own business" (1 Thess. iv. 11); and Barrow in one of his sermons draws at some length the distinction between 'meddling' and "being meddlesome", and ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... quarrels, smutted more characters, and created more ill-feeling between friends, neighbors and acquaintances, than all else beside in the community of Frogtown. Uncle Josh was voted a great bore by the men, and a sneaking, meddling old granny by the women. So, at last, the young women of the town did agree, that the very next time Uncle Josh carried, concocted, or circulated any slanderous or otherwise mischievous stories, they would duck him in ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... said the wheels in wheels of time are broken; And dust and storm forgotten; and all forgiven. . . . But what you asked he wouldn't tell you, though,— Ha ha! there's one thing you will never know! That's what you get for meddling so ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... men, from the commencement of the siege to this day. I have written to M. de Larche, that if he persists in not coming here, let who will raise money upon the Poleagers for me, I will not do it; and I renounce (as I informed you a month ago I would do) meddling directly or indirectly with any thing whatever that may have relation to your administration, whether civil or military. For I had rather go and command the Caffrees of Madagascar than remain in this Sodom, which it is impossible ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... when I saw Mr. Patterson ride up. He went into the bunk-house to wait until the men should come. Now, from something Gale had said I fancied that Bob Patterson must be the right man. I am afraid I am not very delicate about that kind of meddling, and while I had been given to understand that Patterson was the man Sedalia expected to marry, I didn't think any man would choose her if he could get Gale, so I called him. We had a long chat and he told me frankly he wanted Gale, but that she didn't care ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... talk about the prospects of the Church, and what might be done to reconvert the British Isles to the true faith. Her cheek flushed, and her eye shone with the theme; and Francis smiled paternally; but the young priest drew back. Mrs. Gaunt saw in a moment that he disapproved of a woman meddling with so high a matter uninvited. If he had said so, she had spirit enough to have resisted; but the cold, lofty look of polite but grave disapproval dashed her courage ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... about that we used to have comers and forgers, murderers and French spies—all sorts of malefactors—hiding in our straw throughout the day, wait-for the whistle to blow from the Street at dusk. I, born with my century, was familiar with these things; but my mother forbade my meddling with them. I expect she knew enough herself—all the resident gentry did. But Ralph—though he was to some extent of the new school, and used to boast that, if applied to, he "would grant a warrant against any Free Trader"—never did, as ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... "But when I made my round after daylight I had a special look at these stones, and I saw at once that someone had been meddling with them. Then I called you, sir, and told you. I was backwards and forwards all night, and I never saw a ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... grandmother had an establishment. Then she could pass whole days with her mother, who, in turn, spent summers at Nohant, and Aurore for years was buoyed up by the hope that a permanent reunion would still be brought about. But meantime domestic jealousy and strife, inflamed by the unprincipled meddling of servants, raged more fiercely than ever, and could not but be a source of more than ordinary childish misery to their innocent object. It was but slowly that she became attached to her grandmother, whose undemonstrative temper, formal habits and ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... friendship!" he shouted. "You're sixteen, you young Jezebel; and you—you're old enough to know better, Thornton. I know what it's leading to, and it ain't going further. I'll not stand here and argue with you. But if you come meddling in my family after what I've said, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... stocked with drawers and bottles and had quite a business-like appearance. One bottle was labelled 'Mixture for Sulks,' and another, 'Bad Temper Lotion.' Then there were 'Cross-patch Powders' and 'Pills against Meddling.' In a prominent place Beryl saw two tall flasks, one almost full of water and the other almost empty, and the water in the one that was nearly full was thick and muddy, but that in the second was clear as crystal. The flask that was nearly full was lettered 'Tears Shed for ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... "we have to fulfil a grave responsibility to the parish, to the city, and to God. The matter of choosing a rector to-day, when clergymen are meddling with all sorts of affairs which do not concern them, is not so simple as it was twenty years ago. We have, at St. John's, always been orthodox and dignified, and I take it to be the sense of this vestry ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... centre of the yard, to the lean long-eared pigs that try to gobble up everything that comes within their reach, to the hens that flutter over our beds and shake the dust of ages from the barn-roof at dawn, to the noisy little children with the dirty faces and meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... beguiled of my prey!—mocked—thwarted. But beware, old man; thy meddling may prove dangerous. I will possess the inheritance, though every earthly power withstood me! That boy is mine. He hath sworn it—sealed it with his heart's blood—and I demand the pledge." The victim groaned. "Hearest thou that response? 'Tis ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... make a living some way, so some of us earn our salt by bucking up against the law of the survival of the fittest, thereby rendering humanity the beautiful service of encumbering the earth with the weak. If the medical profession would just quit its damn meddling, nature might manage, in time, to do something ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... said," spoke up the knight Segfried, "that no good came of captured monks, or meddling with the Church. Besides, we are noble all, and do not hold with the raising of a mailed hand against ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... dreaded influenza epidemic did not make its appearance, and, though people still talked learnedly of germs and microbes, and put meddling fingers into the medical pie, it was decided by the legitimate authorities that the mischief had blown over for ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of his pupils either for partiality or dislike. Yet he was thoroughly kind-hearted, and many remembered his good deeds with generous gratitude. Nor was he wholly wrong in his theory that a tutor often does as much harm by meddling interference as he does by distance ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... flung its old Puritan, Sword-and-Bible Faith into the cesspool,—or rather having set its old Bible-Faith, MINUS any Sword, well up in the organ-loft, with plenty of revenue, there to preach and organ at discretion, on condition always of meddling with nobody's practice farther,—thought the same (such their mistake) a mighty pretty arrangement; but found it hitch before long. They had to throw out their beautiful Nell-Gwynn Defenders of the Faith; fling them also into the cesspool; and were rather at a loss what ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Britain and France could no longer be persisted in without grave danger to these states. To deal with trade and industry as though they were matters that concerned only the particular business firms engaged in them was no longer an economical error, it was also a political blunder. To Government meddling in trade and industry the British people have ever been averse. And their dislike is intelligible although no longer warranted. A glance at Germany's economic campaign and its results ought to have borne out the thesis that individual self-reliance ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... discovered that his patriotic view of this work did not commend itself to his brother travellers. He found that they had no feeling but one of contempt for people whom they regarded as meddling amateurs. Occasionally, when some convent, under a bustling Mother Superior, advanced from the region of half-charitable sales at exhibitions into the competition of the open market, contempt became dislike, and wishes were expressed in quite unsuitable language ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... are just the one to do it, and that it is your obvious duty, and all that?" said Mrs. Swan. "Now, just take my advice, and don't burn your fingers meddling with other people's affairs, nor do any such foolish thing for ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... marked for destruction. Not a boat could pass between Providence and Newport without being subjected to search by the crew of the "Gaspee;" and the Yankee sailors swore darkly, that, when the time was ripe, they would put an end to the Britisher's officious meddling. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... will be nothing on us, unless the Clephane letter is translated and implicates me by name—or Paris resorts to cable. If it were not for France's meddling, it would be ridiculously simple so far as we are concerned; everything would be up ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... seemed to forget himself, the subject and the company, and to become absorbed in the process of his thought; the look was wholly impersonal: I have seen the same in the eyes of portrait-painters. The counts upon which whites have been deported are mainly four: cheating Tembinok', meddling overmuch with copra, which is the source of his wealth and one of the sinews of his power, 'peaking, and political intrigue. I felt guiltless upon all; but how to show it? I would not have taken copra in a gift: how to express that quality ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man to meet the eyes of his fellow-citizens. Had Fortini known that the Marchese had been made aware of the purposed excursion of his nephew with the singer—as the reader knows that he had been by the officious meddling of the Conte Leandro,—it might have seemed strange that he should have chosen just that day and hour for the declaration of his intention. Was it that he hastened to acquire such an authority over Bianca, as might enable him to put an ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... inn-keeper, up before the magistrate and fined for selling liquor in opposition to law. He proclaimed it highly immoral to sell liquor at all, and told Bright to his teeth that no honest man would do it. For this he had been twice kicked out of the inn by Bright, who damned him as a meddling varlet, not to be tolerated in a peaceable village. Again he had Bright up before the magistrate, who justified the aggression, but fined the aggressor ten dollars a kick, which Bright considered cheap enough considering ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... myself with giving only a character of the person and his writings, without meddling with the transactions of his life, which was altogether private: I shall only make this known observation of his family, that there was scarce so many extraordinary men in any one. I have been acquainted with five of his brothers, of which three are still living, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... make a tremendous impression on me at the moment. By the way, Polycarp, if it is indeed you who listen to this, you must excuse my way of relating the facts. I can only tell the tale in my own way. Besides meddling with finance, I've dabbled in pretty nearly all the arts, including the art of fiction, and I can't leave out the really interesting pieces of my narrative merely because you're a lawyer and hate needless details, sentimental or otherwise. But do you hate sentimental details? I don't ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... have lost no time in summoning his notary and Lunison to his presence, in order that he might hear what they had to say about the business. They, however, at once protested that priest Hunus's story was a parcel of lies, and that after the relics left Rome no one had any opportunity of meddling with them. Moreover, Lunison, throwing himself at Eginhard's feet, confessed with many tears what actually took place. It will be remembered that after the body of St. Marcellinus was abstracted ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... was tremendous. "Then I don't mean to be allowed less liberty than Oliver. It's no good continuing this conversation. Why, I declare! some fool has been meddling with those books!" ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of War, and of M. de Castries to that of Minister of Marine, were wholly the work of that circle. The Queen dreaded making ministers; her favourite often wept when the men of her circle compelled her to interfere. Men blame women for meddling in business, and yet in courts it is continually the men themselves who make use of the influence of the women in matters with which the latter ought to have ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... effected. The school, no longer able to pay the high rent required by the Royal Institution, was removed to its present site in Brown Street, placed under the management of Mr. Hammersley, who had previously been a successful teacher at Nottingham, and freed from the meddling of incompetent authorities. And now pupils anxiously crowd to receive instruction, and annually display practical evidence of the advantages they ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... student, or reader of this book, were I to conclude this chapter without pointing out a means of protection against the use of this phase of psychic influence against them on the part of some unscrupulous person; or for that matter, against the meddling influence of any person whatsoever, for any purpose whatsoever, without one's permission and consent. Therefore, I wish now to point out the general principles of self-protection or defense against this class of ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... nor did the exalted rank and brilliant reputation of Montmorency serve for an instant to turn him from his purpose. Private animosity closed all the avenues of mercy; and the indiscretion of one meddling spirit sealed the death-warrant of the gallant prisoner. It is asserted that when he was captured Montmorency wore upon his arm a costly diamond bracelet, containing the portrait of Anne of Austria, which having been perceived ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... party were willing to agree that a few years ago most educated men in the south regarded slavery as a misfortune and not justifiable, though necessary under the circumstances. But the meddling, coercive conduct of the detested and despised abolitionists had caused the bonds to ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... yesterday; and a messenger despatched to-night from Downing Street will be at the Embassy in the Faubourg Saint Honore the day after to-morrow. But that constant and minute control, which the Foreign Secretary is bound to exercise over diplomatic agents who are near, becomes an useless and pernicious meddling when exercised over agents who are separated from him by a voyage of five months. There are on both sides of the House gentlemen conversant with the affairs of India. I appeal to those gentlemen. India is nearer to us than China. India is far better known to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was sitting on the hearthrug playing with her two kittens, and you would have thought she was as happy as a queen, and quite contented to stay where she was instead of wanting to run about the world meddling with other people's property. But it happened that she was rather a mischievous little maid, and could not resist teasing her pets, so one of them scratched her, and then she would play with ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... attack of paternomania. If you don't mind my saying so, you're making a prodigious ass of yourself and of Jerry. If I were the boy, I'd pack you out bag and baggage. Imagine it! Put yourself in his place. Would you like any meddling in your little affairs of gallantry?" And he laughed aloud at his joke. I scowled at him, but passed the absurd remark in ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... said hastily; "you speak very prudently and well, sir. I hope you will honor me by taking up your abode in my house during your stay here; but may I ask you not to allow my wife, who is inquisitive by nature, to see the list with which I furnish you? Women are ever meddling in matters which ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... ability, and asked advice from no one. Like my father, she had a liking to control those about her, was restlessly busy, and was never so pleased as when engaged in arranging other people's lives, or meddling ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... have been made the freemen of the Lord Jesus Christ, and left this world rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. The elements of an empire, which I hope will lead Ethiopia very soon to stretch out her hands to God, is the fruit of the institution here. An officious meddling with the institution, from feeling and sentiments unknown to the Bible, may lead to the extermination of the slave race among us, who, taken as a whole, are utterly unprepared for a higher civil ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... keeping an eye out. Three times she had a perfect fit of fright, lying on her back, and kicking and trembling violently. On these occasions she made a scuttling noise or cry, and I thought each time she would die, so I grew more and more cautious about meddling with her. There was one interesting thing about it,—she rose from these fits and ate heartily, and cleaned herself with great unconcern. I was tempted to believe that ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... which "Puck" depicts,—while we are solemnly warned against admitting the comparatively mild peril of a political difference! It is like cautioning a manufacturer of dynamite against the danger of meddling with mere edge-tools. Even with all the intensity of feeling on religious matters, few families are seriously divided by them; and the influence of political differences would be ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him; 'tis a meddling friar; I do not like the man: had he been lay, my lord, For certain words he spake against your Grace In your retirement, I had swinged him ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... the reasons why the tragedy is admired by readers who shrink from Othello and are made unhappy by Lear. But what Shakespeare perhaps felt even more deeply, when he wrote this play, was the incalculability of evil,—that in meddling with it human beings do they know not what. The soul, he seems to feel, is a thing of such inconceivable depth, complexity, and delicacy, that when you introduce into it, or suffer to develop in it, any change, and particularly the change called evil, you can form only the vaguest ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... you meddling with me for? What's the use? I want to marry her, and I'm going to make proposals. What are you up to! Yes, ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... station. He had need no longer to watch and worry. There was nothing left now but to greet her upon her arrival, this golden houri from the verses of Sa'adi. The two weeks of durance vile among the low castes in the steerage should be amply repaid. In six days he would be beyond the hand of the meddling British Raj, in his own country. Sport! What was more beautiful to watch than cat play? He was the cat, the tiger cat. And what would the Colonel Sahib say when he felt the claws? Beautiful, beautiful, like a pattern woven in ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... the fact of Hugh looking meaningly at him that caused Monkey to stop in the midst of his sentence, for he saw by the expression on the face of the scout master that Hugh would not permit any meddling. The enormous expense and labor attending the taking of that picture must not be wasted through any injudicious act on the part of himself or one ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... fees before them. "I was going to say no such thing. I was going to warn her not to meddle with matters of business of which she can understand nothing, by the advice of those who know less, and who may have jobs of their own to settle while they are meddling with hers." "And I warn you to quit this room, sir," said Sir Philip Hastings, a bright spot coming into his usually pale cheek; "the lady has already expressed her opinion upon your intrusion, and depend upon it, I ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... throughout the country about our wedding on Whit-Monday. People came from more than thirty miles around, upon excuse of seeing Lorna's beauty and my stature; but in good truth out of curiosity and a love of meddling. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... meddling with lovers' affairs," rejoined Richard. "Lovers take themselves very seriously indeed, and—well, here the thing is! Now, who will go and fetch her from Liverpool? I should say that both my father and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man that he never mistrusted any one. That is why the big lock was not fastened. The key, not working well, he took it some days ago to the locksmith, and when the latter failed to return it, he laughed, and said he thought no one would ever think of meddling with his front door." ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... been the case. Thus, the "cup of bitterness," of which Granvelle had already complained; was again commended to his lips, and there was more reason than ever for the government to regret that the national representatives had contracted the habit of meddling with financial matters. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... an infant refuses to take the bottle under such circumstances, the best plan to adopt, and the wisest one in the long run, is to starve the child into submission. If he gets absolutely nothing but the bottle he will shortly take it without protest. If a meddling individual attempts to feed the child some other food and tries to coax it to take the bottle in the meantime, much harm may result; it is safe only to fight it out for a day or two and win than to half starve the child ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... halt and stand right where you are," retorted the Englishman, nervously handling a heavy walking stick that he carried. "I don't know whether it's going to be a good evening for you, or not, young man. Do you know that your cursed meddling has resulted in the arrest of ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... individual property, and promote the study of the arts of peace. Above all, we must give and enforce justice; and for the rest, as far as possible, leave them alone. By all means let us avoid a fussy meddling with their customs, manners, prejudices, and beliefs. Give them order and justice, and trust to these to win them in other regards to our ways. All this points directly to utilizing existing agencies as much as possible, developing native initiative and control in ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... own affairs and not meddling with things that don't concern me, as seems to be the way out in the Great World you are so fond of talking about," retorted Grandfather Frog. "Wise people know enough to be content with what they have. You've been out in the Great World ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... Dropt in ambrosial oils, till she revived, 840 And underwent a quick immortal change, Made Goddess of the river. Still she retains Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve Visits the herds along the twilight meadows, Helping all urchin blasts, and ill-luck signs That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make, Which she with precious vialed liquors heals: For which the shepherds, at their festivals, Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream 850 Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... in ships of war until the early seventeenth century. He ranked above the master, and acted as the captain's proxy, or ambassador, "upon any occasion of Service" (Monson). In battle he commanded on the forecastle, and in the forward half of the ship. He was restrained from meddling with the master's duties, lest "Mischiefs and factions" should ensue. Boteler adds that a lieutenant ought not to be "too fierce in his Way at first ... but to carry himself with Moderation and Respect to the Master Gunner, Boatswain, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... entertain for my daughter; tells him she serves his cause with her friend very ardently, but that he has a friend in the garrison who serves him yet more effectually. Look particularly at the pencilled passages, Mr. Ratcliffe, where this meddling girl recommends bold measures, with an assurance that his suit would be successful anywhere beyond the bounds of the ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... vested in bills to great advantage. Two quarters' salary have been transmitted by me, but as I am unauthorised in this business, I shall inform Mr Morris that he must devise some other way to make these remittances, which I beg leave to decline meddling with ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... mouth boldly, and tell him all from beginning to end. You knew it before me, and ought to have given me a hint of what was going on! The girl might yet have been advised. It might still have been time to save her! But, no! There was something for your meddling and making, and you must needs add fuel to the fire. Now you have made your bed you may lie on it. As you have brewed so you may drink; I shall take my daughter under my arm and be off with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Jimmy Jay is a very mischievous little bird. Yes, sir, he certainly loves to tease. Grandmother Magpie is mischievous, too, but she's no worse than little Jimmy Jay. She does harm by meddling and Jimmy Jay ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... of it," she said, firmly. "I don't believe it. I wouldn't believe it was anything but your mean meddling if ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... we attempted a mediation, but be peremptorily refused to speak a word. He observed that it was a quarrel between the two chiefs, and he had therefore no right to interfere; nor could all our representations, that by merely repeating what we said he could not possibly be considered as meddling between the chiefs, induce him to take ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... for evil was thus turned into a precedent for good, and though irregular gatherings of a like sort were for a while occasionally held they were soon seen to be fruitless and discontinued. But the Commons long shrank from meddling with purely administrative matters. When Edward in his anxiety to shift from himself the responsibility of the war referred to them in 1354 for advice on one of the numerous propositions of peace, they referred him to the lords ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... need not be disguised, that we ourselves find the priests far more accommodating than these meddling parsons. The priests, for instance, allow us to amuse ourselves in any manner we think fit, week-day or Sunday; and far from finding fault, ten to one if they don't join in the sport; the Protestant minister, on the contrary, never allows a violation ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... peremptory, and when I do not feel myself called on to give battle to any proposition, I am always willing to grant it, rather than give myself much trouble. I knew this fellow to be a greedy, tiresome, meddling coxcomb; still, however, I must have some one about me in the quality of guide and domestic, and I was so much used to Andrew's humour, that on some occasions it was rather amusing. In the state of indecision to which these reflections led me, I asked ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Catholic faith could it be said to be accomplished. The pontificate of his ancestor in the third degree, Pope Felix III., might be called heroic, in that, while under the domination of the Arian Herule, Odoacer, he resisted the meddling with the received doctrine of the Church by the emperor Zeno, guided by the larger mind and treacherous fraud of Acacius, the bishop of Constantinople, who ruled its emperor. Then the Arian Vandals bitterly persecuted the Church in Africa, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... friends at one time. Why, she went up there to live just in order to be near them. And now she has no word hard enough for Jim Browner. The last six months that she was here she would speak of nothing but his drinking and his ways. He had caught her meddling, I suspect, and given her a bit of his mind, and that was the start ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the stories told by travelers of officious meddling by the police on their arrival in Russia, and of their footsteps being dogged, I have recently been favored with some light on that subject. I believe the tales, with reservations, since some perfectly innocent and truthful ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... attention to which they were never entitled. Such instances as these have always served to prejudice the South improperly against the North. Men are too much given to forming opinions of us from the intemperate acts of a few meddling men. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... well enforced and illustrated in Dr. Ingleby's book, which was originally published in one of the Annuals of the German Shakespeare Society under the title of The Still Lion, a title suggested by a passage in De Quincey, where the danger of meddling with Milton's text is compared to that of meddling with a still lion, which may be neither dead nor sleeping, but merely shamming. Dr. Ingleby substitutes Shakespeare for Milton, and maintains that the mass of Shakespearian emendations that have been proposed during the last twenty years ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... permit me as a practical man to ask you not to engage in too many affairs. Events in this world are accomplished without much meddling. If you attempt to do something to-day, everyone will cry out: 'What! he is going to demolish everything!' If you do nothing, they will cry: 'What! he does not budge! If I were minister, which God forbid, I would say nothing—and ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... deserve punishment and requital for two reasons: firstly for the fulfilment of thy word, because thou art the supreme King; and secondly, by reason of their presumption against thee and their seducing thee and their meddling with that which concerneth them not and whereof it befitteth them not even to speak. Wherefore they have right well deserved death; yet let that which hath befallen them suffice them, and do thou henceforth reduce them to servants' estate. But it is thine to command in this and in other ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... rattle of oars and raced down the beach in the direction of the dory. Some one was meddling with their boat. When he reached the place where they had left the skiff, he found it gone. From the waters of the little cove came the creak of oar-locks. Plunging into the water, Gregory swam rapidly in the direction of the launch. Whoever ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... he had a receding forehead. More likely, though, his enormous vanity lay at the bottom of it. He would show these wives of his, in whose admiration he basked all the day long, whether or not he was to be thwarted in his purpose of eating crumbs by a meddling boy with some kind of ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... that really mattered could—if you were given to looking forward—be foreseen. A strike—a really bad one—might conceivably affect Anthony's business, for a time; but not all the strikes in the world, not all the silly speeches, not all the meddling and muddling of politicians could ever touch ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... vigorous resistance it was reviewing expenditure, dictating its own policy in Church and State, checking the royal action even in foreign affairs, denouncing ministers and driving them from office, meddling now even with the succession to the Crown. It did this as representing the people, and yet the people could hardly be said to be represented. The counties alone really returned their own members, and in the counties the franchise ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... but she had acted "rashly," without "advisedness" from the right quarter, under the lead of "ignorant persons;" and therefore it was necessary to make a great ado about it, and hold her up as a warning to prevent other persons from meddling in such matters. Her husband was an uncle of Mary Walcot, one of the afflicted children; and it was particularly important to keep their relatives, and members of their immediate families, from taking any part or action in connection with them, except under due "advisedness," and the direction ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... they contradict them;' which shows that they considered the instructions of October the 29th, 1783, as still in full force. I do not give you the trouble of this discussion, to save myself the trouble of the negotiation. I should have no objections to this part: but it is to avoid the impropriety of meddling in a matter wherein I am unauthorized to act, and where any thing I should pretend to conclude with the court of Denmark, might have the appearance of a deception on them. Should it be in my power to render any service in it, I shall ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and scenes of domestic affliction and courts, for the sake of gratifying a gross love of excitement, which they disguise to themselves under various ingenious pretences. But the tendency of the age is to discourage such meddling and prying into the mysteries and miseries of humanity. It is low, it is mean, and the better nurtured and higher minded leave it to boors—be they of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... written (Prov. 20:3): "All fools are meddling with revilings [Douay: 'reproaches']." Now folly is a vice opposed to wisdom, as stated above (Q. 46, A. 1); whereas anger is opposed to meekness. Therefore reviling does ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... grieve about me. I have reached a point where I can no longer suffer, because all suffering is become so sweet. Besides, it is quite a mistake to trouble yourselves as to what I may still have to undergo. It is like meddling with God's work. We who run in the way of Love must never allow ourselves to be disturbed by anything. If I did not simply live from one moment to another, it would be impossible for me to be patient; but I only look at the present, I forget the past, and I take good care not ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... to strangle her husband. "I am quite aware," said Voltaire, "that she is reproached with some bagatelles in the matter of her husband, but these are family affairs with which I cannot possibly think of meddling." ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... her, the fascination of will-making being temporarily eclipsed by a local temperance crusade led by Mr. Hewett, which enlisted the full energy of her not inconsiderable powers for conscience-guided meddling. The parson had deemed the time ripe for a war on the groggeries of the Flats, with the outcome that most bar-rooms of the town, including that of the Tuscarora House, were found to be violating the Sunday closing law. In the legal unpleasantness ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... went to China, where his meddling with the Catholic missions met with fierce opposition. He so dogmatically asserted his unproved authority, that he caused European missionaries to be cited in the Chinese Courts and sentenced for their disobedience; but he was playing with fire, for at last the Emperor of China, wearied of his importunities, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... doesn't pay. We're of this world and we've got to live in this world. Mike's always trying to get beyond it, to get into touch with the other side. It's no good meddling with that sort of thing, it always has a disastrous effect on the human mind and human happiness, which proves to me that we're not intended to know or to get in touch with those who have left us. It's unwise to give up one's ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... made you strike in after that fashion?" demanded the young man, as he and his companion followed more slowly in the strangers' footsteps. "That is just your way, Mattie, interfering and meddling in other folks' affairs. Why cannot you mind your own business sometimes," he continued, irritably, "instead of putting your foot ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... great part of her long life (1767-1849) to active benevolence and to attendance on her father, an eccentric and pedantic English gentleman who lived mostly on his estate in Ireland and who exercised the privilege of revising or otherwise meddling with most of her books. In the majority of her works Miss Edgeworth followed Miss Burney, writing of the experiences of young ladies in fashionable London life. In these novels her purpose was more ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... may be supposed to act unjustly by invading the possession of another; but no injustice can be conceived of God, inasmuch as there is nothing that belongs to any other besides himself, so that wrong is not imputable to him as meddling with things not appertaining to him. All things, himself only excepted, genii, men, the devil, angels, heaven, earth, animals, plants, substance, accident, intelligible, sensible, were all created originally by him. He created them by his power ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... question—that some alterations may be expedient, but that this is not the time for making them. The other is, that no essential alterations are at all wanting, and that neither now, nor at any time, is it prudent or safe to be meddling with the fundamental principles and ancient tried usages of our Constitution—that our representation is as nearly perfect as the necessary imperfection of human affairs and of human creatures will suffer it to be; and that it is a subject of prudent and honest use and thankful enjoyment, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... like Mrs. Octagon—I never did," said Mallow, impetuously, "but I don't care two straws for her opposition. I shall marry Juliet in spite of this revenge she seems to be practising on you. Though why she should hope to vex you by meddling with ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... Scarcely had he done this when the witch called her daughter and bade her lift the pot off the fire and put the stew into a dish, as it had been cooking quite long enough and she was hungry. But no sooner had she tasted it than she put her spoon down, and declared that her daughter must have been meddling with it, for it was impossible to eat anything that was all made ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... the orders of March thirteenth, that the force he had left at Washington was inadequate to its safety, that the capital was "uncovered." Here was a chance for Stanton to bring to bear on Lincoln both those unofficial councils that were meddling so deeply in the control of the army. He threw this firebrand of a report among his satellites of the Army Board and into the midst ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... scorned the idea of "women-folk meddling wi' their 'counts and wool," and, "besides," as Matt argued, "Davie's going would necessitate the hiring of two shepherds; no hired man would do more than half of what folk did ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a position to judge, and I don't think I want to be. I have no real liking for meddling in ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... autonomous; but I should like you to recollect that this is a sacrifice, and that you should not be surprised if it occasionally happens that you see a biologist apparently trespassing in the region of philosophy or politics; or meddling with human education; because, after all, that is a part of his kingdom which he has only voluntarily forsaken"]—how to learn biology, the use of Museums, and above all, the utility of biology, as helping to give right ideas in this world, which] "is after all, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... somebody to do the business side, I've got.... I can design dresses. That's what I'm good at. She knows. She lets me design them, sometimes. I've got a touch, d'you see? But she's hard. She's so afraid of anybody meddling. She's made that business herself, and she won't let anybody else touch it. She has me to help her with the accounts; but, as I say, I'm not a business man. She thinks I'm a fool. You don't think I'm ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... 'What are you after now? 'and the Lion asked if he had seen Ananzi pass that way, but the old man said 'No, that fellow Ananzi is always meddling with some one; what mischief has he been up ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... being drunk in his solitude, paid down a shilling to have it to himself. There was one small place of rich promise in which their hopes were blighted, for a favourite character in the play having gold-lace upon his coat and being a meddling wooden-headed fellow was held to be a libel on the beadle, for which reason the authorities enforced a quick retreat; but they were generally well received, and seldom left a town without a troop of ragged children shouting ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of the O.T. Prague 1517-19; the Acts and Epistles, Vilna 1525. Skorina, in one of his prefaces, found it necessary to excuse his meddling with holy things by the example of St. Luke, who, he says, was of the same profession. The dialect of this translation is the White Russian; and the book of Job contains the first ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... that Jimmy Jay is a very mischievous little bird. Yes, sir, he certainly loves to tease. Grandmother Magpie is mischievous, too, but she's no worse than little Jimmy Jay. She does harm by meddling and ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... the Colonel. He was led, indeed, to fear that his "governor," as he was in the habit of calling Trevelyan in his half-spoken soliloquies,—that his governor was not as true to him as he was to his governor. What business had that meddling fellow Stanbury at St. Diddulph's?—for Trevelyan had not thought it necessary to tell his satellite that he had quarrelled with his friend. Bozzle was grieved in his mind when he learned that Stanbury's interference was still to be dreaded; and wrote to his governor, rather severely, to that ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... through years of discipline and training. They resent the interference of laymen in matters purely professional. They resent such interference as would a reputable physician, a reputable lawyer, a reputable engineer. They resent officious patronage and "fussy" meddling. They resent all these things manfully, vigorously. But your true craftsman will not whine. If the conditions under which he works do not suit him, he will fight for their betterment, but ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... commissionaire answered. "But when I made my round after daylight I had a special look at these stones, and I saw at once that someone had been meddling with them. Then I called you, sir, and told you. I was backwards and forwards all night, and I never saw a soul ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the razors, For talking of cutting throats, For calling hair-powder flour, For meddling with anything on ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... the frank of a member of congress covers all that is under it, within the prescribed limit of two ounces weight. Those members who are so disposed can frank envelopes for their friends, in any number, and send them in parcels of two ounces, to be used anywhere, without any more meddling of the post-office clerks. The remedy will be, to reduce the rate of postage so low, that it will be worth no person's while to use the franking privilege, or to seek its benefits from those who hold it; or so that, if it is retained, ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... February 2000 when opposition leader Koumba YALLA took office following two rounds of transparent presidential elections. Guinea-Bissau's transition back to democracy will be complicated by a crippled economy devastated by civil war and the military's predilection for governmental meddling. ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in Pitscoorie, for the fouk were awfu' creetics, though they didna maybe think sae muckle o' themselves as Drumtochty. A' aye githered their jidgment through the week, an' gin he hed made a slip meddling wi' warks or sic-like in his sermon, it wes pit richt next Sabbath, and sovereignty whuppit in ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... the laws of the State was also a topic which he felt required a word. "Considering the great probability," he said, "that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer not meddling with them, unless they were attacked by others; in which case I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take that stand which, in my view, might tend most to the advancement ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... He believed that every man should "receive at least a moderate education." He deprecated changes in existing laws; for, he said, "considering the great probability that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer not meddling with them." The clumsy phraseology of his closing paragraph coupled not badly a frank avowal of ambition with an ingenuous expression of personal modesty. The principles thus set forth were those of Clay and the Whigs, and at this ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... his terror, but the other, a man of more dignity, only bowed his head and murmured a prayer. By this time also the mules had tied themselves into a knot and were threatening to overturn the coach, to prevent which our captors, before meddling with us, cut the animals loose with their machetes or swords, and drove them over the brink of the abyss, where, like the drivers, they vanished. Then a dusky-faced ruffian, with a scar on his cheek, came to the door of the diligence and bowing politely beckoned to us to come out. As there were ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... uncomfortable feeling, doubt, invaded him. He had an unjustified sense of meddling, of blundering into a paramount situation to which he lacked the key. He had done nothing debatable, he assured himself; Mariana's inherent, well—prejudices, couldn't be charged to him. In the room where he was to sleep ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... eyes, and thinkers "miscreants," because ideas and thinkers have rashly meddled with politics and practice. This would be all very well if the dislike and neglect confined themselves to ideas transported out of their own sphere, and meddling rashly with practice; but they are inevitably extended to ideas as such, and to the whole life of intelligence; practice is everything, a free play of the mind is nothing. The notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleasure ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... life, as though he were my own, and hoped as long for his great happiness. On more than one occasion I contrived situations which I thought might make your choice my happiness, too. I know now that I was no better than any other meddling old woman, whose efforts are well meant but dangerous for all that. And I will meddle no more. But—but my heart aches a little, too, to-day, Barbara. May I just ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... tell me I'm meddling with what doesn't concern me,' said his hostess. 'Of course I know I'm meddling; I sent for you here to meddle. Who wouldn't, for that ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... astrology was encouraged, and its professors courted and rewarded, necromancers were universally condemned to the stake or the gallows. Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Arnold of Villeneuve, and many others, were accused, by the public opinion of many centuries, of meddling in these unhallowed matters. So deep-rooted has always been the popular delusion with respect to accusations of this kind, that no crime was ever disproved with such toil and difficulty. That it met great encouragement, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... to the policy of Establishment, no one can hesitate to admit that the clergy of the Church are men of pure life and conversation, zealous in the discharge of their duties; and at present, apparently, more bent on prosecuting one another than on meddling with Dissenters. Theology itself has broadened so much, that Anglican divines put forward doctrines more liberal than those of Priestley; and, in our state-supported churches, one listener may hear a sermon to which Bossuet might have given his approbation, while ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... knew of it, and that it was not Steel who had originally discovered the sleeping intruder, but an under-gardener, who, seeing his master also up and about, had prudently inquired what was to be done with the man before meddling with him. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... one course for this country to pursue in its dealings with other States; she must abstain from all interference, all mischievous meddling with their domestic concerns, and leave them to support, or to destroy, or to amend their own institutions in their own way. Let us cherish our own Government, keeping our own institutions for our own use, but ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... Emperor had in some measure stopt one floodgate, he effectually opened another, and one which was more formidable. "The more shame to your Imperial wisdom, my father!" exclaimed the Princess Anna Comnena; "it is a shame, that with wisdom and a beard like yours, you should be meddling in such indecent follies as admit disturbance into private families, and that family your own daughter's! Who can say that the Caesar Nicephorus Briennius ever looked astray towards another woman than his wife, till the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... canons were issued for the Church of Scotland, which owed their existence to the dangerous meddling of Laud, now Archbishop of Canterbury. James, who loved Episcopacy, had dreaded the influence of Laud in Scotland; his fear was justified, for it was given to Laud to make an Episcopal Church impossible ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... bears this thought ever with him, in brain and heart, in nerves and his very marrow, his work possesses a strength which is almost terrifying, combined with a beauty as terrifying in its way. If he will but develop his immense genius instead of meddling with social and political questions, and getting into prison on that score with disheartening regularity, something incalculably great may be the outcome. It is said that he is now banished in polite exile ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... rendered it either the Pity or Contempt of its Neighbours. The Cardinal erected that famous Academy which has carried all the Parts of Polite Learning to the greatest Height. His chief Design in that Institution was to divert the Men of Genius from meddling with Politicks, a Province in which he did not care to have any one else interfere with him. On the contrary, the Marquis de Torcy seems resolved to make several young Men in France as Wise as himself, and is therefore taken up ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... I, somewhat testily, though without a grain of anger in my heart against any one but the meddling old woman. 'But, Helen, I've something to say to you before ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... "Meddling fool," he muttered. "Do you know that there are two detectives now in Salthouse? They come and go and ask all manner of questions. One of them pretends that he believes Engleton was drowned, and walks always on the beach and hires boatmen to explore ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. 2. The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul. 3. It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool will be meddling. 4. The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing. 5. Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out. 6. Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: but a faithful man who can ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in meddling with questions of State, and in answering them in a manner opposite to the King's inclination, may have had something to do with the unexplained chastisement inflicted upon him in the summer of 1611. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Micheltorena's order of March 29, the temporal control of the Mission was restored to the padre. But, though the order was a kindly one, and relieved the padre from the interference of officious, meddling, inefficient, and dishonest "administrators," it was too late to effect any ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... Preston himself became aware that her name was being coupled with his, though hardly to the extent to which the love of excitement and gossip had carried people's speeches; he chuckled over the mistake, but took no pains to correct it. 'It serves her right,' said he to himself, 'for meddling with other folk's business,' and he felt himself avenged for the discomfiture which her menace of appealing to Lady Harriet had caused him, and the mortification he had experienced in learning from her plain-speaking lips, how ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the Clown, when I tell him to do what he ought, "Sir, whatever your character be, To obey you in this I will never be brought, And it 's wrong to be meddling with me." Says my Wife, when she wants this or that for the house, "Our matters to ruin must go: Your reading and writing is not worth a souse, And it 's wrong to neglect the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of time. The first reformers had reformed it from its corruptions once and for all. The guardians of its purity had only to walk loyally in their steps, carry out their principles, and not be misled by any so-called reformer of a later day, whose meddling hands would only have marred the finished beauty of an accomplished work ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... appeal to her generosity would be worse than useless. With a little of her old artistic egoism, Katherine valued her brother's career very much as a thing of her own making, and the idea of another woman meddling with it and spoiling it was insupportable. It was as if some reckless colourist had taken the Witch of Atlas and daubed her all over with frightful scarlet and magenta. But the trouble at her heart of hearts was the certainty that Audrey, that creature of dubious intellect and fitful emotions, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... speech was not so good as usual; it was laboured, and some say tame. In the morning I met him and walked with him; he seemed in very good spirits, talked of the thing as over, said he could not endure any meddling with the Tithe Bill, that he considered great good had been done by the dissolution, which had created a party strong enough to obstruct any violent measures on the part of their opponents, said he understood they had sent for Lord Spencer ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... suffered in the church, but knowing that Scoon understood neither Latin nor Greek, he wisely avoided naming the constant moderator in English, but always gave the Greek or Latin name for it. Sermon being ended, Scoon said to some of the nobles attending him, You see I have scared the preacher from meddling with the constant moderator, but I wonder who he spoke so much against by the name of praestes ad vitam. They told him, That it was in Greek and Latin the constant moderator; which so incensed him, that when Mr. Row proceeded to constitute the synod in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... separate, and instead of having one to have two independent governments. The spirit of secession is rampant in the land. I do not know what the result will be, and I fear it will bode no good to the country. Between the fire-eating Southerners and the meddling Abolitionists we are about to be plunged into a great deal of trouble. I fear there are breakers ahead. The South is dissatisfied with the state of public opinion in the North. We are realizing that we are two peoples in the midst of one nation. ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... lacking. Contrary to all expectation, the committee had scrupulously refrained from meddling with the State armouries. All militia muskets were available. In addition the State had now the right to a certain quota of Federal arms, stored in the arsenal at ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... &c. 459; wakefulness; sleeplessness, restlessness; insomnia; pervigilium[obs3], insomnium[obs3]; racketing. movement, bustle, stir, fuss, ado, bother, pottering, fidget, fidgetiness; flurry &c. (haste) 684. officiousness; dabbling, meddling; interference, interposition, intermeddling; tampering with, intrigue. press of business, no sinecure, plenty to do, many irons in the fire, great doings, busy hum of men, battle of life, thick of the action. housewife, busy bee; new brooms; sharp ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to realize it," said Mrs. Ferrall suavely; "and in doing so you insure your own safety. Sylvia dear, I wish I hadn't meddled; I'm meddling some more I suppose when I say to you, don't give Howard his conge for the present. It is a horridly common thing to dwell upon, but Howard is too materially important to be cut adrift on the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... permitted. No stone could be moved but his true eye would detect it in a flash, and wild was the fury with which his fiery trowel flew for the culprit, and with such convincing force that it was wise to avoid further meddling with the "gude mon's" work. Of "Jamie Allen," master-mason and staunch auld kirke mon, many an amusing story is told in Fenimore Cooper's "Wyandotte, or the Hutted Knoll," written in 1843. These men among others ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... of meddling with men's amourettes," said Genvil; "Sir Damian would needs brawl with Wenlock about his dealings with this miller's daughter, and you see they account him a favourer of their enterprise; it will be well ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... God! Where are they now? Not coming here? I don't have any policemen trampling here and meddling with my finds—tell them to clear out, Thatcher, you know there's no ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... hold me more gently? You have seized my fine brown coat in such a manner that it is all torn and full of holes, meddling and interfering rubbish that you are!" With these words he shouldered a bag filled with precious stones, and slipped away to his cave ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... ignorant and cultured alike. The aim of the distinguished writer of the "Grip of Desire" is far removed from that of vulgar and gratuitous image-breaking. He seeks to show the danger to human character that comes through meddling with one of the most imperious of natural instincts. If in the "Chastisement of Mansour" he bodies forth the consequences of unbridled Libertinism, in the "Grip of Desire" he demonstrates the evils attendant on a life of forced ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... cajoled him into buying an ass worth fifty dirhams[FN479] for five thousand and five hundred.[FN480] His friends blamed him and a gathering of the folk laughed at him and admired his folly and over-faith in believing the talk of the sharpers without suspicion, and meddling with that which he understood not and thrusting himself into that whereof he had no sure knowledge. "On this wise, O King Shah Bakht" (continued the Wazir), "is the issue of greed for the goods of the world and indeed coveting that which our knowledge ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... said, "let us take advantage of the absence of this American, to talk over our affairs; some things don't concern him at all, and I don't care to have him meddling with them." ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... good reason even for my most wilful conduct, and an excuse for my most irrational, will easily credit that, in interfering in an affair in which you are concerned, I am not influenced by an unworthy, an officious, or a meddling spirit. No, dear May! it is because I think it better for you that we should speak upon this subject that I have ventured to treat upon it. Perhaps I broke it in a crude, but, credit me, not in an unkind, spirit. I am well conscious I have a somewhat ungracious manner; but you, who have pardoned ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... countless host, [104] Whom every path of Pleasure's flow'ry way Has lured in turn, and all have led astray— E'en I must raise my voice, e'en I must feel Such scenes, such men, destroy the public weal: Altho' some kind, censorious friend will say, "What art thou better, meddling fool, [105] than they?" And every Brother Rake will smile to see That miracle, a Moralist in me. 700 No matter—when some Bard in virtue strong, Gifford perchance, shall raise the chastening song, Then sleep my ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... rushed to the Burgomaster's bedside, and begged him, for Heaven's sake, to prevent the priest from meddling with the women; for the whole bevy, hearing that their three leaders were called before the priest, were collecting in the marketplace, keys, bundles, and all; and the panic of the worthy magistrates was renewed. The Burgomaster ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the student, or reader of this book, were I to conclude this chapter without pointing out a means of protection against the use of this phase of psychic influence against them on the part of some unscrupulous person; or for that matter, against the meddling influence of any person whatsoever, for any purpose whatsoever, without one's permission and consent. Therefore, I wish now to point out the general principles of self-protection or defense against this class ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... mundane sphere - presiding at public meetings, drafting proclamations, receiving mis-addressed letters that have been carried all night through tropical forests? It seems strange indeed, and to you, who know me really, must seem stranger. I do not say I am free from the itch of meddling, but God knows this is no tempting job to meddle in; I smile at picturesque circumstances like the Misi Mea (MONSIEUR CHOSE is the exact equivalent) correspondence, but the business as a whole bores and revolts me. I do nothing and say ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bowes next to Theodore Watling, Joel Harrington was deemed the ablest lawyer in the city. We organized in due time the corporation known as the Boyne Iron Works, Limited; a trust agreement was drawn up that was a masterpiece of its kind, one that caused, first and last, meddling officials in the Department of Justice at Washington no little trouble and perplexity. I was proud of the fact that I had taken no small part in its composition.... In short, in addition to certain emoluments and opportunities for investment, I emerged from ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... greater and greater on public affairs. In spite of the king's vigorous resistance it was reviewing expenditure, dictating its own policy in Church and State, checking the royal action even in foreign affairs, denouncing ministers and driving them from office, meddling now even with the succession to the Crown. It did this as representing the people, and yet the people could hardly be said to be represented. The counties alone really returned their own members, and in the counties the franchise was limited to freeholders. In all but ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... learned a new and valuable lesson today. Ever since I came to Green Gables I've been making mistakes, and each mistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming. The affair of the amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things that didn't belong to me. The Haunted Wood mistake cured me of letting my imagination run away with me. The liniment cake mistake cured me of carelessness in cooking. Dyeing my hair cured me of vanity. ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... gun on Sunday. His sermons, it was complained, were all satires on particular persons. He insisted upon weekly communions, desired to rebaptize Dissenters who abandoned their Nonconformity, and exercised his pastoral duties in such a manner that he was accused of meddling in every quarrel ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... was, perhaps, a little piqued that the Irishman should make himself so conspicuous about things he could not possibly be supposed to understand, and which to the Malay himself were matters of an almost special knowledge. There was a twinkle of mischief in his eye as he contemplated the meddling of Murtagh, and waited for ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... Wiseman filled his mind through two courses, for he did not speak until he set his fish knife and fork together and muttered something about a "silly, meddling jackass!" ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... that I did not come thither to talk with him, but with the justice. Whereat he supposed that I had nothing to say for myself, and triumphed as if he had got the victory; charging and condemning me for meddling with that for which I could show no warrant; and asked me, if I had taken the oaths? and if I had not, it was pity but that I should ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... novelty and therefore fashionable, affected by the tenderlings of that era, "as the proper thing to have." The quack-doctor, continues the writer above mentioned, must have been a fashionable style of man, not meddling much with the poor, and familiar with boudoirs, curing the new disease with ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... some time in making a fresh examination of the cataract, and then resumed his voyage on Lake Ontario. He stopped, however, at the great town of the Senecas, near the Genessee, where, with his usual spirit of meddling, he took upon him the functions of the civil and military authorities, convoked the chiefs to a council, and urged them to set at liberty certain Ottawa prisoners whom they had captured in violation of treaties. Having settled this affair to his satisfaction, he went ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... brief for the brewer and the distiller. They got exactly what was coming to them. Had they, as a class, been content to obey the existing laws, instead of conniving to break them; had they kept their meddling fingers out of local politics; had they realized more fully their responsibilities as manufacturers and purveyors of potentially dangerous products; had they been willing to cooperate with right-thinking men in a sane and orderly campaign for the cleaning-up and the proper regulation ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... not think you are officious or meddling or anything of the sort, I think you are one of the best and kindest-hearted women in the world. But—bless your motherly soul, Polly! the thing is utterly preposterous. Of course, Patricia is young, and likes attention, and it pleases ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... they are accustomed to do between Thursday evening and Friday morning, they seize any spinning which has been begun, work away at it till cock-crow, and then carry it off. In modern Greece the women attribute all nightly meddling with their spinning to the Neraides (the representatives of the Hellenic Nereids. See Bernhard Schmidt's "Volksleben der Neugriechen," p. 111). In some respects the Neraida closely resemble the Lamia, and both of them have many ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... awfully destructive to our youth. I should recommend you, as a young mahn of principle, to burn the vollum. At least I hope you will not leave it about anywhere unless it is carefully tied up. I have written upon the paper round it to warn off all the young persons of my household from meddling with it." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... conversation. They gave the room extra care this time because there had been some quick-fingered students around who just might have got it into their heads to improve the machinery. Satisfied at last that there had been no subtle meddling, they snapped the cowl of the generator back into position. They took one more sharp look around, then walked, single file, up the narrow passage to the control room. Louie LeBeau was sitting in the astronavigator's ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... tell us again that there is nothing new in the world. Five hundred years ago they were millionaires. One of these Fuggers had a voice even in the election of Charles V, and we are still hard at it trying to keep our Fuggers from meddling in politics. Another Fugger, Marcus by name, wrote a capital book on the horse in the sixteenth century, and at the last horse-show at Olympia, in 1912, a Fugger came over from Germany and took away the first prize for officers' chargers. So far flung ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... speak," she thought wistfully. "I hate to do it. I always did hate meddling. My mother always used to say that ninety-nine times out of a hundred the last state of a meddler and them she meddled with was worse than the first. But I guess it's my duty. I was Margaret's friend, and it is my duty to protect her child any way I can. If the Master ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and interfering of you to say anything of the sort, then; what business have you meddling with other people's love affairs?" interrupted Elsie sharply; and Maud glanced at her, and turned away quickly to avoid a look of sympathetic understanding. Elsie was old beyond her years, and had been ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... with anger. "I think that it's damned impertinent of you to come here meddling in my business. I might have expected it. You've always been ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... Don't you go to meddling in this affair," laughed Ted. "Well, here we are at the colonel's. I reckon he didn't count on this addition to ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... the door of the amphitheatre, and his loud inquiries as to the meaning of the splendid scene before him were heard distinctly even where the King sat. An old woman, near the entrance, explained to him the meaning of the feast, but forgot to inform him of the regulations as to meddling with dishes at a distance from one's own place. The man took his place, and shortly afterwards stretched out his hand to seize something a little way off. "Hold!" cried at once a thousand voices; "hold, or ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... niente pigliate, emai ritornate[Footnote: Begone, begone; nothing take, nor turn anon.]; and although there is a patriarch here who takes care of church matters, and is attentive to keep his clergy from ever meddling with or even mentioning affairs of state, as in such a case the Republic would not scruple punishing them as laymen; yet has Venice kept, as they call it, St. Peter's boat from sinking more than once, when she saw the Pope's territories endangered, or his sovereignty insulted: nor is there ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Bobbie's dignity was tremendous. "Then I don't mean to be allowed less liberty than Oliver. It's no good continuing this conversation. Why, I declare! some fool has been meddling with those books!" ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hills—rough and forbidding, but never ugly. Always beckoning, always challenging, yet always repulsing. Guarding their secrets well. Their rock walls and mighty precipices frowning displeasure at the presumptuous meddling of the intruder, and their valleys gaping in sardonic grins at the puny attempts to wrest their secret from them. Always, the mountains mock, even as they stimulate to greater effort with their wonderful air, and soothe bitter disappointment ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... the cadi, starting up like a man suddenly awakened from a dream, "and I least of all; and this is why I have permitted you to speak, my young Solomon. I wished to honor in you the wisdom of your father; but another time avoid meddling with his highness's name; it is not safe to sport with the lion's paws. The matter is settled. The necklace is worth a hundred thousand piasters, is it not, Mansour? This madcap, shall give you, therefore, a hundred thousand piasters, and all ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... comfortable as they were. But there were two men on board who didn't take things easy. They wanted to know what had happened, and they wanted to know what was likely to happen next. I was one of these men, and a stock-broker from New York was the other. He was an awful nervous, fidgety, meddling sort of a man, who was on this cruise for the benefit of his health, which must have been pretty well worn out with howling, and yelling, and trying to catch profits like a lively boy catches flies. He was always poking his nose into all sorts of things that didn't concern him, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... the extent of my rudeness and the venom of my repartee. Montreuil, on his entrance into our family, not only fell in with, but favoured and fostered, the reigning humour against me; whether from that divide et impera system, which was so grateful to his temper, or from the mere love of meddling and intrigue, which in him, as in Alberoni, attached itself equally to petty as to large circles, was not then clearly apparent; it was only certain that he fomented the dissensions and widened the breach between my brothers and myself. Alas! after all, I believe ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... business of your life to stir up dissension. You no more sympathize with the poor who are in distress than you sympathize with me. You incite them to outrage for bad purposes of your own; so does the individual called Noah of Tim's. You two are restless, meddling, impudent scoundrels, whose chief motive-principle is a selfish ambition, as dangerous as it is puerile. The persons behind you are some of them honest though misguided men; but you two I count ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... good to one another. Lottie herself, except in her most lurid moments, was good to her brother and sister, and almost invariably kind to her parents. She would not, Breckon saw, have brooked much meddling with her flirtations from them, but as they did not offer to meddle, she had no occasion to grumble on that score. She grumbled when they asked her to do things for Ellen, but she did them, and though she never did them without grumbling, she sometimes ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... there are woods and heath-lands in plenty for adventurous boys, as those of the middle-class are aware; yet those of the village never risk the adventure. I can but infer that they are afraid of something, and a moment's thought discloses what they fear. Just as in meddling with my nut-tree, so everywhere they are in danger of trouble with people of the propertied or employing kind; and behind these people stands the policeman, and behind the policeman that dim object of dread called "a summons." ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... Marchese had made to him, his lawyer, were not likely to dispose such a man to meet the eyes of his fellow-citizens. Had Fortini known that the Marchese had been made aware of the purposed excursion of his nephew with the singer—as the reader knows that he had been by the officious meddling of the Conte Leandro,—it might have seemed strange that he should have chosen just that day and hour for the declaration of his intention. Was it that he hastened to acquire such an authority over ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Hands. To make the Matter short, when this crafty Fellow, with such Expressions as these, had clear'd himself from all Suspicion of a Design, and had gain'd Credit, that he understood one Way perfectly well, Balbinus's Mind began to have an Itch to be meddling. And at last, when he could hold no longer, Away with your Methods, says he, of Curtation, the Name of which I never heard before, I am so far from understanding it. Tell me sincerely, Do you throughly understand Longation? Phoo! says he, perfectly ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... owned the place. He was sly enough with me at first, and would brow-beat the Squire only while I was out of earshot. It chanced one day, however, that I heard loud voices through an open window and paused to hearken. That vile servant called my father 'a meddling old fool,' 'Fool and meddler art thou thyself, varlet,' I shouted, springing through the window, 'that for thy impudence!' and in my heat I smote him a blow mightier than I intended, for I have some strength in mine ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... weariness. Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. Because time softens its outlines and rounds the sharp angles of its cornices, shall a fellow take a pickaxe to help time? Let me tell you what comes of meddling with things that can take care of themselves.—A friend of mine had a watch given him, when he was a boy,—a "bull's eye," with a loose silver case that came off like an oyster-shell from its contents; ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... to admiring missionary enterprise," she wrote. "The enthusiasm which seems to so many magnificent seems to me but a meddling in other people's business; the money that is poured out, so much bread and light and air and happiness filched from the ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... risks, my dear, and meddling with such matters. Let 'em have which king they like, and quarrel and fight about it; but don't you have anything to do ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... ought to remember, that he had himself jointly with Mr Morris complained of our interfering as he thought in that department; and therefore he did not incline to subject himself to any further censures, or as he expressed it "raps over the knuckles" for meddling in the affair. We were indeed as much surprised as Mr Izard appears to have been on the occasion, but our surprise arose from another cause; it was to find Mr William Lee desirous of holding such a plurality of appointments, in their ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... up until the time you planted that bomb on us. Anyone who tried to work any changes in his own past would be almost certain to end up finding himself never having been born. So we don't do any meddling. What we have discovered is a way not only of moving back into the past, but also of making our own choice of spatial references while we do it, and of changing ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher
... to my ears like good mother-English—it wants translating. Here and there you might, I think, have condensed some sentences. I go on the plan of thinking every single word which can be omitted without actual loss of sense as a decided gain. Now perhaps you will think me a meddling intruder: anyhow, it is the advice of an old hackneyed writer who sincerely wishes you well. Your remark on the two sexes counteracting variability in product of the one is new to me. (151/2. Scott (op. cit., page 214): "The reproductive organs of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... needful), make its appearance, directly on old Kur-Pfalz's decease, if one live to see such event. [Stenzel, iv. 61.] France and the Kaiser will probably take good survey of that Buderich phenomenon before meddling. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Yes, I should think it is a new name," said Mr. Tulliver, with angry emphasis. "Dorlcote Mill's been in our family a hundred year and better, and nobody ever heard of a Pivart meddling with the river, till this fellow came and bought Bincome's farm out of hand, before anybody else could so much as say 'snap.' But I'll Pivart him!" added Mr. Tulliver, lifting his glass with a sense that he had defined his resolution ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... a method of analysis whereby facts were pulverized, reduced to a dust of facts. Most of the facts labelled as such by Positivism were really only fragments of facts. In psychology its action was harmful. There were even scholastics meddling in literature—I will not say philosophers meddling in poetry, because poet and philosopher are twin brothers, if not even one and the same—who carried this Positivist psychological analysis into the novel and the drama, where the main business is to give act ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... They abhorred equally a temporising conservatism and a plundering democracy. They stood frankly for birth and wealth, the Church and the expert. They were the apostles of resistance and negation; they were sworn to oppose any further meddling with trade and the personal liberty of master and workman, and to undo, if they could, some of the meddling that had been already carried through. A certain academic quality prevailed among them, which made them peculiarly sensitive to the absurdities of men who had not been to Oxford or ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... minister! I will open my mouth boldly, and tell him all from beginning to end. You knew it before me, and ought to have given me a hint of what was going on! The girl might yet have been advised. It might still have been time to save her! But, no! There was something for your meddling and making, and you must needs add fuel to the fire. Now you have made your bed you may lie on it. As you have brewed so you may drink; I shall take my daughter under my arm and be off ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... to cultivate a gossiping, meddling, censorious spirit in your children, be sure when they come home from church, a visit, or any other place where you do not accompany them, to ply them with questions concerning what everybody wore, how everybody looked, and what everybody said and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Mr. Cameron, who wished to arrest or soften a painful interview. "General McClellan is not to blame; it is Seward's work. He is constantly meddling with what is none of his business, and (alluding to the Pickens expedition) makes mischief in the war and ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... estray laws—the law respecting the issuing of executions, the road law, and some others, are deficient in their present form, and require alterations. But considering the great probability that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer [not] meddling with them, unless they were first attacked by others, in which case I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take that stand, which in my view, might tend most ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... me officially? No? Well, then, I don't want to know anything about it. I won't burn my fingers in meddling with a matter of ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... all we can do here," Dick replied. "All we know is that a man seemed to have been hurt here. If he was, he was able to take himself away, and to conceal the signs of his hurt before going. Therefore we've no further excuse for meddling around here that ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... strength as Cheppi; but the latter had learned more than once that with hands and feet Otto was much the more skilful of the two. He did not strike out, but held his fists doubled up, and cried out angrily, "Let me alone: I am not meddling with you." ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... from the table the chessmen that were set there in readiness for a game, and he emptied the silver flagons upon the ground. His reasons for not meddling with the horn he explained to the Princess: she shivered, and said that, such being the case, he was certainly very sensible. Then they mounted, and departed from the black and silver pavilion. They came thus without further adventure to Gogyrvan Gawr's ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... of paternomania. If you don't mind my saying so, you're making a prodigious ass of yourself and of Jerry. If I were the boy, I'd pack you out bag and baggage. Imagine it! Put yourself in his place. Would you like any meddling in your little affairs of gallantry?" And he laughed aloud at his joke. I scowled at him, but passed the ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... welfare, and especially the welfare of the agricultural class, the wealth-producers of the community. To violate economic laws, Boisguillebert declared, is to violate nature; let governments restrain their meddling, and permit natural ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... anger lasts an instant, A meddling man's for two hours, A base man's a day and night, A ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the Hyndses!—What do you want me to explain? I have already told you it was necessary for Miss Smith and me to attend to a matter that is none of your business. In return, you hold us up like brigands. Would it make a dent in your armor of righteous meddling, if I were to remind you that you are ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... and troubled me to the marrow. And I had from that moment the definite wish to take her in my arms. And in that same moment I realized that those who thought we were too much together were not such meddling fools as ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... a strange praist, and almost as black as a nagur; and I'd be a poor body, I think, to let him be meddling wid my work. Shure, I never heard of the like of such interfering in Ireland, nor in the States at all!" Then turning to the Mexican cook, Manuel—"You may lave the fire alone till I ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... blessing (forsooth!) of meeting, and billing and cooing every day, the two young people, your parents, went on in a fool's paradise, little heeding the world round about them, and all its tattling and meddling. Rinaldo was as brave a warrior as ever slew Turk, but you know he loved dangling in Armida's garden. Pray, my Lady Armida, what did you mean by flinging your spells over me in youth, so that not glory, not fashion, not gaming-tables, not the society of men of wit in whose way I ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... knowing that they don't grow Providentially sweet or large unless we look after them; but we don't give any care to the good of Italy or Germany, because we think that they will grow Providentially happy without any of our meddling. ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... the Cossack. "What do we care if you are married or not. You will be imprisoned anyway for meddling in a matter that does not concern you. Silence, I tell you. Answer my questions. What is ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... added, though with the voice of sorrow rather than of anger, that if she had not resolution enough to execute the commands he brought her from her husband, his ruin would lie at her door; and, for his own part, he must give up any farther meddling ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... until relieved by other women, even for lunch, for fear of losing a vote. The whole thing appealed to the men irresistibly. We are receiving praise from all quarters for the kind of campaign we made—no personalities, no boasting of what we would do, no promises, no meddling with other issues—just 'Votes for Women' straight through, because it is just and reasonable and everywhere when tried has been ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... husband's papers might be found. Her own study was not exempt from the prying eyes of the detectives. This room, sacred to her, which Roland himself never entered without permission was ransacked, and forever desecrated in her eyes. This official meddling with her books and her papers could never be forgotten. The pleasant place was made an ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... his return from Europe, he denied the truth of an assertion made in a newspaper, as to the amount he derived from the sale of each of his novels. "It remains for the public to decide," said he, "whether it will tolerate or not this meddling with private interests by any one who can get the command of a little ink and a few types." In the prefatory address to the publisher which appeared in the first edition of "The Pioneers," he made the statement, that the success of "The Spy," should ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... going to do something," cried the old man sharply. "Look here, young man; if you get meddling with anything in my garden there's going to be trouble, so mind that. I know what boys is, so none ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others better than those who are engaged ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... considered might be of disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them. They perceived, however, by his banner, that the King was on board, which gave them great joy, as they were eager to fight with him; so they put their vessels in proper order, for they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of allegiance to Ireland—clash number one. It is not simply a question of yes or no; there are attendant circumstances. Around a public man in place circulates a swarm of interested people, needy friends, meddling politicians, "supporters" generally. The chief magistrate will have influence on the bench which they all wish to invoke now and then, and they all wish to see him there. They don't approve of any principle that stands in the way. They ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... simple. It looks very easy to mind one's own business, but it is one of the hardest things in the world to do, because it is one of the hardest things in the world for us to be willing to do. The Scripture says, "Every fool will be meddling," and it is so hard for some folks not to act like fools, anyway in this particular respect, even though they are ever so wise. The affairs of others are so interesting to them! This is a very human trait, but it sometimes leads ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... precipitate attempts to change externals. He let slavery—he let war alone; he let the tyranny of the Roman Empire alone—not because he was a coward, not because he thought that these things were not worth meddling with, but because he, like all wise men, believed in making the tree good and then its fruit good. He believed in the diffusion of the principles which he proclaimed, and the mighty Name which he served, as able to girdle the poison-tree, and to take ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... upon to play flowed through him like some elixir; he felt that he was transcending himself, that his inspiration was drawn from the hidden springs of the spirit, and that he could neither falter nor go astray. "You don't know what you are meddling with! This man has plotted to lay the South in ruins—he has been arming the negroes—it—it is incredible that you should all know this—to such I say, go home and thank God for your escape! For the others"—his ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... open, and my lady swept in with flashing eyes. "What is all this?" she cried. "What have you done to my husband? Will nothing teach you your position in this house? Will you never cease from making and meddling?" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seems,' she interrupted, 'that my arrangements are not to your liking. That is of absolutely no consequence to me—among my subjects I am sovereign, and answerable to no one for them, only I am not accustomed to having people criticising me in my presence, and meddling in what is not their business. I have no need of learned philanthropists of nondescript position; I want servants to do my will without question. So I always lived till you came, and so I shall live after you've gone. You do not ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... she watched her vase with rather anxious eyes after that time. However, there was no more meddling; the brilliant blossoms were allowed to adorn the place and Esther's life as long as they would, or could. She cherished them to the utmost of her knowledge, all the rather that Pitt was gone away again; she gave them fresh water, she ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Mr. Grimes. "You take three little chaps, and have 'em meddling with your nails, and sticking scraps of iron into the coals, and it makes a man cross—or it frets me, and ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... publicly pummelling her in the Rue Gay-Lussac. He hastened to remonstrate; and the husband went off, hiccoughing of his outraged rights, and calling the universe to witness that he would have the law of the meddling stranger. Pair picked the girl up (she was scarcely eighteen then, and had only been married a sixmonth), he picked her up from where she had fallen, half fainting, on the pavement, carried her to his lodgings, which were at hand, and sent for a doctor. In ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... young blackguard! You impertinent meddling blockhead! How dare you presume to look at that photograph! How dare you, sir! ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... us earn our salt by bucking up against the law of the survival of the fittest, thereby rendering humanity the beautiful service of encumbering the earth with the weak. If the medical profession would just quit its damn meddling, nature might manage, in time, to do ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... endurance should run the slightest risk of being lowered in a nation which depends so largely upon the individual qualities of her citizens for her defence. Do away with war, if the cursed thing can by any wit of man be avoided, but until you see your way to that, have a care in meddling with those primitive qualities to which at any moment you may have to appeal for your ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and the functions of Stock Exchanges form a most intricate part of political economy. It has, consequently, been a noticeable phenomenon in all contemporary industrial society that the activities of the stock markets have been a constant subject of agitation and legislative meddling. Most of this meddling has been based upon ignorance and misunderstanding, but in a broad view this ignorance and misunderstanding are excusable owing to the novelty and above all the great complexity of the factors at work. One ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... have made us drowsy. The roar of the sea, and the singing of the wind in the stiff grass of the sand hills was in our ears, unnoticed, and we had made up our minds that there was no man on the island and that we need fear no meddling with the ship until the sea calmed, and men might come from the mainland to see what they could take from the wreck. Presently we ourselves would get what was worth aught to ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... her. "And what do you deserve, I'd like to know, for going meddling with those poor happy young things? Why couldn't you let them alone? Karen's been a bother to you for years. Why couldn't you be satisfied at having her nicely fixed up and let her tend to her own potato-patch while you tended to ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... The envoys accordingly believed them and set off for Carthage. An assembly being called some of the Carthaginians counseled maintaining peace with the Romans, but the party attached to Hannibal affirmed that the Saguntines were guilty of wrongdoing and the Romans were meddling with what did not concern them. Finally those who urged them to make ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... lead to such an issue. To enter thus upon the discussion of questions which have been mixed up with religion, and made to contribute their support to piety, seems to the idle spectator, or to the person who is absorbed in defending religion, a mere useless and troublesome meddling, dictated by the pride of intellectual triumph, or by the moral cowardice which seeks ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... said to be temporary—nothing more—and to leave a sense of vacant arms and a stinging aggravation of envy. So what Pattie Batch wanted was a baby to keep—a baby she could call her own and cherish against meddling—a baby that should be so rosy and fat and curly, so neat and white, so scrubbed and highly polished from crown to toe-nails, that every mother in the land, beholding, would promptly expire on the spot of ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... laughed Herbert "You, prying, meddling Meta; talking about other people's curiosity! Well, that's ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... for. That wife of his may feel the consequence of meddling in other folk's concerns. Not that I care for that now, there's metal more attractive; but she has crossed me, and shall suffer for it.' These short sentences met the ear of a broad-shouldered man in a rough coat, as, in elbowing his way through the crowd on the quay at Boulogne, he was detained ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my revenge," he said. "I should like to see my young ferryman's face when he sees his boat again. It'll cost him more than he'll ever get from my miserly uncle to repair it. It serves him right for meddling with matters that don't concern him. And now I must be getting away, for my affectionate uncle will soon be raising a hue and cry after me if ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... murderers and French spies—all sorts of malefactors—hiding in our straw throughout the day, wait-for the whistle to blow from the Street at dusk. I, born with my century, was familiar with these things; but my mother forbade my meddling with them. I expect she knew enough herself—all the resident gentry did. But Ralph—though he was to some extent of the new school, and used to boast that, if applied to, he "would grant a warrant against any Free Trader"—never did, as a matter of fact, or not ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... was at once obscured. "Mary, a considerable spell back a wise man said, 'Every fool will be meddling.' If you aren't familiar with the author, Mary, it would pay you to read him." Again he gave his attention to Celia. "We'll share this, turn and turn about," he compromised. "First you have a spoonful and ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... my lad; meddling with rattlesnakes may mean bringing down the Indians, so we'll let ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... reverend vicar speak to me? His intercourse with the doctor, with the apothecary, with the rich husbandmen of the place, hardly gives motive for three words of conversation. As the reverend vicar possesses the very rare quality, in one bred in the country, of not being fond of scandal, or of meddling in other people's affairs, he has no one to speak of but Pepita, whom he visits frequently, and with whom, as may be gathered from what he says, he is in the habit of holding the ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... be meddling and remarking to get myself ill-will; so I'll keep myself to myself: for Randal's ready enough with his hand as you with the tongue—no offence, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... room, or interfering at all in the election on his account, as he knew that I had an objection to place myself in the power of such a fellow, by being even in the same room with him. Cleary, who, upon such occasions, was always a very busy, officious, meddling Marplot, felt very much mortified at this prohibition, so much so, that I am informed he immediately offered his services to the Rump, to act in opposition to his patron and friend, the Major. But, however basely ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... take heed how he behaves. If he persists in saying to me what he likes, he'll be hearing things that he don't like. Am I meddling with these matters or interesting myself? Can you not endure your troubles with a patient mind? For as to what I say, whether it is true or false what I have heard, can soon be known. A certain man of Attica, a long time ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... "Take that, you sassy meddling up-start—you belong to me till you are twenty-one years old. What 'ud you do with a ginger man 'cept to eat it?" He cuffed the boy through the door and sent him ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... his tracks. He had carefully investigated the alley of fir branches from the outside. Then he had broken through it behind the noose, and safely made off with the bait. Rather contemptuously the old wolverene went on. She did not understand this kind of trap, so she discreetly refrained from meddling with it. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Maren had been to the village shop, Ditte ran out screaming, as she came back. "Grandad's dead!" she burst out sobbing. Soeren lay bruised and senseless across the doorstep to the kitchen. He had been up on the big chest, meddling with the hands of the clock. Maren dragged him to bed and bathed his wounds, and when it was done he lay quietly following her movements with his eyes. Now and then he would ask in a low voice what the time was, and from this Maren knew that ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... way to ruin. Language is in a certain sense every one's business; but it is especially the business, as their appellation denotes, of men of letters; and a primary duty of their high vocation is to be jealous of any careless or impertinent meddling with, or mishandling of, those little glistening, marvelous tools wherewith such amazing structures and temples have been built and are ever a-building. Culture, demanding and creating diversity and subtlety of mental processes, is at once a cause ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... always communicated to me, and as far as I had it in my power I obtained redress for the oppressed. I very soon, therefore became an object of suspicion and dread amongst the petty tyrants of that district; and by them I was denominated "a busy meddling fellow;" but as a set off to this, I received the thanks, the blessings of the poor, and the love of my servants, whom I looked upon as my friends and neighbours. I had as much work done for my money as any man; I paid my servants well; but I did what ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... not exactly that, Mr. Lyman. But I did think that it was meddling with something that—that did ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... people were now of an age to understand and to govern themselves by reason; and with these she determined to use those preventive measures which reason affords. Without meddling with politics, in which no amiable or sensible woman can wish to interfere, the influence of ladies in the higher ranks of life may always be exerted with perfect propriety, and with essential advantage to the public, in conciliating the inferior classes of society, explaining to them their ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... what I get for meddling in the affairs of other folks!' said little Mr. Chipmunk bitterly. 'If I'd just minded my own business, it wouldn't ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... will never resent words of warning or comfort if they are prompted by genuine feeling. When I was a young man, I felt as you do. My wife's cousin, a young fellow not yet of age, lived in our house for six months. My dread of meddling was such that I never asked him to be present at family worship, or spoke to him on the subject of religion. He fell into the company of a wild set, and was rapidly going to the bad. When I reasoned ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood
... the O.T. Prague 1517-19; the Acts and Epistles, Vilna 1525. Skorina, in one of his prefaces, found it necessary to excuse his meddling with holy things by the example of St. Luke, who, he says, was of the same profession. The dialect of this translation is the White Russian; and the book of Job contains the first ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... the persons who played the parts. The business of the playwright is selection and rejection, and usually the dramatic situations revealed have been culled from very many lives over a long course of years. Here the author need but reveal the tangled skein woven by Fate, Meddling Parents, Pride, Prejudice, Caprice, Ambition, Passion. In other words it is human nature in a tornado, and human nature is a vagrant ship, with a spurious chart, an uncertain compass, a drunken pilot, a mutinous crew and a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Further, it is written (Prov. 20:3): "All fools are meddling with revilings [Douay: 'reproaches']." Now folly is a vice opposed to wisdom, as stated above (Q. 46, A. 1); whereas anger is opposed to meekness. Therefore reviling does not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... was a stranger come in from beyond the village of Bashkai. The minute Dravot puts on the Master’s apron that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the stone that Dravot was sitting on. ‘It’s all up now,’ I says. ‘That comes of meddling with the Craft without warrant!’ Dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand-Master’s chair —which was to say the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt, ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... conquering note which is so potent an ally of the mind in subduing men. I heard Seward's oration at Plymouth in 1855, a worthy effort which may be read in his works, but I do better here to pick up only the straws, not meddling with the heavy-garnered wheat. I recall an inconspicuous figure, of ordinary stature, and a face whose marked feature was the large nose (Emerson called it "corvine"), but that, as some one has said, is the hook which ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... sorry we are to tease you; but what did you want meddling with the like of us, when it's a long time we are going our own ways — father and son, and his son after him, or mother and daughter, and her own daughter again — and it's little need we ever had of going up into ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... once Wych Hazel would have been quite willing to have him stay. 'What would her "other guardian" say to her, for such meddling in his affairs? such tampering with masculine business?' She retreated behind her salver, and sat there sugaring Mr. Rollo's empty cup, but not counting the lumps this time. Rollo however hardly justified her fears. He did come and sit own beside her, and he did relieve her hand of the sugar ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... character of mine!' she exclaimed. Truce, treaty, withdrawal, signified publicly pardon, not exoneration by any means; and now that she was in armour she had no dread of the public. So she said. Redworth's being then engaged upon the canvass of a borough, added to the absurdity of his meddling with the dilemmas of a woman. 'Dear me, Emma! think of stepping aside from the parliamentary road to entreat a husband to relent, and arrange the domestic alliance of a contrary couple! Quixottry is agreeable reading, a silly performance.' Lady Dunstane pleaded his friendship. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... become absorbed in the process of his thought; the look was wholly impersonal: I have seen the same in the eyes of portrait-painters. The counts upon which whites have been deported are mainly four: cheating Tembinok', meddling overmuch with copra, which is the source of his wealth and one of the sinews of his power, 'peaking, and political intrigue. I felt guiltless upon all; but how to show it? I would not have taken copra in a gift: how to express ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thousand into Thrace to dwell among the Bisaltae, and others into Italy, when the city Sybaris, which now was called Thurii, was to be repeopled. And this he did to ease and discharge the city of an idle, and, by reason of their idleness, a busy, meddling crowd of people; and at the same time to meet the necessities and restore the fortunes of the poor townsmen, and to intimidate, also, and check their allies from attempting any change, by posting such garrisons, as it were, in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... good deal of evidence to show, that aspirations after intellectual freedom had nothing whatever to do with the movement. Dante, who struck the Papacy as hard blows as Wicliff; Wicliff himself and Luther himself, when they began their work; were far enough from any intention of meddling with even the most irrational of the dogmas of mediaeval Supernaturalism. From Wicliff to Socinus, or even to Muenzer, Rothmann, and John of Leyden, I fail to find a trace of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... mused. Her duty, she now felt convinced, was to abstain from any sort of meddling. These two people must settle their affairs as they chose. To interfere was to incur an enormous responsibility. For what she had already done in ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Mediterranean. But before his ship sailed, a letter, also from Italy, from his aunt Maria, who was spending the winter in Rome, informed him that the ring was a Christmas gift from her. In his rage he unjustly condemned Aunt Maria as a meddling old busybody, and gave her ring ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... as all that. There is a remedy for every mistake except—a few physical ones, which we euphuistically describe as visitations of God.—Steady, steady there—wait a bit.—And I—I tell you I can't sit down under this unhappiness of yours and just put up with it. Don't think me a meddling fool, please. Something's got to be done. I know I probably appear to you the last person in the world to be of use. And yet I'm not sure about that. I have time—too much of it—and I'm not quite an ass. And you—you must know, I think, there's nothing in heaven or earth I would ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... agitation. My opinion is that all the skallywags who are taking part in it should be locked up, and have the cat every morning at five o'clock, and every hour of the day after, until they abstain from meddling with what they know nothing about! And as for Plimsoll, I would tie one end of a rope round his neck, and attach the other to a fire bar, and chuck him in there," pointing to the ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... there to live in order to be near them. And now she has no word hard enough for Jim Browner. The last six months that she was here she would speak of nothing but his drinking and his ways. He had caught her meddling, I suspect, and given her a bit of his mind, and that was the start ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all have for meddling in the affairs of others, and what a delicious zest we find in faithfully applying our surplus energies to business that is not strictly our own! I had become a part of the Sir George-Dorothy-John affair, and I ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... don't!" she said, with decision, warding off the girl's meddling hand, and putting back some of the quiet bands of hair. "You mustn't make me look so unlike myself. And besides—I couldn't live up to it!" Her shy smile ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bereavement is most affecting to a mother. Her husband's health kept her in a constant state of apprehension for his life, and his affairs became embarrassed to the very verge of bankruptcy. So long as they remained prosperous, he insisted on her not meddling with them in any way, and even required her to keep to her drawing-room and leave the conduct of their domestic establishment to the butler and housekeeper. But when (from circumstances detailed in the "Autobiography") his fortune was seriously endangered, he wisely and gladly availed ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... glad of that. What did he say to thee? He was feeling very bad, I know, about the Naylor boys. I wonder what makes thee even thyself with that low set. Thy father will be angry, if he knows, and Greenwood thinks he is sure to know if Naylors are meddling in his family or his affairs. Greenwood speaks very badly of the ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... handsome and agreeable woman, but she did not inspire me with any passions, no doubt because my mind was occupied with another, otherwise I should have drawn a bill on sight, and paid myself without meddling with her purse. It was two o'clock in the morning when I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the Royal Institution, was removed to its present site in Brown Street, placed under the management of Mr. Hammersley, who had previously been a successful teacher at Nottingham, and freed from the meddling of incompetent authorities. And now pupils anxiously crowd to receive instruction, and annually display practical evidence of the advantages ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... them on the beach; and the nurse, a German, said something that she could not understand. On the 1st of July—yes—but I have the date here—came a telegram to the hotel to have rooms for Lady de Lyonnais and Mr. Egremont ready by the evening. The whole place knew it, and some meddling person burst on Alice with the news, roughly and coarsely given, that they were coming to call her to account for her goings on. Captain Egremont found her crying in the utmost terror, and—she really hardly knew what he said to her—she thinks he offered to shelter ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cabinet agree with me in being strongly of opinion that Albert should not be a Peer; indeed, I see everything against it and nothing for it; the English are very jealous at the idea of Albert's having any political power, or meddling with affairs here—which I know from ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... trace the course of the bullet, and judged it best to spare meddling with a hurt we could not help. So, having bathed away the clotted blood and bandaged him, we strewed a fresh bed of fern, and watched by him, moistening his lips from time to time with water, for which ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the justice of men. For a man may be supposed to act unjustly by invading the possession of another; but no injustice can be conceived of God, inasmuch as there is nothing that belongs to any other besides himself, so that wrong is not imputable to him as meddling with things not appertaining to him. All things, himself only excepted, genii, men, the devil, angels, heaven, earth, animals, plants, substance, accident, intelligible, sensible, were all created originally by him. He created them by his power out of mere privation, and brought them into light, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... not so particular as some others, and might be willing to give you a cast forward. In fact, sir, I believe it's the man's trade: a piece of knowledge that burns my mouth. But that is what you get by meddling with rogues; and perhaps the biggest rogue now extant, M. de Saint-Yves, is ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... head despondently. He went all over the car again, but was forced to the first conclusion, that the reserve current had leaked away, in consequence of the meddling prank of the youth at the hotel. The situation was far from pleasant, and the delay would ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... his search alone, while Mrs. Liddell and her daughter went to the latter's room, anxious to keep from meddling with what did not ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... unalterable determination never, under any circumstances, to either advise anybody or receive it myself where it can be avoided. If it is ordained that I am to make a fool of myself, it shall be done on my own responsibility, and not with the assistance of meddling friends—though if they have any desire to take the credit of it, I shall make no objections whatever. I doubt if they will. The longer I live in the world, the clearer appears the fact that half at least of our unhappiness is unnecessary. We ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... As for that meddling Englishman, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and his crack-brained followers, they must be effectually swept out of the way first of all. De Batz felt that they were the real, the most likely hindrance to his schemes. He himself would have to go very cautiously to work, since apparently Heron would ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... "You have performed your mission well. The slanders must now cease. But one thing more remains to be done—the meddling nation must be identified, as I have already said. ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... native, who runs things to suit himself, and in his turn makes his office an occasion for graft. The parish priests who formerly had so great influence in the villages have now been ordered by the governors to cease meddling with secular matters, and some of them even are in collusion with the alcalde, whom they endeavor to aid in order that they may gain their own ends. Notwithstanding the alcaldes are few who are ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... bone-patcher, old digger in men's flesh, Doctors are ever itching to be priests, Meddling in conduct, natures, life's privacies. We have been coupled now for twenty years, And she has never turned from me an hour— She knows a woman's duty and a queen's: Whose, then, can her affection be but mine? How can I hurt her—she is still my ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... were brought from Alsace," explained Miss Chrissy, as I commented freely. "Elsace is the way to call it—and we can't bear to have strangers meddling with what ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... things in the subject that I felt they ought to see, but fortunately I was restrained from interfering. Instead, I had an exciting morning hearing all the things that I wanted to say said by them. It was a great experience! This illustrates how important it is for us to keep ourselves from meddling, and to have confidence in the Spirit. Then the truth appears in the midst of us much more powerfully than if we handed it out, because when it appears out of the midst, it comes with authority, it comes with ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... orders of March thirteenth, that the force he had left at Washington was inadequate to its safety, that the capital was "uncovered." Here was a chance for Stanton to bring to bear on Lincoln both those unofficial councils that were meddling so deeply in the control of the army. He threw this firebrand of a report among his satellites of the Army Board and into ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... "Excuse us, captings, for meddling into something that p'raps ain't none of our business. We ain't meaning to peek nor pry, but some of us couldn't help overhearing. We've cleaned out our pockets. Here it is—three hundred and sixty-eight dollars and thirty-seven cents. Will you let me step onto the quarter-deck ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the power to hear without instruments, if indeed it were she; and if it were but one of the false callings of the Evil Forces, or more cunning monsters, or as was sometimes thought concerning these callings, the House of Silence, meddling with our souls, then would they have no power to say the Master-Word; for this had been proven through ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... subject to propoganda of the four-flusher for their home influence is, to say the least, negative. Their opportunities limited, their education neglected and they are easily aroused by the meddling influence of the vote-getter and the traitor. I would to God that their eyes might be ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... rabbits, fowls, or other poultry to sell ... and that the 'foreign' poulterers, with their poultry, shall stand by themselves, and sell their poultry at the corner of Leadenhall, without any 'denizen' poulterer coming or meddling in sale or purchase with them, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Old Mr. Toad!" grumbled Jimmy, as he ambled up the Lone Little Path through the Green Forest on his way to the hill where Prickly Porky lives. "Of course I'm not afraid, but just the same I don't like meddling with things I don't know anything about. I'm not afraid of anybody I know of, because everybody has the greatest respect for me, but it might be different with a creature without legs or head or tail. Whoever heard of such a thing? It gives me ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess
... to tear up the railroad, having no doubt had enough of that business at Beaver Dam last Sunday. They did not interfere with the telegraph wire through prudential motives, shrewdly guessing that any meddling with that would give ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... a long story to tell in a few words. Another people, the Locrians, had also made an invasion on Delphian territory. The Amphictyonic Council called on Philip to punish them, He at once marched southward, but, instead of meddling with the Locrians, seized and fortified a town in Phocis. At once Athens, full of alarm, declared war, and Philip was as quick to declare war in return. Both sides sought the support of Thebes, and Athens gained ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was sent out a sacrifice, and came home a burnt offering; a saying of seamen who have caught the venereal disease abroad. He has burnt his fingers; he has suffered by meddling. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... fermenting in the barrel, like a curious vintage; the bear sniffing querulously round it, perhaps cracking it like a cocoa-nut, or extracting him like a periwinkle! Of these chances he had been deprived by the interference of the crew. Friends are often injudiciously meddling. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... and went back to her place. She played no more tricks that day, but as soon as the guests were gone, began telling Lilias how Miss Weston had been meddling and scolding her. ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... minutes, with all humility, not rashly intruding ourselves into the things we have not seen, or meddling with divine matters which are too hard for us, but taking our Lord's words simply as they stand, and where we do not understand them, believing ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... he broke out, "you are always meddling! Why can't you let things that don't belong ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... is, laddie. It's a matter of life and death, I'm thinking!" He smiled grimly, as it entered his head that he might be driven to do violence to that meddling policeman. The yellow gas-light gave his face such a sardonic ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... his mouth all fixed to tell Brother Bill that, in his opinion, he wasn't much better than a faro dealer, for he used to brag that he never let anything turn him from his duty, which meant his meddling in other people's business. I want to say right here that with most men duty means something unpleasant which the other fellow ought to do. As a matter of fact, a man's first duty is to mind his own business. It's been my experience that it takes about all the thought and work which ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... that you were a poor Mormon, Cecilia. And from first to last I opposed my family's entering the community. Tithes and meddling sent my father out of it a poor man. But I'm glad he went before this; and your ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... once she thoroughly enlisted Jacinth's sympathy for her friends. Possibly, far down in Jacinth's heart, candid and loyal by nature, lay a consciousness that, notwithstanding the plausible and, to a certain extent, sound reasons for not meddling in other people's affairs, and for refraining from all 'Harper' allusions to Lady Myrtle, she was going farther than she needed in her avoidance of these girls, in her determination not to know anything about their family or their possible connection with her old lady. Her conscience was not entirely ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... the party were willing to agree that a few years ago most educated men in the south regarded slavery as a misfortune and not justifiable, though necessary under the circumstances. But the meddling, coercive conduct of the detested and despised abolitionists had caused the bonds to be drawn ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... before the hounds, impresses you as an animal of dignity and calculation. He never seems surprised, much less frightened; never loses his head; never does things hurriedly, or on the spur of the moment, as a scatter-brained rabbit or meddling squirrel might do. You meet him, perhaps as he leaves the warm rock on the south slope of the old oak woods, where he has been curled up asleep all the sunny afternoon. (It is easy to find him there in winter.) Now he is off on his nightly hunt; he is trotting along, head ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Government injures friends no less than enemies. Look at me! I am a passive resister; I belong to the National Liberal Club; I have married my deceased wife's sister; and none of my children are vaccinated; yet they are meddling with my rights as a landlord." The Lords did not see the fun, the papers did not report it, but it is to be found ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... of us, she needed rousing up to her duty. She had got the rousing now, and it did her good, for she could not bear to be praised when she had not deserved it. She had watched Molly's efforts with lazy interest, and when the girl gave up meddling with her affairs, as she called the housekeeping, Miss Bat ceased to oppose her, and let her scrub Boo, mend clothes, and brush her hair as much as she liked. So Molly had worked along without any help from her, running in to Mrs. Pecq for advice, to Merry ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... he was attacked by a bully and ex-prize fighter who was hired by some of his enemies to teach him the rewards to be won from "meddling." The result was unexpected. The bully went sprawling, knocked down by a well directed blow from the undersized, bespectacled young assemblyman—and some of the gang that attempted to bring aid to the fallen also found themselves ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... good;" Rom. iii. 10, 11, 12. For it is not possible for a man that is not first made righteous by the God of heaven, to do any thing that in a gospel-sense may be called righteousness. To make himself a righteous man, by his so meddling with them, he may design; but work righteousness, and so by such works of righteousness make himself ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... some one else has not been meddling with that money? I do not see that it follows no one could touch ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... on. So that everything that really mattered could—if you were given to looking forward—be foreseen. A strike—a really bad one—might conceivably affect Anthony's business, for a time; but not all the strikes in the world, not all the silly speeches, not all the meddling and muddling of politicians could ever touch one ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... zealous activity of the most promising kind was displayed by officers and men alike. By September twenty-ninth fourteen guns were mounted and four mortars, the essential material was gathered, and by sheer self-assertion Buonaparte was in complete charge. The only check was in the ignorant meddling of Carteaux, who, though energetic and zealous, though born and bred in camp, being the son of a soldier, was, after all, not a soldier, but a very fair artist (painter). For his battle-pieces and portraits of military celebrities he had received large prices, and was as vain of his artistic ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of old exploded aristocratic gewgaws that they had flung out of the country—with the heads of the owners in them sometimes, for indeed they were not particular—a score of years before? What business, forsooth, had they to be meddling with gentility and aping its ways, who had courage, merit, daring, genius sometimes, and a pride of their own to support, if proud they were inclined to be? A clever young man (who was not of high family himself, but had been bred up genteelly at Eton and the university)—young Mr. George ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... might have supposed he was blaming himself for meddling with matters that did not ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... same right as every man that has a footing in his country, or that has a posterity to possess liberty and claim right, must have, to preserve the laws, liberty, and government of that country to which he belongs, and he that charges me with meddling in what does not concern me, meddles himself with what 'tis plain ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... infatuation, or on his return may find that some one else has supplanted him in her affections. I should not fancy that constancy would be one of her strong points; at any rate I do not see that I can do any good by meddling in the matter, though if Dampierre spoke to me about it, I should certainly express my opinion frankly. It is much the best that things should go on between us as they are now doing. He is a hot-headed beggar, and the ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... get for your infernal meddling!" snapped Halkett. In catastrophic moments many barriers go down; deference to ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... night, after all," she said. "Now, Bill, bring me that revolver, and if I catch you meddling with it again I'll put that pair of fur rugs you are so ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the footman peeking and at that he cut up the stairs. The dimun-lady stiffened up and she said: 'So you are one of those meddling, interfering country jays that come here and try to make us lose our good servants, so you can hire them later. I've seen that done before. Lucette is invaluable,' said she, 'and perfectly reliable. Takes all the care of those ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... replied. "No! to answering Graham's question. He is not the person to ask it. I wonder that he does not see the impropriety, the absurdity of his meddling at all in this affair. Besides, he could not understand my answer even if he believed it. But to the explanation, I say, Yes! I will give it, not to Graham, but to you. I make you this proposition. To-morrow is Sunday. We shall be excused from service if we tell the master that ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... hand REBUILD, is no darling of your political Repairer. Call the party and the men by their right names: and give me for utility in legislation or administrative action an Old Tory and Obstructive party rather than this middling, meddling, muddling Repairer— ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... of King William IV. His life has been hitherto passed in obscurity and neglect, in miserable poverty, surrounded by a numerous progeny of bastards, without consideration or friends, and he was ridiculous from his grotesque ways and little meddling curiosity. Nobody ever invited him into their house, or thought it necessary to honour him with any mark of attention or respect; and so he went on for above forty years, till Canning brought him into notice by making him Lord High Admiral at the time ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... no escape. Then some wild desire to have the thing done at once possessed him. At once—at once—and then the grave would cover over his remorse and despair. Natalie would forget; she had her mother now to console her. Evelyn would say, "Poor devil, he was not the first who got into mischief by meddling in schemes without knowing how far he might have to go." Then amidst all this confused din of the London streets, what was the phrase that kept ringing in his ears?—"And when she bids die he shall surely ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... strictly enjoined from meddling with them, even if they came in his way. If they chased the Bronx, she would be justified in defending herself under the orders; and that was the most she could do. Flint was terribly disappointed, and he regarded the commander with the deepest interest to learn what ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... enmity of Caesar and Pompeius which produced the civil wars, but their friendship rather, inasmuch as they first combined to depress the nobility and then quarrelled with one another. Cato, who often predicted what would happen, at the time only got by it the character of being a morose, meddling fellow, though afterwards he was considered to be a wise, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... without perhaps realizing all that the movement meant, or all that it tended to. Because we hold in our hearts and keep holy there the vision of a great future, I have fought passionately for the entire freedom of our movement from external control, lest the meddling of politicians or official persons without any inspiration should deflect, for some petty purpose or official gratification, the strength of that current which was flowing and gathering strength unto the realization ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... the ducking,' replied Neil. 'He will be quite harmless, only a little odd. You will nefer be seeing him with the others; he will always be wandering about by himself, and sleeping in all kinds of places. Och! but this will not do though; he is meddling with our coats that we took off when we were going to climb. Hi, Gibbie! you must not ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... insolent meddling on the part of governments no longer exists. There can be no such thing among an enlightened people. As the mass of mankind, or we will say their leaders or representatives, become more cultured, they demand a larger field of individual freedom, and organize a pressure upon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he was saying over and over again to himself, sometimes aloud. "Why should he have a pardon? What are the laws for? Curse that meddling old fool Clegg! They'll set him free, and he'll hunt me out, I know he will. He won't forgive me for that day's work. He may be free now-it may have been he who followed me. But no! That's a silly thing to think. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... a nominal thing, old man," Frere said to his former comrade, when they met. "That parson has made meddling, and they ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... or reader of this book, were I to conclude this chapter without pointing out a means of protection against the use of this phase of psychic influence against them on the part of some unscrupulous person; or for that matter, against the meddling influence of any person whatsoever, for any purpose whatsoever, without one's permission and consent. Therefore, I wish now to point out the general principles of self-protection or defense against this class ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... many Persians account for it by paternal severity. Youths arrived at puberty find none of the facilities with which Europe supplies fornication. Onanism[FN399] is to a certain extent discouraged by circumcision, and meddling with the father's slave-girls and concubines would be risking cruel punishment if not death. Hence they use each other by turns, a "puerile practice" known as Alish-Takish, the Lat. facere vicibus or mutuum facere. Temperament, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the curiosity of the people was upon him: and as he did not wish to seem to fly from it, he threw in his lot with Ada. The little town buzzed with tattle. Christophe's colleagues in the orchestra paid him sly compliments to which he did not reply, because he would not allow any meddling with his affairs. The respectable people of the town judged his conduct very severely. He lost his music lessons with certain families. With others, the mothers thought that they must now be present at the daughters' lessons, watching with suspicious eyes, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Colonel, testily, and when the boys had gone he read the Bazar-Sergeant's son a lecture on the sin of unprofitable meddling, and gave orders that the Bandmaster should keep the Drums ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... old man said, "What are you after now?" and the Lion asked if he had seen Ananzi pass that way, but the old man said, "No, that fellow Ananzi is always meddling with some one; what mischief has he ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... justly wish the downfall of abused powers, but I believe that no government ever yet perished from any other direct cause than its own weakness. My opinion is against an overdoing of any sort of administration, and more especially against this most momentous of all meddling on the part of authority,—the meddling with the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had been against unions. Bonbright was against unions. His reason for this attitude was not the reason of his father. It was simply this: That he would not be dictated to by individuals who he felt were meddling in his affairs. He had arrived at a definite decision on this point: his mills should never be unionized.... If his men had grievances he would meet with them individually, or committees sent by them—committees of themselves. He would not treat with so-called professional ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... by the revision by its positive meddling with the materials as found in the sources, is not so irreparable; yet it is considerable enough. The change of colour which was effected may be best seen and characterised in the far-reaching observations which introduce the Israelite series of kings; "Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... compromise Epimetheus, Prometheus?" demanded Pandora. "Besides, my attendant Hope was always telling me that all would come right, without any meddling of mine." ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... of any meddling of authority with opinion is that the mind is robbed of its genuine employment. Such a system produces beings wanting in independence, and in that intrepid perseverance and calm self-approbation which grow from independence. ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... anything, except that it's your picture, and I put in a little time meddling with your property for want of something else to do. All I painted doesn't cover one quarter of the canvas, and I guess you've done enough for me to more than make up. I guess you needn't worry over that cow and calf—you're ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... instrument! You forget, Senor, that this is underground diplomacy. It must appear to work itself out and the new King must be logical. With Louis a prisoner their meddling hands ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... of thine handmaid." Or, does it cease on the child's leaving the parental roof for another place of residence? Or, on entering upon the married state? Or, upon the commission of some great act of outward transgression, shall we pronounce the covenant to be dissolved? Do we not see that we are meddling with a divine prerogative, if we assume to act in such cases? Expostulations, warnings, entreaties, from parents, pastor, brethren of the church, may always be in place; but further than these ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... I don't mean in anything wrong, but the order is so entirely opposed to the monastic spirit. It is difficult to explain; I really can't.... What I mean is ... well, that their worldliness is repugnant to me—fashionable friends, confidences, meddling in family affairs, dining out, letters from ladies who need consolation.... I don't mean anything wrong; pray don't misunderstand me. I merely mean to say that I hate their meddling in family affairs. Their confessional is a kind of marriage bureau; they have always got some plan on for marrying ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... him all from beginning to end. You knew it before me, and ought to have given me a hint of what was going on! The girl might yet have been advised. It might still have been time to save her! But, no! There was something for your meddling and making, and you must needs add fuel to the fire. Now you have made your bed you may lie on it. As you have brewed so you may drink; I shall take my daughter under my arm and be off with her ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... shattered, and he had been the great man of the village for little more than fourteen hours, ten of which he had spent in sleep. He cursed the hour in which he had espied that luckless kiss, and too late perceived the folly of a humble gamekeeper's meddling with the affairs of those who own the game ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... of St Paul, if he had ever been in the circumstances," said the Rector; "and I should just like to know what he would have done in a parish like this, with the Dissenters on one side, and a Perpetual Curate without a district meddling on the other. Ah, my dear," continued Mr Morgan, "I daresay they had their troubles in those days; but facing a governor or so now and then, or even passing a night in the stocks, is a very different thing from a showing-up in the 'Times,' not ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... in a position to judge, and I don't think I want to be. I have no real liking for meddling in ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... very encouraging, and disclosed to me a somewhat consoling prospect of increasing my influence as musical conductor at a time when my disgust was daily growing stronger at the constant meddling with our opera repertoire, which made me lose more and more influence as compared with the wishes of my would-be prima donna niece, whom even Tichatschek supported. Immediately on my return from Berlin I had ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... may be set in action, in any one of those "pretty family scenes" which "Puck" depicts,—while we are solemnly warned against admitting the comparatively mild peril of a political difference! It is like cautioning a manufacturer of dynamite against the danger of meddling with mere edge-tools. Even with all the intensity of feeling on religious matters, few families are seriously divided by them; and the influence of political differences would be ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... working-day of the session left, for the session must end at noon of the 4th of March. The list must be reduced. The manner in which this was done clinches the proof, if there had been any doubt before, that the list of twenty-seven was the result of negotiations with congressmen. No meddling with that list was permitted, though the use of patronage as "spoils" had some very glaring illustrations in it. The President had to make the reduction from his own promotions made earlier, and which were therefore higher on the list and in rank, instead of dropping those ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... on bottled spiders, or try to make mystical divinity out of the Song of Solomon, much less out of the erotic and bacchanalian songs of Hafiz. Hafiz himself is determined to defy all such hypocritical interpretation, and tears off his turban and throws it at the head of the meddling dervis, and throws his glass after the turban. But the love or the wine of Hafiz is not to be confounded with vulgar debauch. It is the spirit in which the song is written that imports, and not the topics. Hafiz praises ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Stafford dryly. Rising with a yawn, he went on: "Half the marital troubles one hears about are the fault of the wife. She is often too exacting, too fond of meddling in her husband's affairs. A man who respects himself bends to no one—not even to his wife." With another yawn he added: "Will you two excuse me for a few minutes? I have a ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... this love of pounding things small, this passion for small blessings, is found in all his work. His God is so difficult to content, so scrupulous, so meddling, that no one would ever get to heaven if they believed what he said. This God of his is the fault-finder of eternity, the miser ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... like a downy young owl. She wasn't sure but she thought that he muttered, "I'm damned if I will." She considered with wholesome fear the perils of meddling with other people's destinies, and she said timidly, "Hadn't we better ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... to protect the pilgrims, and to retrieve the Holy Places. The patriarch replied, "Nothing, unless God will touch the heart of the western princes, and will send them to succor the Holy City." The patriarch did not propose meddling himself, nor did it occur to him that the pope should intervene. He took a rationalistic view of the Moslem military power. Peter, on the contrary, was logical, arguing from eleventh-century premises. If he could but receive a divine mandate, he would raise ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Peter, abandoning any desire he may have felt to beat about the bush. Nay, indeed, it is very possible he welcomed, rather than resented, the Irishwoman's meddling. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... only I can't bear to have Aunt Lilias meddling with my letters; and there's a poor uncle of mine that I know would not like her, or any of the Mohuns, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Roger. "You're right, in a way. But Mona is so accustomed to managing for herself that I'm pretty sure a meddling relative ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... Casembe: before that I never heard such a babbler, to every one passing, man or woman, he repeated the same insinuations about the English, and "Mpamari," and the Banyamwezi,—conspiracy—guilt—return a second time,—till, like a meddling lawyer, he thought that he had really got ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
