|
|
|
More "Petulant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Satyrick songs, with which the antient Tragedians endeavoured to enliven the Dithyrambicks, gave rise to two different species of poetry. Their rude jests and petulant raillery engendered the Satire; and their sylvan character produced ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... Spanish Ministers either manifested sullen reserve or indulged in petulant complaints respecting the "Sant' Iago," Corsica, and Hayti. The conduct of the Marquis del Campo at London was equally sinister; his despatches represented the policy and conduct of England in the darkest colours. In the hope of softening these asperities Pitt and Grenville decided to ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... with a king over candle-ends?" Graham queried, pleasuring in the sight of her graceful abandon. Thirty-eight! It was impossible. She seemed almost a girl, petulant and flushed over some school task. Then he remembered Mrs. Tully's remark that Paula was the most mature child she ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... that she cannot befriend him. Then his cousin laughed, and in idleness talked with the children; Sometimes she turned to him, and then when the thistle was falling, Caught it and twined it again in her hair, and called it her keepsake, Smiled, and made him ashamed of his petulant gift there, before them. But, when the night was grown old and the two by the hearthstone together Sat alone in the flickering red of the flame, and the cricket Carked to the stillness, and ever, with sullen throbs of the pendule ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... and artificial fashion. But the effect of her grave little face and severe expression, with this opulent gold, and her red lips and round blue eyes, was very piquant. Even powder, earrings, and "clubbing" her hair did not rob Julia of the appearance of a sweet, wilful, and petulant child. Besides the powder and earrings, she indulged in cologne, in open-work silk stockings and high heels, in chains and rings and bracelets; she wore little corsets, at fourteen, and ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... hesitatingly, "the reason why I wanted to have you come out here, why I couldn't sleep, I wanted to tell you how ashamed I am for having been peevish, being petulant, last night. I'm so sorry, because you were very patient with me, you were very good to me. I don't want you to think of me just as a crochety woman who didn't appreciate you. You are very kind, and when I hear that ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... succeeded in making herself so thoroughly petulant and exacting to all her maids, that when she ordered them out of the room, and told them on no account to disturb her in any respect for the rest of the day, they "rejoiced with trembling," and had no anxiety to thrust their attentions upon so unreasonable a mistress. And a little while ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... me,—nothing more than telling what had happened at school one morning. No matter who asked it; but there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no heart to speak;—I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away, and the first battle of life was lost. What remorse followed I need not tell. Then and there, to the best of my knowledge, I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned my back on Duty. Time has led me to look upon my offence more leniently; I do not believe it or any other ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... boat!... You were my friend, then!" he added suddenly, with a note of question sounding through the affirmation, and she answered quickly, looking away with an air of petulant reproach. "Why, you know I was, Captain Kerissen. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... her "young chaps" in the kitchen, but Louis was too frightened to face them. He was too shy to go downstairs to carry up water or coal for Marcella, and she had to do it herself; in the undermined state of his nerves it was torture to him to face people, and he became petulant if asked to do what he called "menial tasks." Marcella understood him: Mrs. King had no hesitation in saying ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... have loved Socrates, and done battle with him staunchly and manfully owned his defeat; and the dialogue, arranged by Plato, would have shown even in Plato's gallery. He seemed in talk aggressive, petulant, full of a singular energy; as vain you would have said as a peacock, until you trod on his toes, and then you saw that he was at least clear of all the sicklier elements of vanity. Soundly rang his laugh at any jest against himself. He wished to be taken, as he took others, for what was good ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... timid and one asks him the cause, he is liable to hear in reply: "Me fright along you too much." Or the native may be fright along storm, or wild bush, or haunted places. CROSS covers every form of anger. A man may be cross at one when he is feeling only petulant; or he may be cross when he is seeking to chop off your head and make a stew out of you. A recruit, after having toiled three years on a plantation, was returned to his own village on Malaita. He was clad in all kinds of gay and sportive garments. On his ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... month Ralph's money ran out, and then he was petulant and often upbraided her. Those were the only times when he essayed to study, and he would not walk with her of evenings, so destitute. Then Fanchette amused her: "Sew in my room," she would say; "Ralph will come for you at eight o'clock." But Ralph never went, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... morning, T was probably one of the most thoughtful and judiciously-minded; yet of every one but myself the business in being abroad was sober and reasonable, while mine was utterly ridiculous and silly. And the girl whose banter had driven me to it—perhaps she had attached no seriousness whatever to my petulant vow and had even now forgotten it. With these reflections were mingled the pangs of parting from my home and family; and for a time ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... arose from a force of intellect, and quick-seeing, far-reaching sagacity, everywhere discerning his object and pursuing it steadily. Whether it was popular or professional, he grasped a point and held it with a strong hand. He was sarcastic sometimes, but not frequently; not frothy or petulant, but cool and vitriolic. Unfortunate for him ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... accordance with that same treaty, should first satisfy various claims of British subjects for restitution, indemnity, and relief. The regular diplomatic machinery stuck fast at this point, both at home and abroad. In one of his gossipy, confidential letters Fisher Ames remarked that Hammond was a most "petulant, impudent" man, habitually railing against the conduct of our government "with a gabble that his feelings render doubly unintelligible." But Pinckney, our representative in England, was equally undiplomatic. ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too, there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever disappointment he felt, and, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... on, a thunderstorm drove the king as he passed along the river to the house of the Bishop of Durham where the Earl was then sojourning. Simon bade Henry take shelter with him and have no fear of the storm. The king refused with petulant wit. "If I fear the thunder, I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world." But Simon had probably small faith in the cumbrous system of government which the Barons devised, and it was with reluctance that he was brought to swear to the Provisions of ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... pipe, down on the West Main wharf, where he seated himself on a stone mooring post, placed the bundle containing the loaf beside him, and then began to eat heartily? Nothing of the kind. Jem was thinking very hard about home and his little petulant, girlish wife. ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... her white sash: "But you said—you said you'd dance with me if I got my sash ..." or some such words, but only Miss Le Pettit caught all the muttered syllables, and she never spoke of them, save with a petulant reluctance to Mr. Constantine ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... papers in their hats, that show'd As if they to the pillory rode. Have all these courses, these efforts, 620 Been try'd by people of all sorts, Velis & remis, omnibus nervis And all t'advance the Cause's service? And shall all now be thrown, away In petulant intestine fray? 625 Shall we that in the Cov'nant swore, Each man of us to run before Another, still in Reformation, Give dogs and bears a dispensation? How will Dissenting Brethren relish it? 630 What will malignants say? videlicet, That each man Swore ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... to turn pedlar any day! The King's army will go to the dogs fast enough since the Governor commissions Recollets and Jesuits to act as royal officers," was the petulant remark of another ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... hands. With a miser's care she husbanded her strength, ate the most nourishing food they could afford, and rested every moment her duties permitted. The economy they were now compelled to practice amounted almost to daily privation. Belle and the children were often a little petulant over this change, Mrs. Jocelyn apathetic, but Mildred was inflexible. "We must not run in debt one penny," she would often ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... very eagerly. An impulse seized her to ask him to forgive all her petulant speeches and waywardness, but when she tried to do it she could not find her voice. Perhaps he read her thought in her tearful eyes and changeful face, and grew a little remorseful as he remembered how often he had vexed her during the first months of their acquaintance. ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... Who in the motion[6] have no share, But purely come to hear and stare; Have no concern for Sabra's sake, Which gets the better, saint or snake, Provided Punch (for there's the jest) Be soundly maul'd, and plague the rest. Thus, Tim, philosophers suppose, The world consists of puppet-shows; Where petulant conceited fellows Perform the part of Punchinelloes: So at this booth which we call Dublin, Tim, thou'rt the Punch to stir up trouble in: You wriggle, fidge, and make a rout, Put all your brother puppets out, Run on in a perpetual round, To tease, perplex, disturb, confound: Intrude ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... in the box opposite, "not a Frenchwoman. Her youth is too girlish, and she has too petulant an air ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... however it may soften and enlarge a petulant and wayward nature, instead of increasing, cuts short and crisp the patience of the patient. When Lancelot was as near as manners and prudence allowed to that lonesome house, he sat down quietly for a little while in a little niche of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... bushy shock of hair curling at the ends, such as the Italians call a zazzera. The eye is deeply sunk, with long venomous flat eyelids, like those which Leonardo gives to his most wicked faces. The nose is long and crooked, curved like a vulture's over a petulant mouth, with lips deliberately pressed together, as though it were necessary to control some nervous twitching. The cheek is broad, and its bone is strongly marked. Looking at these features in repose, we cannot but picture to our fancy what expression they might assume under a sudden ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... may observe, that as Tragedy, by painful emotions, elevates us to the most dignified views of humanity, being, in the words of Plato, "the imitation of the most beautiful and most excellent life;" Comedy, on the other hand, by its jocose and depreciatory view of all things, calls forth the most petulant hilarity. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... one expression, we should call it melancholy-musical. Even the more frivolous and equivocal songs have a tincture of this pensiveness. While the Servian songs of this description are the ebullitions of merry and petulant youth, the Russian are frequently not without a spice of sentimentality. Girls are often represented painting the unhappy consequences of their weakness with a very suspicious mixture of penitence and pleasure; ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... it cannot be settled by attributing it to a mysterious dispensation of natural depravity. The probability is that the home life is without harmony and full of discord, that the parents are themselves petulant and more anxious to assert their separate opinions than to find unity of action. Nothing is more effective to teach children peaceful living than to see it constantly before them in their parents. A harmonious home seldom has quarrelsome children. Such harmony is a matter of organization ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... said Hepsa, impatiently; "don't talk any more; it sounds odd." Genevieve looked at Hepsa, and the wild, petulant look of her face grieved and shocked her so much, that she ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... still before him the peril of financial embarrassment, that he was mortgaging the house, and that his colloquies with David Dain continued to be frequent and obviously disconcerting. When she saw him nervous, petulant, preoccupied, she attributed his condition solely to his thought of the one danger which she had secretly removed. She had a strange determined impulse ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... own good breeding," says Chesterfield, "is the best security against other people's ill manners. It carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duke of Marlborough, or a civil one to Sir ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... louder. This is Mr. Williams. Speak up. I can't understand you." The voice was petulant and so distinct that even Shirley could hear it, as he knelt by the side of the phonograph. Again Van Cleft insisted on his deafness. There was the suggestion of a break in the voice which brought to Shirley's eyes the sparkle ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... order of the Secretary of War, that he might go on this trip. He is scrupulously careful, and a little mishap works him into a passion, but when labor is needed he has a ready hand and powerful arm, and in danger, rapid judgment and unerring skill. A great difficulty or peril changes the petulant spirit ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... disregarded. The next morning, the surgeon having reported that Schriften was apparently quite recovered, he was summoned into the cabin. His frame was wasted away to a skeleton, but his motions and his language were as sharp and petulant ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Church Street, running from the river to St. John's Church, Westminster, that atrociously ill-mannered church of Queen Anne's day, built it is said on the lines of a footstool overturned in one of that lady's fits of petulant wrath. Down Church Street ran Martha, followed by Copperfield ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Foreigner, travelling among us, particularly in the western Counties, some Summers past, judge of our national Wisdom and Oeconomy? Would he not start even at our Humanity, on seeing the best arable Grounds in the Kingdom, in immense Tracts, wantonly enjoyed by the Cattle of a few petulant Individuals; and at the same Juncture, our high Ways and Streets crowded with Shoals of mendicant fellow-creatures! reduced, through Want of proper Sustenance, to the utmost Distress? Would not a Frenchman ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... myself with Levi's book, in answer to Dr. Priestley. It is a curious and tough work. His style is inelegant and incorrect, harsh and petulant to his adversary, and his reasoning flimsy enough. Some of his doctrines were new to me, particularly that of his two resurrections: the first, a particular one of all the dead, in body as well as soul, who are to live over again, the Jews in a state ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... at all," she answered after a pause, the corners of her red mouth drooping in petulant, spoilt-child fashion, "and if you go away I ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... thoroughly understands. The preacher taught me Latin, Greek, and history: two persons, however, occupied themselves with my religious education—the preacher and my old Rosalie. She is a good soul. How often have I teased her, been petulant, and almost angry with her! She thought so much of me, she was both mother and sister to me, and instructed me in religion as well as the preacher, although she is a Catholic. Since my father's childhood she has been a sort of governante in ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... and fed them—have never been held in a lover's arms, or held a child of their own against their heart. And so," she went on smiling, "many of them lavished their tenderness upon animals or crafty servants or selfish relations; and grew old and fanciful and petulant before their time. It seems a sad waste of life that! Because so many of them are spirits that could have loved finely and devotedly all the time. But here," she said, "they unlearn their caprices, and live a life by strict rule—and they ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... regularly crushed any proposal, if put to the vote without such previous deliberation, by means of the political or religious veto.(28) The revolution hadswept away thesebarriers; andin consequence that absurd system now began fully to develop its results, and to put it in the power of any petulant knave to overthrow the state in due form of law. What was under such circumstances more natural, more necessary, more truly conservative, than now to recognize formally and expressly the legislation of the senate to which effect had been hitherto given by ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... blackened with the smoke of the battle, it is unworthy of two mighty empires to carry on an ignoble war of words. If peace is their wish, let them manifest the great and enlightened sentiment in all its purity, and disdain to irritate each other by acts of petulant and provoking recrimination. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... dumb, spiritless and absolutely crestfallen, and who also observed the symptoms we spoke of, he began naturally enough to suspect that something had gone wrong. His interrogations, however, were fruitless. Val, on his inquiring the cause of these appearances, told him in a petulant fit of that ill-temper which is pecular to cowards, "to go be hanged;" a compliment which dutiful Phil returned to his worthy father with interest. This was all that passed between them, with the single exception of an observation which fell from Phil's lips as ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... much after the manner of a petulant child. "I won't leave it!—I won't leave Verner's Pride! You could not be so cruel as to wish me. Who says he is alive? Lionel, I ask you who it is that says he ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "Your petulant vehemence is both unbecoming and displeasing; and in future you would do well to recollect that, as a child submitted to my guidance by your mother's desire, it is disrespectful both to her and to me to insist upon a course at variance with ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... that Madame von Marwitz gave to her moods of sometimes tragic and sometimes petulant melancholy. Karen had told him all about Fafner and how, in the cave, Tante would lie sometimes for long hours, silent, her eyes closed, holding her hand; sometimes asking her to read to her, English, French, German or Italian poetry; their range ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... various rout Of petulant capricious sects, The maggots of corrupted texts.'' Hudibras, Part ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... gone out to the gate with his bird gun on his shoulder and found Will Fletcher and the spotted foxhound puppies awaiting him in the road. He saw again the boy's face, with the sunlight full upon it—eager, alert, a little petulant, full of good impulses readily turned adrift. There had been no evil upon it then—only weakness and a pathetic absence of determination. His own damnable intention was thrust back upon him, and he heard again the words of Carraway which had reechoed ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... her frame was relieved by more frequent sighs; there was more elasticity in her walk, more youthfulness in her attitudes; even in the stillness of her chamber, a pleasant though feverish agitation produced a petulant movement of her feet, and sent the words more hurriedly to her lips. In the evening Julie would undraw the curtains, and frequently lean forth from her window to take in the freshness of the water, the rays of the moon, and the breath of the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... disobedient school-urchin, he told himself, glowering sulkily in the presence of his tutor. Between this man and himself lay an enmity that was deeper than the grave, and yet to Quinton Edge he was merely the petulant boy to be scolded and punished or, even more contemptuously, ignored. Was he never to stand before him as ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the plays were over, kept her carmine saucer on the dressing-table, and put on her blushes, regularly as the morning. When stared and jeered at, she at first said she did it because she thought it made her look pretty; but, after a while, she became petulant about it,—would make no reply to any joke, but merely ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... from Mrs. Toplady. He knew the writing, and opened the envelope with a petulant grimace, muttering "No, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... had imitated Gila Dare's petulant childish accent to perfection. At another time the three young men would have shouted over it. Now they looked ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... no reply to the petulant words and action. An expression of tender pity crossed her face, as she stooped and lifted the torn barb, and examined the rent, with as much apparent calmness as if it had been damaged in the washing. ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... any padding—strength in the lean lithe figure; but it was always brute strength. There was no moral strength whatever in the restless fidgeting—the savage winding and unwinding of his left foot around the saber scabbard, or the attitude, leaning forward over the table, of petulant pugnacity. And the cruel voice was as weak as the hand was strong with which ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... with a dull light glowing about his head and fading away directly, then more darkness and stumbling on, and once more a dull yellow glow, and this fading away, with the darkness increasing. Then a slight struggle, and a few petulant remonstrances. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which through' the poem, or through the music, we attain to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... beside her. She had been chatting in a bright, rapid, desultory fashion about the book and a dozen other things—amusing herself really by a continual stream of playful talk—until she perceived that the girl's fancies were far away. Then she stopped suddenly, with this expression of petulant but good-natured disappointment. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... Lessingham's, calling to Matthews from the staircase, though, for an instant, I hardly recognised it, it was so curiously petulant. Pushing past Matthews, I stepped into the hall. A young man, I suppose a footman, in the same undress as Matthews, was holding a candle,—it seemed the only light about the place. By its glimmer I perceived Lessingham standing half-way up the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... that firmness of purpose, which gave him poise when all about him was tumult. Other men lost their heads; Paul kept cool. It was a critical moment around the temple court that morning; the Jewish mob was murderous, the Roman chief captain was petulant, and he was cold ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... would leave him very short-handed, and seriously embarrass him until he could obtain others to fill their places; and I formed this opinion from the fact that his many expressions of regret at being blown away from his boats were every one of them coupled with a petulant repetition of the remark that his hands would be completely tied should he fail to recover their crews. So persistently did he hang upon this phase of the mishap, that at length I ventured to ask him whether there were none ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... circumstance during this period to bind Jemima and Mr Farquhar together. They were still misunderstanding each other with all their power. The difference in the result was this: Jemima loved him all the more, in spite of quarrels and coolness. He was growing utterly weary of the petulant temper of which he was never certain; of the reception which varied day after day, according to the mood she was in and the thoughts that were uppermost; and he was almost startled to find how very glad ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... overturned. Thorpe's dry-eyed, burning, almost mad insistence on the importance of the day's task had not its ordinary force. They looked upon him from a standpoint apart, calmly, dispassionately, as one looks on a petulant child. The grim call of tragedy had lifted them above little ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... makes the silly goats guffaw at such a rate when I recite my 'Ode to a Dying Sparrow'," he said in a petulant tone to Nealie, one day when his audience had been more than usually convulsed. "It must be shocking bad form to double up in public as they did; a photograph of them would have served as an up-to-date advertisement ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... intent on the page along which Whinnie's stubbled finger was crawling like a plowshare beside each furrow of text. He was in the South Pacific, a thousand miles away from me. In my own house Struthers was putting a petulant-voiced Poppsy to bed, and Gershom, up in his room, was making extraordinary smells at his chemistry experiments. Susie I found curled comfortably up in front of the fire, idling over my ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... than to Alfonso, or Giovanni Tornabuoni. Mantegna's portrait of Gonzaga, though made later, shows a rather different type, less displeasing than the bronze. In the bust we have what is probably the portrait of a coarse and clumsy person; he is petulant in the mouth, weak in the chin, gross in the thick and heavy jaw. The bronze is extremely rough, and shows no signs of the nervous and individual touches which we find in Donatello's terra-cotta. Both the busts are unfinished; in the absence of chasing and hammering they are covered with ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... men in New York to inspire more passionate personal attachment than George Clinton. A patriot never lived who was more bitter in his hostility to English misrule, or more uncompromising in his opposition to toryism. He was a typical Irishman—intolerant, often domineering, sometimes petulant, and occasionally too quick to take offence, but he was magnetic and generous, easily putting himself in touch with those about him, and ready, without hesitation, to help the poorest and carry the weakest. This was the kind of man the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... remember of them was the general, yet not unpleasing, intimation of a devotional character impressed on each little party—formally assumed perhaps by some, but sincerely characterising the greater number—which hushed the petulant gaiety of the young into a tone of more quiet, yet more interesting, interchange of sentiments, and suppressed the vehement argument and protracted disputes of those of more advanced age. Notwithstanding the numbers who passed me, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... little, moved westward, westward, round the circumference of the planet, at last to overtake and dominate the fixed twilight of its primitive home— waited, ageless, tireless, acquiescent, her history a blank, while the petulant moods of youth gave place to imperial purpose, stern yet beneficent—waited whilst the interminable procession of annual, lunar and diurnal alternations lapsed unrecorded into a dead Past, bequeathing no register of good ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... results only from our own limited comprehension of it; and that St. James uses no meaningless phrase, but is stating a logical and scientific truth, when he speaks of "The perfect Law of Liberty" (Jas. i, 25). What we have to do is, to follow this up, not by petulant self-assertion, but by quietly considering the why and wherefore of the whole thing. In doing so we can fortify ourselves with another maxim, that "Principle is not limited by Precedent." When we spread the wings of thought ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... would be placed in the list of the natural criminals and lawbreakers, while in reality they are about as meek and docile a set of women as are to be found within the four seas. Pit a fiery little Welsh woman or a petulant Parisienne against the most regal and Junonic amongst them, and let them try conclusions in courage, in energy, or in audacity; the Israelitish Juno will go down before either of the small Philistines, and the fallacy of weight and color in ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the bar, a massive figure, beyond the age of a sea-going engineer, but still as light on his feet as a girl. "Where's she gone?" He pushed open one of the little glass screens, and put his petulant face, with its pale eyes set like aquamarines in bronze, into an opening too small to frame it. "Can you ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... has a habit of dropping to the floor. A piece of paper once folded tends to crease in the same place. These are examples of the force of habit in nonliving matter. Living matter shows its power even more clearly. If you assume a petulant expression for some time, it gets fixed and the expression becomes habitual. The hair may be trained to lie this way or that. These are examples of habit in living tissue. But there is one particular form of living tissue which is most susceptible to habit; that ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... much in this her first real trouble, and a little thing was enough to overset her. She had not readily recovered from the petulant tone of anger with which Janet told her not to ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Duncan came out with a book of flies in his hand, and he said in rather a petulant way, "And it iss no wonder Miss Sheila will be out. And it wass Miss Sheila herself will tell me to see if you will go to ta White Water ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... night, leaving her standing there, petulant, furious, yet with admiration in her eyes. Ten minutes later he heard her call. She was sitting on the edge of the improvised couch, smiling sweetly, ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... nought and continued gazing, while only the little smile, tilting the corners of her lips, betrayed that she had heard the petulant speech. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the numerous matters that would have to be settled up between them, especially Dan's responsibility in the new adventure, the transport of grain from Moab to Jerusalem. Dan's curiosity was not to be diverted, and seeing him give way to his rage like a petulant child, Joseph decided that he must tell him, and he began with a disparagement of his story, the truth of which he did not vouch for. At Capernaum they were all telling how some two or three weeks ago Jesus heard God speaking ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... when she wears Rich emeralds round her neck, and in her ears Pearls of enormous size,—these justify Her faults, and make all lawful in her eye. More shame to Rome! in every street are found The essenced Lypanti, with roses crowned; The gay Miletan and the Tarentine, Lewd, petulant, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... his own. I approved mildly of St. Claire; Michigan awed me from a little boy's summer; Huron was familiar from another summer, but Erie heretofore had meant only something to be crossed—something shallow and petulant. Here she lay in the sunlight, with bars of orange light darkening to ocean blue, and one far sparkling line in the West. Then I knew that I had wronged her. She seemed not to mind, but leisurely to wait. We faced ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... upon the ground—glancing, with a petulant expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I saw you were still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the little alley called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with the overlapping ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... more than admiration in the good sense, the right feeling, the worthiness of his counsels on conduct. And Diderot did not merely moralise at large. All that he says is real, pointed, and apt for circumstance and person. The petulant damsel to whom they were addressed would not be likely to yawn over the sharp remonstrances, the vigorous plain speaking, the downright honesty and visible sincerity of his friendliness. It appears that she had sense enough not to be offended with the frankness of her father's ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... she felt a trifle remorseful about her behavior. Some day she would marry him—she had got far enough to admit that—and perhaps it was unkind of her not to let the matter be settled. And at that she gave a petulant wriggle of her shoulders under her cotton blouse. Wasn't that his business? Wasn't he the one to end it, not wait on her pleasure? Were all men so ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... more particularly as almost all the persons animadverted upon became subsequently my acquaintances, and some of them my friends, which is 'heaping fire upon an enemy's head,' and forgiving me too readily to permit me to forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petulant, and shallow enough; but, although I have long done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or generality of many of its attacks. If Coleridge writes ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... a further reflected glory, due also to Jowett's kindness—a kindness which survived many outbursts of what I thought somewhat petulant disapproval. I received from him one day a curt invitation to dinner, and presented myself, wondering mildly to what this mark of favor could be due. But wonder turned to alarm when, on entering the Master's drawing-room, I ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... conditions remain what they are, the commercial supremacy of England is in no immediate danger. It is these great permanent geographical factors that make or mar a country, not Eight Hours Bills or petty social reconstructions. Said the Lord Mayor of London to petulant King James, when he proposed to remove the Court to Oxford, "May it please your Majesty not to ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... where his hard-earned guineas went—to keep in luxury this petulant, complaining woman whose entire thoughts were centred about her own bodily comfort, and whom Patrick Lovell, with his lucid recognition of values, would have contemptuously described as "a parasite woman, m'dear—the kind of female I've no ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Jean from bursting out with her petulant complaint, and it was Eleanor who replied with warm thanks. 'My Lord Cardinal would come to visit them on the morn,' the Prioress said; 'and in the meantime, she hoped,' looking at Jean, 'they would condescend to the hospitality of the poor ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... charming companions. Often as a carriage dashes by, the pedestrian is able to catch a glimpse of some jewelled and turbaned sultana, of dazzling beauty, attended by her maid, who does not always possess a sinecure, for the mistress is often haughty, proud, and petulant, very hard to please, and exacts great deference from her inferiors. Many of them live in regal splendour, and everything that wealth and pampered luxury can bestow is theirs, as long as their personal charms remain; but ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... captain takes his page's place, and lies with his faithless mistress, cuckolds his treacherous friend, thrusts his sword through his body, recovers his casket, and marries his page. You will observe that this play is also larded with a petulant, litigious old woman (a relation of the captain), who is the most comical character that was ever brought ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... time came when the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid, ungainly zealots, after having furnished much good sport during two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers. The wounds inflicted by gay and petulant malice were retaliated with the gloomy and implacable malice peculiar to bigots who mistake their own rancour for virtue. The theatres were closed. The players were flogged. The press was put under the guardianship of austere licensers. The Muses were banished from their own favourite ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in a martial hand; be curst and brief] Martial hand, seems to be a careless scrawl, such as shewed the writer to neglect ceremony. Curst, is petulant, crabbed—a curst cur, is a dog that with little provocation snarls and ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... our prayers thus? Do we try to bring our desires into harmony with Him, before we venture to express them? Do we go to His footstool to pour out petulant, blind, passionate, un- sanctified wishes after questionable and contingent good, or do we wait until He fills our spirits with longings after what it must be His desire to give, and then breathe out those desires caught from His own heart, and echoing His own will? Ah! The discipline ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... passionate and unrequited love. She was for a while the sole object of his reveries; and Perdita became aware that his thoughts and time were bestowed on a subject unparticipated by her. My sister was by nature destitute of the common feelings of anxious, petulant jealousy. The treasure which she possessed in the affections of Raymond, was more necessary to her being, than the life-blood that animated her veins—more truly ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... prescriptive right of holding us lingering in their chains; and Lord Greville would do well to remember that his services are too important to his country to be held on the caprices of a silly girl's affected coyness. But be it so—since you are so petulant a lover, be prepared when you join her Majesty's circle to-night, ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... little lesson in patience, to teach me not to think so much about myself. But, as a matter of fact, the little pain I suffered made me think more of myself than I had previously been doing; it turned me for the time from a bland and hedonistic philosopher into a petulant pessimist, because it seemed that no one was the better for the incident; certainly, if life is worth having at all, the beetle was no better off, and in my own case I could trace no moral improvement. I had been harmlessly enough employed in getting air and exercise in the middle of hard ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... won my love, you petulant boy!" she answered, archly. Then, dropping her voice to its tenderest music, she murmured: "What would you ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... been petulant and reminiscent. He had seemed perversely bent on committing a righteous suicide by forcing her to make him angry. He had cast into damnation all the "fads" and "isms" of an ungodly present and, since he judged the time had come to point a moral, ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... very low and the sky was dull; there was just enough water to lap against the sides of the boat, and make it rock up and down. The boat fretted like a petulant child, and pulled at the rope as a dog pulls against its chain, but it could not ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... yet another circumstance which increased the animosity of Louis towards his overgrown vassal; he owed him favours which he never meant to repay, and was under the frequent necessity of temporizing with him, and even of enduring bursts of petulant insolence, injurious to the regal dignity, without being able to treat him otherwise than as ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Judge Hyde was dead; nineteen years of petulant, helpless, hopeless wretchedness were at last over, and all that his daughter cared to live for was gone; she was an orphan, without near relatives, without friends, old, and tired out. Do not despise me that I say "old," you plump and rosy ladies whose life is in its prime of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... arrogant assailant assistant attendant clairvoyant combatant recreant consonant conversant defendant descendent discordant elegant exorbitant important incessant irrelevant luxuriant malignant petulant pleasant poignant reluctant stagnant triumphant vagrant warrant ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... mast-head called "Land ahoy!" much to the delight of the voyagers. The land in question was the island of St. Helena. This sea-girt rock had not at that time become classic ground. It had not yet become the prison and mausoleum of Napoleon the Great. The petulant squabbles between Sir Hudson Lowe and his illustrious prisoner had not been heard of. Little wotted then the proud ruler of France the fate that awaited him, for, when the Boudeuse touched at the island, all Europe, with the single exception ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... treaties made by their authority shall be the SUPREME LAW of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.'' These two clauses have been the source of much virulent invective and petulant declamation against the proposed Constitution. They have been held up to the people in all the exaggerated colors of misrepresentation as the pernicious engines by which their local governments were to be destroyed and their liberties exterminated; as the hideous ...
— The Federalist Papers
... he exclaimed with a sort of petulant dignity, and, pushing back his chair, half rose. Helen gave me a swift glance, and with our united strength we barely kept him from falling on his face. He staggered to his feet, looking at us angrily, and not releasing our hold we steadied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... habits; sleeping during the day in holes of trees, and coming out to feed at night. Sir William Jones describes one kept by him for some time; it appeared to have been gentle, though at times petulant when disturbed; susceptible of cold; slept from sunrise to sunset rolled up like a hedgehog. Its food was chiefly plantains, and mangoes when in season. Peaches, mulberries, and guavas, it did not so much care for, but it was most ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... in a petulant non sequitur, "is that YOU, my own twin-brother, never lets on about her comin' yer, permiskus like, when I ain't yer, and you and her gallivantin' and promanadin', ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... general so good as his Epistles. His enmity is effeminate and petulant from a sense of weakness, as his friendship was tender from a sense of gratitude. I do not like, for instance, his character of Chartres, or his characters of women. His delicacy often borders upon sickliness; his fastidiousness makes others ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... alacrity, cheerful rapidity. You could see, here looked forth a soul which was winged; which dwelt in hope and action, not in hesitation or fear. Anthony says, he was "an affectionate and gallant kind of boy, adventurous and generous, daring to a singular degree." Apt enough withal to be "petulant now and then;" on the whole, "very self-willed;" doubtless not a little discursive in his thoughts and ways, and "difficult ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... a magic power over her, and, to use the language of modern theosophy, can summon her astral shape at will to be the queen of his enchanted garden, leaving her body stark and lifeless; but when not in his power she serves the ministers of the Grail in a wild, petulant, yet not wholly unloving manner. Gurnemanz tells the young esquires the story of the Grail, and together they repeat the prophecy which promises relief to ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... petulant obstinacy came, when she wouldn't sit still to have her hair combed, and it looked like a "hurrah's nest," her brother Bob said. All her naughtiness came right out then. She rolled one eye entirely up in her head, and left it there, and stared so wild with the other, that ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... Anthony raised his earnest eyes to his face. "Not only by forgiving my dear petulant Godfrey, but by continuing his friend. I know that I have spoilt him—that he has many faults, but I think his heart is sound. As he grows older, he will know better how to value your character. Promise me, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... said Napoleon, in a petulant voice; "YOUR illumination is magnificent; as to the inhabitants of Dresden, it seems to me, they are the children of the sun that we saw at the theatre—their lights have gone out." And the emperor, coldly bowing to the king, and offering his arm to his consort, walked ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... one time been concentrated in the lines through which the procession had to pass, was now streaming out in all directions in pursuit of a new object. Such intervals of a Festa are precisely the moments when the vaguely active animal spirits of a crowd are likely to be the most petulant and most ready to sacrifice a stray individual to the greater happiness of the greater number. As Tito entered the neighbourhood of San Martino, he found the throng rather denser; and near the hostelry ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... understood that Colonel Desmit passed a most uneasy night after Nimbus had left his house. He had been summoned before the Bureau! He had expected it. Hardly had he given way to his petulant anger when he recognized the folly of his course. The demeanor of the colored man had been so "sassy" and aggravating, however, that no one could have resisted his wrath, he was sure. Indeed, now that he came to look back ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... a note from Mrs. Toplady. He knew the writing, and opened the envelope with a petulant grimace, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... meadows now grow only dandelions—in frightful quantity too; but, for wild ones, primula, bell gentian, golden pansy, and anemone,—Primula farinosa in mass, the pansy pointing and vivifying in a petulant sweet way, and the bell gentian here and there deepening all,—as if indeed the sound of a deep ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... necessity for it, Norman," she resumed in a slightly agitated, not to say petulant tone. "It's simply ridiculous for a young man of your position to be working at common labor with such terribly common people. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... by the lowest adulation to all deputies while present, and blackened their character by the vilest calumnies when recalled; and that Strafford, expecting like treatment, had used this expedient for no other purpose than to subdue the petulant spirit of the man. These excuses alleviate the guilt; but there still remains enough to prove, that the mind of the deputy, though great and firm, had been not a little debauched by the riot of absolute ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... her eyes the happy past; She turns from it with petulant disdain, And tries to read the future,—but in vain. Blank are its pages from the first to last. She hears faint music, smiles, and leaves the room Just as one rosebud ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... so great service to his country would, in the approaching struggle, be exerted in behalf of its entirety and honor. Southern 'chivalry' in him was exhibited in a nobler and more amiable light than in his more petulant and less generous colleagues. A certain graceful dignity was united with the most attractive felicity of manner, and one could not help regarding him, when viewed in private society, as a perfect model of a gentleman. His courtesy and delicacy were exhibited ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... juncture Ferdinand opportunely died (1516), and the Algerine Moors seized their chance. They stopped the tribute, and called in the aid of Salim, the neighbouring Arab sheykh, whose clansmen would make the city safe on the land side. "But what are they to do with the two hundred petulant and vexatious Spaniards in the fort, who incessantly pepper the town with their cannon, and make the houses too hot to hold them; especially when they are hungry? Little would the gallant Arab cavalry, with ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... told the boys in our office that the old man was cross and petulant that year, and there is no doubt that Isabel Markley was beginning to find her mess of pottage bitter. The women around town, who have a wireless system of collecting news, said that the Markleys quarrelled, and that she was ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... study, No. 9, is the first one of those tone studies of Chopin in which the mood is more petulant than tempestuous. The melody is morbid, almost irritating, and yet not without certain accents of grandeur. There is a persistency in repetition that foreshadows the Chopin of the later, sadder years. The figure in the left hand is the first in which ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Mr. Williams. Speak up. I can't understand you." The voice was petulant and so distinct that even Shirley could hear it, as he knelt by the side of the phonograph. Again Van Cleft insisted on his deafness. There was the suggestion of a break in the voice which brought to Shirley's eyes the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the humors and peculiarities of our canine companions, some object provoked their spleen, and produced a sharp and petulant barking from the smaller fry, but it was some time before Maida was sufficiently aroused to ramp forward two or three bounds and join in the ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... we were very busy in one of these affairs, I remember, Jim was blue-eared, ragged-nerved and petulant to such a degree that I began to think of shipping him back to the old farm, where pork gravy and fried cakes would certainly restore his nervous system; otherwise I felt he would land in a padded cell. Nothing he ate agreed with him and I felt sure it must be ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... liked me to nurse him. He looked at me and smiled sadly. His look was quite human. He, who was usually so quick and petulant, always playing tricks on one of us, was now ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... upon his companion's face. "Zounds!" he exclaimed in a half-grieved, half-petulant ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... vivacious, and belonging to one of the oldest families in that Commonwealth of Blue Bloods. The many moves and changes during the last month or two considerably interrupted our communications and mail facilities, and Jones had not received the expected letters. He became restless, petulant, and cross, and to use the homely phrase, "he was all torn up." Instead of the "human sympathy" and the "one touch of nature," making the whole world akin, that philosophers and sentimentalists talk about, it should be "one sight of man's misery"—makes ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... been bred in Arms preserve to the most extreme and feeble old Age a certain Daring in their Aspect: In like manner, they who have pass'd their Time in Gallantry and Adventure, keep up, as well as they can, the Appearance of it, and carry a petulant Inclination to their last Moments. Let this serve for a Preface to a Relation I am going to give you of an old Beau in Town, that has not only been amorous, and a Follower of Women in general, but also, in Spite of the Admonition of grey Hairs, been from his sixty-third Year to his present seventieth, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... it might find its proper place, either in the sewing society or with some Jewish vender of old clothes. Yet here it was again, and her head was resting against it, while her heart beat almost audibly, and her voice was even petulant in its tone as she answered her lover's questions. Ethelyn was making a terrible mistake, and she knew it, hating herself for her duplicity, and vaguely hoping that something would happen to save her from the fate she so much dreaded. But nothing did happen, and it was now too late to retract ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... one, so that Jerome had scarcely seen it. When she had so far recovered as to be able to look around her, she raised herself slightly, and again screamed and swooned. The old man now feeling satisfied that Jerome's dark complexion was the immediate cause of the catastrophe, said in a somewhat petulant tone,— ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... met in the morning, they took leave of each other with the usual ceremonies of such occasions. Charles, after bidding King Louis farewell, advanced with Lord Germain, who was present in his suite at that time, to Anne Maria, and she gives the following rather petulant account of what passed: "'I believe,' said Charles, 'that my Lord Germain, who speaks French better than I do, has explained to you my sentiments and my intention. I am your very obedient servant.' I answered that I was equally his obedient servant. Germain paid me a great number of compliments, ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... —and Hotspur's interpretation (slightly petulant, to be sure), "Why, so it would have done at the time if your mother's cat had but kittened, though you yourself had never been born." I protest that I reverence poetry and the poets: but at the risk of being ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... looked round her in petulant despair, angry with herself for having done this foolish thing, angry with the loneliness and barrenness of the valley, where no inn opened doors of shelter for such as she, angry with the advancing gloom, and with the bitter wind that teased ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conduct which you pursue." He is clearly satisfied to remain away; the path of honor has no rival in his heart; there is no suggestion of an inward struggle between two masters, no feeling of aloneness, no petulant discontent with uneasy surroundings, or longing for the presence of an absent mistress. The quiet English home, the "little but neat cottage," attracts, indeed, with its sense of repose,—"I shall not be very sorry to see England again. I am grown old and battered ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the strongest natural powers, a lively imagination, and solid judgment, which, joined with an unshaken probity in his moral conduit, and an invincible integrity in his political sphere, ought not only to screen him from the petulant attacks of satire, but transmit his name with some degree ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... that he should halt and hesitate so long!" he exclaimed in a nervous and almost a petulant tone, as he paced up and down the back parlor one evening, after having had a talk with the little mother. "I am sure if ever I had faith for any one in the world ...
— Three People • Pansy
... for human frailty, which could not but give offence to a moralist so unbending as Johnson. But that will hardly account for the assertion that "Harry Fielding knew nothing but the outer shell of life"; still less for the petulant ruling that he "was a barren rascal". [Footnote: Boswell's Life, ii. 169. Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay, i. 91] The truth is—and Johnson felt it instinctively—that the novel, as conceived by Fielding—the novel that gloried in painting all sides of life, and ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... never petulant, and very rarely angry; but when she was, it was a genuine case of unrestrained rage, and woe to the individual who fell a victim to her blazing eyes and sarcastic tongue. To-night Dr. Van Anden was that victim. What right had he to arraign her before him, and say with whom ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... yielded not to envy, avoided all boasting, followed the dictates of reason and loved virtue. When did she sadden her parents even by a look?... There was nothing forward in her looks, bold in her words or unbecoming in her actions. Her carriage was not abrupt, her gait not indolent, her voice not petulant, so that her very appearance was the picture of her mind and the figure ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... had borne a good deal already, and, not being remarkably sweet-natured, he shook the little hand away, half petulant and half alarmed. "I do wish you wouldn't do this sort of thing in public. You'll compromise me, you ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... chamber. Though she had received no injury by the fall, she was extremely discomposed and incensed at the accident, which she even openly ascribed to the obstinacy and whimsical oddity of the commodore, in such petulant terms as evidently declared that she thought her great aim accomplished, and her authority secured against all the shocks of fortune. Indeed her bedfellow seemed to be of the same opinion, by his tacit resignation; for he made no reply to her insinuations, but with ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... low-spirited last night by your manner of talking. You are my only friend, the only person I am intimate with. I never had a father or a brother; you have been both to me ever since I knew you, yet I have sometimes been very petulant. I have been thinking of those instances of ill-humor and quickness, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of the ancient palace of the Lombard Kings, which I should like much to have done; for then I should have endeavoured to make out the chamber into which Jocondo peeped and discovered what cured him of his melancholy, and where the impatient Queen received the petulant answer from her beloved Nano, conveyed by one of her ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... was very low and the sky was dull; there was just enough water to lap against the sides of the boat, and make it rock up and down. The boat fretted like a petulant child, and pulled at the rope as a dog pulls against its chain, but it could not ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... doe of a Lowse; as we have an English Proverb of a poor man, He is not worth a Lowse. The Lice that trouble men are either tame or wilde ones, those the English call Lice, and these Crab-lice; the North English call them Pert-lice, that is, apetulant Lowse comprehending both kindes; it is a certain sign of misery, and is sometimes the inevitable scourgeof God." Rowland's Mouffet's Theater of Insects, p. 1090, ed. 1658 (published in Latin, 1634). By this date we had improved. Mouffet says, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... They were still misunderstanding each other with all their power. The difference in the result was this: Jemima loved him all the more, in spite of quarrels and coolness. He was growing utterly weary of the petulant temper of which he was never certain; of the reception which varied day after day, according to the mood she was in and the thoughts that were uppermost; and he was almost startled to find how very glad he was that the little girls and Mrs Denbigh were coming ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... (accent strong on the second syllable) the birds exclaimed in half-petulant remonstrance at my intrusion as I hobbled about over the rocks. Presently one of them darted up into the air; up, up, up, he swung in a series of oblique leaps and circles, this way and that, until he became a mere speck in the sky, and then disappeared from sight in the cerulean ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... stared at the paper. Mr. Blunt threw one of the doors open, but before we passed through it we heard a petulant exclamation accompanied by childlike stamping with both feet and ending in a laugh which had in it a ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Will wants to bring him along," remarked his sister Grace, in a petulant tone. "He knows ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... exactly like reality viewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube. His interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented a man pacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty but petulant woman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed so strange to Graham. "I have worked," said the man, "but what have ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... the mast-head called "Land ahoy!" much to the delight of the voyagers. The land in question was the island of St. Helena. This sea-girt rock had not at that time become classic ground. It had not yet become the prison and mausoleum of Napoleon the Great. The petulant squabbles between Sir Hudson Lowe and his illustrious prisoner had not been heard of. Little wotted then the proud ruler of France the fate that awaited him, for, when the Boudeuse touched at the island, all Europe, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... must go to Greece because I do not love George; it is more important that I should look up gods in the dictionary than that I should help my mother; every one else is behaving very badly." She only felt irritable and petulant, and anxious to do what she was not expected to do, and in this spirit she proceeded ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... words, the dutiful wife preceded him down a few stairs to a little basement front room, half kitchen, half parlour, where a girl of about nineteen, with an exceedingly pretty figure and face, but with an impatient and petulant expression both in her face and in her shoulders (which in her sex and at her age are very expressive of discontent), sat playing draughts with a younger girl, who was the youngest of the House of Wilfer. Not to encumber this page by telling off the Wilfers in detail ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... understand me," replied Harry, flattered but still petulant. "You are like an iceberg, when ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... his eyes and mouth. With such a man, she thought, there was little to fear; but there was nothing to love. If she asked, he would give, if she opposed him, he would surrender, if she lost her temper and commanded, he would obey with petulant docility. She should be obliged to take refuge in vanity in order to get any satisfaction out of her life, and she was not naturally vain. The luxuries of those days were familiar to her from her childhood. Though she had not lived in a palace, she had been ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... have lost their memories before. But to exchange memories as one does umbrellas! I laughed. Alas! not a healthy laugh, but a wheezing, senile titter. I could have fancied old Elvesham laughing at my plight, and a gust of petulant anger, unusual to me, swept across my feelings. I began dressing eagerly in the clothes I found lying about on the floor, and only realised when I was dressed that it was an evening suit I had assumed. I opened the wardrobe and found some more ordinary clothes, a pair of plaid ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... you, Tudor,' said Sir Gregory, speaking more in sorrow than in anger, 'that you will not have my countenance. I cannot but think also that you are behaving with ingratitude.' Alaric prepared to make some petulant answer, but Sir Gregory, in the meantime, left ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... preacher taught me Latin, Greek, and history: two persons, however, occupied themselves with my religious education—the preacher and my old Rosalie. She is a good soul. How often have I teased her, been petulant, and almost angry with her! She thought so much of me, she was both mother and sister to me, and instructed me in religion as well as the preacher, although she is a Catholic. Since my father's childhood she has been a sort of governante in the house. You should have ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... have been the source of much virulent invective and petulant declamation against the proposed Constitution. They have been held up to the people in all the exaggerated colors of misrepresentation as the pernicious engines by which their local governments were to be destroyed and their liberties exterminated; as the hideous monster whose devouring jaws would ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... bar still lingered the people of Angels, Hearing afar in the woods the petulant pop of the pistol; Never again returned the Crested Jay Hawk of the mountains, Never again was seen the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... walls hung with fish nets and oilskins, four people were sitting. John Cameron and his wife were given the seats of honour in the middle of the room. Mrs. Cameron was a handsome, well-dressed woman, with an expression that was discontented and, at times, petulant. Yet her face had a good deal of plain common sense in it, and not even the most critical of the Racicot folks could say that she "put on airs." Her husband was a small, white-haired man, with a fresh, young-looking face. He was popular in Racicot, for he mingled freely with the sailors and fishermen. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... prosperous farms were heirs and assigns of the people Specified hereinabove and proved by the records of probate— Still on these farms shall you hear (and still on the turnpikes adjacent) That pitiful, petulant call, that pleading, expostulant wailing, That hopeless, monotonous moan, that crooning and droning for Peter. Some say the witch in her wrath transmogrified all those good people; That, wakened from slumber that day by the calling and bawling for Peter, She out ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... which the Baron had stirred up within me I transferred to the Baroness. The entire business seemed to me like a foul mystification; and I would now show that I was possessed of alarmingly good common-sense and also of extraordinary sagacity. Like a petulant child, I shunned the Baroness and escaped Adelheid when she pursued me, and found a place where I wished, right at the bottom end of the table between the two officers, with whom I began to carouse right merrily. We kept our glasses going gaily during dessert, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... now." Worth's laconic answer sent the blood of healthy anger into her face, made her eyes shine. And it brought from Ina Vandeman a petulant, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... confess his abominable passion for that pure angel, imploring me to assist him in bringing destruction upon her and you. Oh, it is execrable, it is vile, it is hellish!" She pressed her hands to her temples as she stood, and glared at the two men. The count was a strong man, easily petulant, but hard to move to real anger. Though his face was white and his right hand clutched his crutch-stick, he still kept the mastery ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... the eye away from any weakness which might be found in the lower. She was darker than her brother—so dark that her heavily coiled hair seemed to be black until the light shone slantwise across it. The delicate, half-petulant features, the finely traced brows, and the thoughtful, humorous eyes were all perfect in their way, and yet the combination left something to be desired. There was a vague sense of a flaw somewhere, in feature or in expression, which resolved itself, when analysed, into a slight out-turning ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him with a petulant exclamation, and went along and down the hill rapidly, as he could hear voices in the darkness. He had just got into the house when his visitors arrived. The door of the room was opened, and there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the general course and scope of Hamlet's utterance, whether to himself or others? We find musings and broodings on the possibility of escape from so vile a world alternating with cool and keen analysis, polished criticism, and petulant wit; we find a pervading ironical bitterness, rising at times to fierce invective, and even to the frenzy of passion when his mother is the theme, relapsing again to trance-like meditations on the depravity of the world, the littleness of man and the nullity ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... face flushed to the roots of his hair, his blue eyes sparkled with anger, and the clear-cut mouth took a petulant curve as he answered, rising hastily ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... Antoinette!' said the invalid, raising a petulant hand, and letting it fall again, inert. 'All the silly memorials of her they sell here!—and the sentimental talk about her! Arthur, of course, now—with his picture—thinks ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... clouds showed a momentary lightening, and a few gleams of watery sunshine brought out every now and then that sparkle on the trees, that iridescent beauty of distance and atmosphere which goes so far to make a sensitive spectator forget the petulant abundance of mountain rain. Elsmere passed Burwood with a thrill. Should he or should he not present himself? Let him push on a bit and think. So on he swung, measuring his tall frame against the gusts, spirits and masculine energy rising higher with every step. At last the passion of his ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... development of human faculties, holding a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our self-love, must be the happiest and most durable epoch. The more we reflect on it, the more we find that this state was the least exposed to revolutions and the best for man; and that he can have left it only through some fatal ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... sleeping during the day in holes of trees, and coming out to feed at night. Sir William Jones describes one kept by him for some time; it appeared to have been gentle, though at times petulant when disturbed; susceptible of cold; slept from sunrise to sunset rolled up like a hedgehog. Its food was chiefly plantains, and mangoes when in season. Peaches, mulberries, and guavas, it did not so much care for, but ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... nights to read your Bible, so as to have verses to fling at people who are overtaken in any possible trial or inconvenience. You always have them ready. Didn't you bring it with you, and don't you prepare a list for each day's use?" This was Eurie's half merry, half petulant reply to the Bible verse that had been ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... kinsman his character assumes a most revolting aspect. Envious, revengeful, subtle, he was as fickle and petulant as he was suspicious and cruel. His brother, even the offspring of his brother, became to him objects of jealousy, if not of hatred. Their friends must, he thought, be his enemies, and applause bestowed upon them was odious to his soul. There were many ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... friendly indication of the old clock, uttered in a solemn, peaceful voice becoming an aged person, the hour of eleven rang out in a shrill, grotesque fashion, with juvenile impertinence, from a petulant little clock of the vicinity, and a few minutes later, to add to the confusion and the chronometric disorder, the bell of a neighbouring church gave a single long, sonorous stroke that quivered for several ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... mind on another, Sabina for a while came to standing-ground in her storm-stricken journey. Each day was an eternity, but she strove to be patient. And, meantime, she wrote and posted a letter to her old lover. It was not angry, or even petulant. Indeed, she made her appeal with dignity and good choice of words. Before all she insisted on the welfare of the child, and reminded him of the cruelty inflicted from birth on any baby unlawfully born ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... away from me with a petulant shrug of the shoulders, as much as to say that she was no longer under obligations to me for preventing her capture by the party that had raided the tavern. The big Irishman, who had evidently recognized ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... neither petulant nor morose. With the men they share that calm-bearing of distinction, combined with the spontaneity of a child which makes such a rare and winning mixture. In moving among the half-caste Eskimo children up here on the edge of things, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laughed; A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, And sweet as English air could make her, she: But Walter hailed a score of names upon her, And 'petty Ogress', and 'ungrateful Puss', And swore he longed ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... thoughtless!" cried Rosette, with all the petulant impatience of the old pedagogue. "If the days are only half as long as they were, sixty of them cannot make up a twelfth part of Gallia's ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... and, woman-like, observed that she supposed it was only people who, like Forbes, had succeeded in disarming the critics, who could afford to scoff at them,—a remark which drew a funny little bow, half-petulant, half-pleased, out of the artist, in whom one of the strongest notes of character was his susceptibility to ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her face was a sweet pensiveness, but sometimes she was irritable and a little petulant. She even snapped Gerard now and then. And when she went to see him, if a monk was with him she would turn her back and go home. She hated the monks for having parted Gerard and her, and she inoculated her boy with a contempt for them which lasted him ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... to abound in his old-fashioned, curious, and sometimes incorrect classical or literary allusions. But if he were crossed in the least, if reinforcements did not arrive, or if there were any sign of independence in Paris, they became petulant, talking of ill-health, threatening resignation, and requesting that numbers of men be sent out to replace him in the multiform functions which in his single person he was performing. Of course these tirades often failed of immediate effect, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... hand, but she refused it angrily. She stood, biting her lip, tapping her foot, her head averted, upon the kerb; her attitude of pique was amusingly familiar to him; often it had gained for her the gratification of some petulant desire; but now all that he wanted was to hurry back to the table ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... looked unaffectedly relieved. The petulant young lady turned her back on him, and surveyed the guests at the other extremity ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... dear Sybilla, listen to me quietly—yes, quietly," he added, seeing how her colour came and went, and her lips seemed ready to burst out into petulant reproach. "When I left England, I was taunted with having run away with an heiress. That I did not do, since you were far poorer than the world thought—and I loved little Sybilla Hyde for herself ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... afternoons of meditation in the picture gallery, where the portrait of the lady in the 'vi'let velvet,' Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt, had often caught his eye and charmed his fancy when the setting sun had illumined its rich colouring and had given life to the face, half-petulant, half-sweet, which pouted forth from the old canvas like a rose with light on its petals. Now all these pleasant rambles were finished. The mistress of Abbot's Manor would certainly object to a wandering parson in her house and grounds. Probably she was a very imperious, disagreeable ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... only (and herein these quotations, if they fail of giving a fair representation of the poet, serve at least to characterise the critic,) could have won upon her only by a seeming air of profundity, by their utter contempt of perspicuous language, and a petulant disregard of even that rhythm, or regulated harmony, which has been supposed to distinguish verse from prose. For very manifest reasons, however, these are not the occasions on which we prefer to test the critical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... after and amuse the other three, viz., her two brothers Harry and Arthur, aged ten and eight respectively, and little Beatrice, aged five. The children seemed altogether out of sorts, they were cross, petulant, teasing, and would settle to nothing. At last Milly thought of the toys indoors, and said, "Now we will go and have a good ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... before the end he was pouring forth glorious and living stuff like the last twenty-seven bars. So the pace at which he had to write in the intervals of bullying or coaxing prima donnas or still more petulant male sopranos was not wholly a misfortune; if it sometimes compelled him to set down mere musical arithmetic, or rubbish like "Honour and arms," and "Go, baffled coward," it sometimes drew his grandest music out of him. The dramatic oratorio is ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... opera-glass was roving the boxes; and he continually poured into my most ungrateful ear remarks on the diplomatic body, and recognitions of the merveilleux glittering round the circle. At last, growing petulant at being thus disturbed, I turned to beg of him to be silent, when he simply said—"La Voila!" and pointed to a group which had just taken their seats in one of the private boxes. From that moment I saw no more of the tragedy. The party ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... no want of trying to remedy the defect, expert at bridge, razor-edged of tongue, but still youthful enough to allow the lid of Pandora's casket to lift on occasions, also to be described by those who feared the razor-edge as petulant instead of peevish, and cendree instead of sandy, passed the tedious moments of waiting in a running commentary upon the idiosyncrasies and oddities of the people and refreshments of the past hours, with a verve which she fondly believed to be a combination of sarcasm and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the pretty petulant frown and shrug of years ago! "Martin knows what he could do," ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... the tenth century suspended the intercourse, without reconciling the minds, of the two nations. But when the Norman sword restored the churches of Apulia to the jurisdiction of Rome, the departing flock was warned, by a petulant epistle of the Greek patriarch, to avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins. The rising majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... London, which I had called a "Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education had been neglected"—and when it was done Taylor and Hessey would not print it, and it discouraged me from doing any thing else, so I took up Scott, where I had scribbled some petulant remarks, and for a make shift father'd them on Ritson. It is obvious I could not make your Poem a part of them, and as I did not know whether I should ever be able to do to my mind what you suggested, I thought it not fair to keep back the verses for the chance. Mr. Mitford's sonnet ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... met by a petulant scolding, and as the Commons met coldly the king's request for a subsidy the Houses were adjourned. James at once assumed the title to which Parliament had deferred its assent, of King of Great Britain; ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... circumstances men of opposite temperaments may live with each other in harmony and die in mutual accord, but circumstances here were extraordinary, abnormal. Hardship, monotony, fatigue score the very soul; constant close association renders men absurdly petulant and childishly quarrelsome. Many are the heartaches charged against those early days and those ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... profession than in others. To be humane, generous, and candid is a very high degree of merit in any case, but those qualities deserve still greater praise when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... for their hard lot, cast on an iron shore and forced to win their scanty bread at the risk of their lives. They do not murmur either at duty or mankind. What should I say to them? I, whose whole life is one restless impatience, one petulant mutiny against circumstance? If I talk with them I only take them what the world always takes into solitude—discontent. It would be a cruel gift, yet my hand is incapable of holding out any other. It is a homely saying that no blood comes ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... to him than to Alfonso, or Giovanni Tornabuoni. Mantegna's portrait of Gonzaga, though made later, shows a rather different type, less displeasing than the bronze. In the bust we have what is probably the portrait of a coarse and clumsy person; he is petulant in the mouth, weak in the chin, gross in the thick and heavy jaw. The bronze is extremely rough, and shows no signs of the nervous and individual touches which we find in Donatello's terra-cotta. Both the busts are unfinished; in the absence ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... them blamed stampedes?" the old blind trapper asked in a queer and petulant falsetto, as the cries of men and dogs and the grind of the sleds swept the silence ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... He issued a petulant order. All the men except Ambrose's guard of six took their guns and filed out through the ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... many petulant, and Johnson many fatuous mistakes about Shakspere; while such minor criticasters as Thomas Rymer[11] and Mrs. Charlotte Lenox[12] uttered inanities of blasphemy about the finest touches in "Macbeth" and "Othello." For if we look closer, we notice that everyone who bore ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... his shoulder, and was as much bewildered as he by what I saw. Cloudy as was the night, glimpses of something white appeared everywhere, going and coming, or flopping fitfully about. There were odd sounds, too, as of soft footfalls, and now and then low, petulant cries. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... grand diplomatic audiences. I never saw him more condescending, more agreeable, or, at least, less offensive, than on the day of his last levee, before he set out to be inaugurated a King of Italy; nor worse tempered, more petulant, agitated, abrupt, and rude than at his first grand audience after his arrival from Milan, when this ceremony had been performed. I am not the only one who has made this remark; he did not disguise either his good or ill-humour; and it was only requisite ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... which began slowly to overtake my steps. I care little, in general, for the discomfort of a shower; yet, as when we are in one misfortune we always exaggerate the consequence of a new one, I looked upon my dark pursuer with a very impatient and petulant frown, and set my horse on a trot, much more suitable to my inclination than his own. Indeed, he seemed fully alive to the cornless state of the parson's stable, and evinced his sense of the circumstance by a very languid mode of progression, and a constant attempt, whenever ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... probably have made a petulant and passionate reply, but at that moment visitors were coming up ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... and he did not believe the story. Irritation at the mad ravishment of his pill-box rendered him incredulous. As he had no means of confuting his nephew, all he could do safely to express his disbelief in him, was to utter petulant remarks on his powerlessness to appear at the dinner-table that day: upon which—Berry just then trumpeting dinner—Algernon seized one arm of the Dyspepsy, and Richard another, and the laughing couple bore him into the room where ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'golden mean' of Horace, and the worship of virtue that redeems the obscurities of Persius. There is a still greater gulf between the high scorn manifested by Persius for all that is base and ignoble, and the fierce, almost petulant, indignation of Juvenal, that often seems to rend for the mere delight of rending, and is at times disfigured by such grossness of language that many an unsympathetic reader has wondered whether the indignation was genuine. Neither Horace nor Juvenal ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... first, petulant outbreak, had also ceased to press Madeleine on the subject of her possible marriage, and with meek demureness reconciled herself to the uncertainty of the future, and the certainty of tormenting her lover ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... training for war. To a great extent the training was on ordinary lines. A routine was followed, and all routines become dull and wearisome. We had been asked to go abroad, we had expressed our willingness to go. This willingness grew into a desire, which at intervals expressed itself in petulant words of longing—"Are we ever going to France?" The answer was always the same: "You will go soon enough, and you will stay long enough." This increased our irritation. Suddenly, on one still and dark November day, parade was sharply cancelled, we clad ourselves in full marching order, there was ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... she asked, in a clear, half-challenging voice, that had that peculiar twang, almost petulant, so female and so attractive. Yet she ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... to the heart of Adele, and her tongue is loosened to a little petulant, fiery roulade against the severities of the life around her, which it would have greatly pained poor Rose to listen to in any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... why won't he know me? thought Lillian. And her tone was almost petulant as she refused ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... struggled alone and unassisted to maintain him by the labour of her hands. That through the utmost depths of poverty and affliction she had toiled, never turning aside for an instant from her task, never wearied by the petulant gloom of a sick man sustained by no consoling recollections of the past or hopes of the future; never repining for the comforts she had rejected, or bewailing the hard lot she had voluntarily incurred. That every little accomplishment she had acquired ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... made him faint and exhausted, disposed to self-pity, and terribly impatient and fretful. He was provoked by Ellen's moving about the room, and more provoked by Harold's whistling as he cleaned out the stable; and on the other hand, Harold was petulant at being checked, and vowed there was no living in the house with Alfred making such a work. Moreover, Alfred was restless, and wanted something done for him every moment, interrupting Ellen's work, and calling his mother up from her baking so often for trifles, that she hardly ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... likely. The wound would not heal well, and she had had several feverish nights. For her convenience, the couch had been drawn up between the fire and the table; and, reclining here, she every now and then threw out a petulant word in reply to her father's or Julian's well-meant cheerfulness. But for the boy, the gloomy silence would seldom have been broken. He, however, was full to-night of a favourite subject, and kept ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... but the dry flints he found close to the wall would strike sparks; but, careless, improvident, petulant child of nature that he was, he exhausted the supply, and one day, too indolent to search his hunting-tracts to regain the necessary two, he endeavored to draw fire from a pair that he dug from the moist earth, and failing, threw them with all his strength at the rocky wall. One of ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... No daydreamer likes being pulled out of his dream by so ugly a reality as Pete, and Johnny was petulant. "Why didn't you get outa the way, then? You ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... Andrew!" the former said, turning upon him, whitefaced, and with a sort of petulant anger. "Why do you come here and spoil ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... has never suspected him to have been aware. Something almost like friendship sprang up as lately as 1867 between him and a man whom nobody would suppose him to admire, Matthew Arnold. It sometimes happens that a sensitive and petulant artist finds it more easy to acknowledge the merits of his successors than to endure those of his immediate contemporaries. The Essays in Criticism and The Study of Celtic Literature called forth from ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... nothing is of more credit or request now than a petulant paper, or scoffing verses; and it is but convenient to the times and manners we live with, to have then the worst writings and studies flourish when the best begin to be despised. Ill arts begin ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... me to ask you what manner of man you are yourself. Do you reflect that we have seen each other only twice? and both times you were on guard, once as an editor, and once as a lover. Even your face has faded to a mere shadow, and, if you persist in your petulant obstinacy about the picture[3], is like to vanish clean away into nothing. Only your encompassing eyes peer at me with solemn expostulation out of the shimmering form I conjure up and call my lover. Is it quite fair, Philip? And as for your character, my hope is that, in spite of your ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... stage of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill, fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen. I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a Turkish cursing—the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants the same pangs in duplicate upon the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... on her knees, a movement which called out a grunt from her husband, but whether this was an expression of approval or disapproval I cannot say. A silence followed, during which I caught the sound of his steady tramping up and down the room. Then she spoke again in a petulant way. 'It may seem foolish to you' she cried, 'knowing me as you do, and being used to seeing me in all my moods. But to him it will be a surprise, and I will so manage it that it will effect all we want, and more, too, perhaps. I—I have a genius for some ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... see for yourself how vain it was to argue with my father. The despair that seized upon me after such an interview was, besides, embittered by remorse; for I was at times petulant, but he invariably gentle; and I was fighting, after all, for my own liberty and pleasure, he singly for what he thought to be my good. And all the time he never despaired. "There is good stuff in you, Loudon," he would say; "there is the right stuff in you. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to go, then!" cried Mrs. Maynard, in petulant disappointment, letting her wraps fall upon ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... behavior of the child in the opposite seat which made the companions think of girls as a crying evil; the mental operations are so devious and capricious; but this child was really a girl. She was a pretty child and prettily dressed, with a little face full of a petulant and wilful charm, which might well have been too much for her weak, meek young mother. She wanted to be leaning more than half out of the window and looking both ways at once, and she fought away the feebly restraining hands ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... indulged in almost everything, but her little nieces were required to be as staid and circumspect as grown-up women. After about six months had elapsed, Mrs. Williams began to find fault with her sister for various trifles, and to be petulant and unkind in manner towards her. This thing was not done right, and the other thing was neglected. If she sat down for half an hour to sew for herself or children, something would be said or hinted to wound her, and make ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... was wrapped in a happy dream of a certain beautiful red wagon with a real seat that she had seen in a thick catalogue sent her mother by a store in a distant city. So she never moved till late in the afternoon, when the gentle breeze strengthened to a sharp wind that, with a petulant gust, whirled her sailor across the rows and ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... narrated in the last chapter were not without lasting effects on most of the persons immediately concerned in them. Michael McAravey was an altered man. His proud reserve seemed changing into petulant self-vindication. He began to look fully his age, and, like many other men of so-called iron constitution, when his strength began to give way it collapsed at once. He also conceived a violent antipathy to George Hendrick. The children ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... them off to him for wars with Sapor in the east;—how Julian sorrowfully bade them go, judging well by Gallus his brother's experience (whom Constantius had treated in the same way as a first step towards cutting off his head) what the next thing should be;—but how they, (bless their Celtic and Petulant and Herulian and Dutch hearts!) told him very plainly that that kind of thing would not wash with them: "Come!" said they; "no nonsense of this sort; be you our emperor, and condemn that old lady your cousin Constantius!—or we kill you right now." Into his bed-room in Paris they poured ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... them. Even the tiny cow-bell, which once served to warn Dame Trippew of the advent of a customer, still hung from a bit of curved iron on the inner side of the street-door, and continued to give out a petulant, spasmodic jingle whenever that door was opened, however cautiously. If the good soul could have returned to the scene of her terrestrial commerce, she might have resumed business at the old stand without making any alterations whatever. Everything remained precisely ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Rochefort's lips became petulant. One noticed for the first time the possibility of considerable petulance back of the shining self-control. "How sick of it I grew—all of us living over there! I'd like to sleep for a thousand years in a field filled ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in both hands and gone through with it; and at what cost of resolution and courage Jimmy was perhaps the only one of her friends capable of forming an adequate conception. But he'd have thought that even Violet might be expected to see that a mere petulant restlessness wouldn't have carried her through; might have admitted, if only in parenthesis, the gameness the girl ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... is always gay, full of quick turns and drolleries; most amusing when most petulant, it represents what is so agreeable in the character of the nation. We have now seen it on two good occasions, the festivities of the new year, and just after we came was the procession of the Fat Ox, described, if I mistake not, by Eugene Sue. An immense crowd thronged the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... she listened to his ready speech and earnest tone with growing wonder both at him and at herself. Her own words had been little more than a petulant outburst. Of actually finding a way to elude her uncle's wishes she had no thought—unless it lay in carrying out that threat of hers to take the veil. Now, however, that Gonzaga spoke so bravely of doing what man could do to help her to evade that marriage, ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... WHO?" she repeated, and upon his yielding to her petulant insistence, she made up her mind that the only thing to do was to tell ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... diamonds and laces,—and around whom all the nice details of elegance, which the cold-blooded beauty next them is scanning so nicely, blend in one harmonious whole, too perfect to be disturbed by the petulant sparkle of a jewel, or the yellow glare of a bangle, or the gay toss ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... spoke, and her voice disappointed the ear; It lacked some deep chords that the heart hoped to hear. It was sweet, but not vibrant; it came from the throat, And one listened in vain for a full chested note. While something at times like a petulant sound Seemed in strange disaccord with the peace so profound Of the eyes and ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
