"Fret" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with an army of vessels Faring to Friesland, where the Frankmen in battle 25 Humbled him and bravely with overmight 'complished That the mail-clad warrior must sink in the battle, Fell 'mid his folk-troop: no fret-gems presented The atheling to earlmen; aye was denied us Merewing's mercy. The men of the Swedelands 30 For truce or for truth trust I but little; But widely 'twas ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... They've nae sair wark to craze their banes. [hard] An' fill auld age wi' grips an' granes: [gripes, groans] But human bodies are sic fools. For a' their colleges and schools, That when nae real ills perplex them, They make enow themselves to vex them, An' aye the less they hae to sturt them, [fret] In like proportion less will hurt them. A country fellow at the pleugh, His acres till'd, he's right eneugh; A country lassie at her wheel, Her dizzens done, she's unco weel; [dozens] But gentlemen, an' ladies warst, Wi' ev'ndown want o' wark are curst, [positive] They loiter, lounging, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... too much, You have soiled your apron too much. Well, Prisko, don't you fret, Wipe it off, then, if you're wet! ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... soft little roll, with the touch almost of floss silk. The machine-made net is hard, stiff, and wiry, and remains perceptibly so in this test. Also, the mesh of machine-made lace is as regular as though made with a fine machine fret-saw, that of hand-made lace being of varying sizes, and often following the ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... will free you, by the sword of His servant Death. This lord of yours, if indeed he be your lord, is a foul traitor. The King of England seeks his life, and there is another who will seek it also ere very long," and he glanced at the senseless form of Hugh. "Fret not yourself overmuch, daughter. Be grateful rather that matters are no worse, and that you remain as you always were. Another hour and you might have been snatched away beyond our finding. What is not ended can still be mended. Now go, seek the rest you need, for I would not have two ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... house, "not if it's really small-pox!" And then, with the hope at which the young are so quick to catch, she added, "May be it isn't small-pox. I haven't heard of a case anywhere about. I don't believe it is." And then she told Mrs. Walker not to fret about home. "I will go," she said, "and milk the cow, and look after things. Don't think one thought about it." And then she asked if the rest of them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... all this eulogium of the twelfth century, or this depreciation of the times we live in, is just and well-merited. Nothing is more cheap than to praise a pretty village perched far away amid the blue skies, and to rail at the sharp edges and corners of things that fret against our ribs. Let it be admitted that there is not a little of artistical decoration, and a great deal of optical illusion, in the matter; still there is some truth, some great truth, that lay in comparative neglect till Schlegel brought it into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... do: he told him, he was obliged as a good Christian, and a dying man, one resolved for heaven to do that good office; and accordingly did. Brilliard taking post immediately, arrived to Philander, where he found every thing as he wished, all out of humour, still on the fret, and ever peevish. He had not seen Sylvia, as I said, since she went from Holland, and now knew not which way to approach her; Philander was abroad on some of his usual gallantries when Brilliard arrived; and having discoursed a ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... fret not yourselves, else shall you be moved to do evil. Remember the saying of the wise man: "Go not after the world. She turns on her axis; and if thou stand still long enough she will ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... obligingly. "I won't. I should never dream of cooping a wild little thing, like you, up in a boarding-school. You'd fret your heart out ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to myself, "My Mary weeps For the dead to-day; Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps The fret and the pain ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... very much valued, and has been read oftener than once. What you say about yourself I was glad to hear; a little decent resignation is not only becoming a Christian, but is likely to be excellent for the health of a Stevenson. To fret and fume is undignified, suicidally foolish, and theologically unpardonable; we are here not to make, but to tread predestined, pathways; we are the foam of a wave, and to preserve a proper equanimity is not merely the first part ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rise, The mother looked from her door again, Shading her anxious eyes, And saw the shadows deepen And birds to their homes come back, But never a sign of Peter Along the level track. But she said: "He will come at morning, So I need not fret or grieve— Though it isn't like my boy at all ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... tone, patting Elsie's cheek and smoothing her hair "I've got some excellent glue, and I think I can stick it on again and make it almost as good as ever. So come, sit down and eat your lunch, and don't fret any more." ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... souls that nearest come To their predestin'd gain, Pant more and more to reach their home: Delay is keenest pain To those that all but touch the wish'd for shore, Where sin, and grief that comes of sin, shall fret no more. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... witless and powerless to loose himself from his love, found life scarce tolerable, and yet knew not how to die. While in this frame he languished, it befell one day that some ladies that were of kin to him counselled him earnestly to be quit of such a love, whereby he could but fret himself to no purpose, seeing that Catella cared for nought in the world save Filippello, and lived in such a state of jealousy on his account that never a bird flew but she feared lest it should snatch him from her. So soon as Ricciardo heard of Catella's jealousy, he forthwith began to ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... sat down, and said: "Now you needn't fret about that any longer—barbarian!" she added, shaking a finger. "Didn't I say that you would get into trouble? that you would set the country talking? Here you were, in the dead of night, telling ghost stories, and raking up your sins, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... werste; For unto loves werk on nyht Him lacketh bothe will and myht: No wonder is, in lusty place Of love though he lese grace. What man hath that complexion, Full of ymaginacion 410 Of dredes and of wrathful thoghtes, He fret himselven al to noghtes. The water, which is moyste and cold, Makth fleume, which is manyfold Foryetel, slou and wery sone Of every thing which is to done: He is of kinde sufficant To holde love his covenant, Bot that him ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... then I thought that money was the thing I ought to get; And I fancied, once I had it, I should never have to fret. But I saw that I had wasted precious hours in seeking wealth; I had made a tidy fortune, but I couldn't buy her health. And I saw this truth much clearer than I'd ever seen before: That the rich man and the poor man have to let ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... Aunt Judy, "but that they are sure to be good for us, even when we like them least, and cannot understand them at all. We know so little what we ought really to like and dislike, dear No. 6, that we often fret and cry as foolishly as the two children did, who, while they were in mourning for their mother, broke their hearts over the loss of a set ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... comfortable security of the solid earth below, and she found the clamor of falling water that came faintly up to her vaguely reassuring. There had been an almost appalling silence where she had left her companions beneath the frozen peaks, but now one could hear the hoarse fret of a rapid on the river, and this was a familiar sound ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... occasion I venture to advise you. Let none know I am here. In the present disturbed condition of affairs there must be almost as many hidden forces existing in Delgratz as there are men in the Cabinet. Why permit them to fret and fume when you alone have power to control them? I promise faithfully to abide by the decision of the Assembly. Should it favor me, your position is consolidated; should it prove adverse to my cause, you still remain the chief man in the State, since the world will ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the open seas, with never a glimpse of land. More than once she made Joel bear the brunt of her own unrest; and because it is not always good for two people to be too much together, and because she had nothing better to do, she began to pick Joel to pieces in her thoughts, and fret at his patience and stolidity. She wished he would grow angry, wished even that he might be angry with her.... She wished for anything to break the long days of deadly calm. And she watched Joel more intently than ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... purse. It had three sovereigns in it—a great sum to my aunt. In her trouble of mind she hurried to the Wise Woman—a thing to make her pious father turn in his grave. The Wise Woman—gazed into the All, I suppose, and told my aunt not to fret herself, for she had had a vision of the purse and it lay somewhere on the food between ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... sympathy with his own personal emotions. He tells us how passionately he is yearning for the days of his youth; he is trying to escape from his pressing annoyances; wrapping himself in sacred associations against the fret and worry of surrounding cares; repaying himself for the scorn of women or Quarterly Reviewers by retreating into some imaginary hermitage; and it is the delight of dreaming upon which he dwells more than upon the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... boy opened his jacket, and showed her his side. She could not see the wound, for the blood had glued his shirt, and even his waistcoat, to his body; but she said, kindly,—"Don't fret, honey. 'Tain't nuffin ter hurt,—it'll soon be well. Ole Katy'll borrer a blanket or so frum some o' dese as is done dead, and git ye warm; and den, when she's gub'n a little more water ter de firsty ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... plays upon its reeds among flocks of clouds. It never undertakes to lead anybody anywhere to any solid conclusion; yet it reveals endless spheres of light, because it has no walls round itself. It acknowledges the facts of evil; it openly admits "the weariness, the fever and the fret" in the world "where men sit and hear each other groan"; yet it remembers that in spite of all there is the song of the nightingale, and "haply the Queen Moon is on her throne," ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... picturesque cottages, and the sublime mountain scenery of Switzerland. Perhaps their temper was not improved by the reflection that others had been permitted to enjoy what they were not allowed to see, for envy is one of the ugliest and most uncomfortable of human passions. Boys, like men and women, fret because they cannot have what others possess, either as the gift of partial Fortune, or as the reward of their own superior skill ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... harmonies, complications, oratorios in words, never. (I do not speak this in any deprecatory sense. Blessed be the memory of the warm-hearted Scotchman for what he has left us, just as it is!) He likewise did not know himself, in more ways than one. Though so really fret and independent, he prided himself in his songs on being a reactionist and a Jacobite—on persistent sentimental adherency to the cause of the Stuarts—the weakest, thinnest, most faithless, brainless dynasty that ever held ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... dreams of rising to the full height of honorable manhood vests chiefly with us. God has endowed us with the capacity to suffer and undergo the trials incident to race development. If we can recognize the need for this training, severe though it be, if we do not chafe and fume and fret and get angry because our deliverance has not come, we may well be comforted in the meanwhile that any device of man to deny us a share in the government of a common heritage in this land consecrated by heaven to suffering humanity, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... forces upon it. It is the man that is unsettled because he does not know what he wants that goes to the wall. We hear persons say that business is trying on the nerves, but it is the unsettling elements of fret and worry and suspense that are nerve-exhausting and not the business. Executing one's plans may cause fatigue, enjoyment comes with rest. If there has not been any unnatural strain, the recuperative powers replace what energy ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... who lived to be eighty-five, retained to the last the fresh and cheerful temperament of a boy. John Wesley, who died when he was eighty-eight, also had a happy disposition. "I feel and grieve," he says, "but by the grace of God I fret at nothing." Goethe, who reached his eighty-third year, is another good example. Then there is Boerhaave, one of the most celebrated physicians of modern times, who held that decent mirth is the salt of life. Indeed in the case of most old ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... has pointed so many morals and adorned so many tales, would have died of inertia and ennui in less than six months after his retirement from business, had not his successor kindly allowed him to help on melting-days; and methinks the very ghosts of certain busy and energetic men must fret and fume at the idle and inactive state of their shadowy and incorporal selves; nor, unless—as some hope and believe—we are to have our familiar and customary tasks and duties to perform in heaven, could their souls be happy and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... with bowed head and frowning brow. Suddenly he looked up and cast his eyes about upon the company. "Before I goes, I wants to say a word to Madge," said he, and turned to her with an impressive earnestness. "Little one, don't you never fret about me, no more." He took her hand and she gave it to him gladly. "I see, now, as you was never made for me." He took a step toward Frank and led her to him. "I see whar your heart is, an' I puts your hand in his." With bowed head he relinquished the brown hand of the ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... thee all yesterday afternoon until six o'clock, but thou didst not come, thou witch, and I grew almost mad. Impatience encircled me like the folds of a viper, and I bounded on my couch at every ring, but oh! mortal anguish, it did not bring thee. "Thou didst fail to come; I fret, I fume, and Satanas whispered mockingly in my ear—'The charming lotus-flower makes fun of ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... Mother's too sick to get it." But the child continues to fret and plead. Finally with a groan Mrs. White stretches out her hand and gets the tin mug of water, of that vile and dirty water which has brought death to so many in the mill village. The child drinks it greedily. I can hear it suck the fluid. Then the woman herself ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... the foolish clown, "kill me the red humble-bee on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr. Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Mr. Cobweb, and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be sorry to have you overflown with a honey-bag. Where ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of life at which we fret, That seem to prison and control, Are but the doors of daring, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... make under the circumstances, and largely turned the current of feeling against Hapley. The very people who had most gleefully cheered on those gladiators became serious at the consequence. There could be no reasonable doubt the fret of the defeat had contributed to the death of Pawkins. There was a limit even to scientific controversy, said serious people. Another crushing attack was already in the press and appeared on the day before the funeral. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the beldame, with a look of dark and devilish malignity:—"the word of a prince! Shall Goody Dickisson, the miller's wife, hold it in distrust? Go, poor fool, and chew thy bitterness, and bake thy bannocks, and fret thy old husband until thy writhen flesh rot from thy bones, and thou gnawest them for malice and vexation. Is it not glorious to ride on the wind—to mount the stars—to kiss the moon through the dark rolling clouds, when the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the city behind us. That is how I always feel when I'm on my way home again. The ranch is home to me, you know. I was born there. I do not know what would happen to me if I was unable to return home at least once every week. It takes me away from all the fret and bother ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... all-powerful, decrees that you must not leave this place. You will have a little princess more beautiful than Venus herself. Let nothing fret you; time alone ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... any one else hear you say that," she replied. "My poor young friend, it's no good to even think it. The real wisdom is to school yourself to move along smoothly, and not fret, and get the best of what's going. I've known others who felt as you do—of course there are times when every young man of brains and high notions feels that way—but there's no help for it. Those who tried to get out only broke themselves. Those who stayed in, and made the best of it—well, one ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... fret with "long distance," the old Scotchman went on trying to impress upon Hal the danger of his position. Quite recently an organiser of the miners' union had been beaten up in broad day-light and left insensible on the sidewalk; MacKellar had watched the trial ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... how far Soul, which, Plato says, Abhors restraint, can act in stays— Might now, if gifted with discerning, Find opportunities of learning: As these two creatures—from their pout And frown, 'twas plain—had just fallen out; And all their little thoughts, of course. Were stirring in full fret and force;— Like mites, through microscope espied, A world of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... sand, While still he smiles, yet chides them for the trick. His silver locks upon his shoulders spread, And not ungraceful is his stoop of age. No stranger passes him without regard; And ev'ry neighbour stops to wish him well, And ask him his opinion of the weather. They fret not at the length of his discourse, But listen with respect to his remarks Upon the various seasons he remembers; For well he knows the many divers signs Which do fortell high winds, or rain, or drought, Or ought that may affect the rising crop. The silken clad, who courtly breeding boast, Their ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... the horizon's verge, No black smoke hid the star, no surge Came up to fret the silent sea, No ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... existence, Though swept by storms, and shocked by Jove's dread thunder, To be a king beneath the dark-green waters. Let me return! the wind comes down from Ida, And soon the galley, stirring from her slumber, Will fret to ride where Pelion's twilight shadow Falls o'er the towers of Jason's sea-girt city. I am not yours—I cannot braid the lilies In your wet hair, nor on your argent bosoms Close my drowsed eyes to hear your rippling voices. Hateful to me your sweet, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... for all horses." Shackles' owner said:—"You can arrange the race with regard to Shackles only. So long as you don't bury him under weight-cloths, I don't mind. Regula Baddun's owner said:—"I throw in my mare to fret Ousel. Six furlongs is Regula's distance, and she will then lie down and die. So also will Ousel, for his jockey doesn't understand a waiting race." Now, this was a lie, for Regula had been in work for two months at Dehra, and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... tenderly-intertwined melody. With what inimitable grace he winds those delicate garlands around the members of his melodic structure! How light and airy the harmonic base on which it rests! But the contemplation of his grief disturbs his equanimity more and more, and he begins to fret and fume. In the second subject he seems to protest the truthfulness and devotion of his heart, and concludes with a passage half upbraiding, half beseeching, which is quite captivating, nay more, even bewitching in its eloquent persuasiveness. Thus far, from the entrance of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... I must lie, who love the truth, (And honour bids me lie), I'll tell a lordly lie forsooth To be remembered by. If I must cheat, whose fame is fair, And fret my fame away, I'll do worse than the devil dare That ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... of my way to walk through a country churchyard; these rural resting-places are as attractive to me as a town cemetery is repugnant. I read the names upon the stones and find a deep solace in thinking that for all these the fret and the fear of life are over. There comes to me no touch of sadness; whether it be a little child or an aged man, I have the same sense of happy accomplishment; the end having come, and with it the eternal peace, what matter if it came late or soon? ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... passion, Felix blurted forth his indignation and disappointment at not being included in the party. Taking him up from the ground, where he had thrown himself in his passion, the good captain tried to console him—"Come now, come, my little man, don't fret so. Don't you know we want you here. How could the dear little girls and the good old lady do without such a grand protector ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... disclosed! Mr. Ruskin seems to me one of the few genuine writers, as distinguished from book-makers, of this age. His earnestness even amuses me in certain passages; for I cannot help laughing to think how utilitarians will fume and fret over his deep, serious (and as THEY will think), fanatical reverence for Art. That pure and severe mind you ascribed to him speaks in every line. He writes like a consecrated Priest of the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... specific action on stones in the bladder, without affecting the rest of the body, he considered quite plausible through the analogy that quicksilver has an affinity with gold but has no effect upon iron. Furthermore, a substance than can corrode a solid body may nevertheless be unable to "fret" a different body which is considerably softer and thinner, if the "texture" does not admit the small particles.[55] Reasoning by analogy served to explain the logical plausibility. In other words, he was very open-minded. ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... fret your dear self. I will marry you, whether you be Will Scarlett or Geoffrey of Montfichet. It is yourself ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Ants, caterpillars, and canker-worms are the only tribes among whom I have not seen battles; and Heaven itself, if we believe Hindoos, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, has not always been at peace. We need not trouble ourselves about these things, nor fret ourselves because of evil doers; but safely trust the 'Ruler with his skies.' Nor need we dread the approach of dotage; let it come if it must. ******, it seems, still delights in his four stories; and Starke remembered to the last his Bennington, and exulted in ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... "Don't fret yourself, old fellow," replied my husband. "That's my wife's little flutter. Dare say the poor fool has had to promise her priest to make me ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... each a bit of red velvet between them and the oak of the cabinet. One sees this on Gothic chests in England and occasionally on the antique furniture of other countries. The red material stretched back of the metal fret-work, is said to be a souvenir of the gruesome custom prevailing in ancient times, of warning off invaders by posting on the doors of public buildings, the skin of prisoners of war, and holding it in place with open-work metal, through which the ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... and returned, bringing with him a most curious sword. It was long, and all the blade, which was very thick and heavy, was to within a quarter of an inch of the cutting edge worked into an ornamental pattern exactly as we work soft wood with a fret-saw, the steel, however, being invariably pierced in such a way as not to interfere with the strength of the sword. This in itself was sufficiently curious, but what was still more so was that all the edges of the hollow spaces cut through the substance of the blade were most beautifully ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... advantages, Boston always soothes our nerves. It has a quieting effect upon us. The people there are better satisfied than any people we know of. Judging from a few restless spirits who get on some of the erratic platforms of that city, and who fret and fume about things in general, the world has concluded that Boston is at unrest. But you may notice that the most of the restless people who go there are imported speakers, whom Boston hires to come once a year and do for her ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... he was amazed to find how bravely he bore the anguish of a breaking heart, and how little he desired to do away with himself. The world, strangely enough, still remained a pleasant place, and already the fret for new adventure was stirring in him. He was not happy—thoughts of Hilda awoke real pain, and his sense of injury burned him like a brand— nevertheless, he could not make himself feel so utterly hopeless, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... "Oh, don't you fret; I'm not goin' to run the wrong way with you in charge. Didn't you hear me promise Mr. Thornton? Well, you see, I've got a sort o' bad memory, that kind o' won't let me forgit when I make a promise;—bothers me that way a heap sometimes." He smirked in a self-deprecating ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... get entangled on the Rappahannock, like an ox jumped half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs, front and rear, without a fair chance to give one way or kick the other." Later: "Fight Lee, too, when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is, fret him—and fret him!" Finally: "If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the tail on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the critter must be slim somewhere; could you not ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... heavily climbed the stairs, she put away the wonder and the thought about his conduct, by determining to believe he was some workman with whom her son had made some arrangement about shooting at the gallery; or mending the old weapon; or something or other. She had enough to fret her, without moidering herself about old guns. Jem had given it to him to bring it to her; so it was safe enough; or, if it was not, why she should be glad never to set eyes on it again, for she could not abide firearms, they were so apt ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of daughters, worthy pair, What heaven brings ye needs must bear, Fret no more 'gainst Heaven's will; Fate hath dealt with you ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... many of those who profess to follow him he is already a hesitating and too cautious leader, and they fret under his coldness towards the millinery of the altar, and writhe under his refusal to accept the strange miracle of Transubstantiation—a miracle which, he has explained, I understand, demands a reversal of itself to account for the change which takes place in digestion. If they ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... Laughter." Colonel Joyce is an incorrigible practical joker, and his humor has been marvellously tickled by the prodigious worry his jest has cost the Wisconsin bard. The public understands the situation; there is no good reason why Mrs. Wilcox should fume and fret and scurry around, all on account of that poem, like a fidgety hen with one chicken. Her claim is universally conceded; there is no shadow of doubt that she wrote the poem in question, and by becoming involved in any further complication on this subject she ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... I thought! I'll figure by the letters that I brought How glad you are to see me. Only one? And that one from a lady? I'm undone! That, lightly skimmed, you'll think me SUCH a bore, And wonder why I did not bring you four. It's ever thus: a woman cannot get So many letters that she will not fret O'er one that did not come." "I'll prove you wrong," I answered gaily, "here upon the spot! This little letter, precious if not long, Is just the one, of all you might have brought, To please me. You have ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... 'calico's' out of the corral and Long Jim's Belezebub ain't hitched no longer. Ha, ha, ha! If either them kids tries to ride Beelzy—Hmm. But Chiquita, now, she's little but she's great. Pa and Matt claim she's worth her weight in gold. She's likely, anyway. An' don't fret, lady. They'll all be home to breakfast, an' seein's I've got that to cook, I'll hump myself to bed and advisin' you to do the same. If not, make yourselves comfortable's you can, and ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... fretful and cross will never be happy, though he should be made king of all England; and a person who is contented and good-humoured will never be wretched, though he should be as poor as a beggar. So never fret yourself, love, because Betty Flood is poor; for though I am poor, I am honest; and whilst my husband and I are happy enough to be blessed with health, and the use of our limbs, we can work for our living; and though we have no great plenty, still ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... room in the Alexandra Hotel, the firelight, with the summer morning coming through the Venetian blinds? Somehow there was a sense of sculpture, even without the beautiful body. Seven years have passed. She has enjoyed seven years of peace and rest; we have endured seven years of fret and worry. Life of course was never worth living, but the common stupidity of the nineteenth century renders existence for those who may see into the heart of things almost unbearable. I confess that every day man's stupidity seems to me more and more miraculous. Indeed it may be said to be divine, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... dissonant and sad—into the turbid flow of that stream of Craving which sweeps men onward through the meaningless cycles of Existence, blind and enslaved forever. But I had reached the farther shore, the Harbour of Deliverance, the Holy City; the Great Peace beyond all this turmoil and fret compassed me around. Om Mani padme hum—I murmured the sacred syllables, smiling with the pitying smile of the Enlightened One ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... "Don't you fret yourself so, Monsieur le Baron," said Madame Olivier. "Madame cares for you, and for no one but you; her maid knows that for true, and we say, between her and me, that you are the luckiest man in this world—for you ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... tears, she again prayed silently to God to guide her girl in the right path. When she opened her eyes the tall form of Marshall Haney towered over her, so handsome, so full of quiet power that he seemed capable of anything. His face was strangely sweet as he said: "You must not fret about anything another minute. You've but to lie quiet and get strong." He put his broad, soft, warm, and muscular hand down upon her two folded ones, and added: "Let me do fer ye as I would fer me own mother. 'Twill not commit ye to a thing." He seemed to understand ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... sighed. Her harum-scarum young son was on her mind a good deal. "Now, don't you fret, honey, about Steve Yeager. He's the kind of man that will take a lot of killing. A man who has lived outdoors in the saddle for a dozen years is liable to get over a wound that would finish some ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... How through life's fret and turmoil The passion and fire of art In him was soothed and quicken'd By her true sister heart; How future hopes had always Been for his sake alone; And now, what strange new feeling Possess'd ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... the chord being about 1-9/16in., in a length of 2ft. 6in. The first fragment is a cornice, or impost, carved on both sides, in three tiers: the upper, a cima with a leaf; the middle division, a Greek fret, not quite similar on each side the stone, and below is a running ornament. The cornice does not project sufficiently to be the cornice of a building, and, as it is decorated on either side, it could not have been intended for a string-course, ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis
... my fate to fret away my years in this country. Not for a second do I regret being American—indeed, I think that a regret typical of very vulgar people, and I feel sure we are the great coming nation—yet"—and she sighed—"I feel my life should have drowsed away close to an older, mellower civilization, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... borne in upon him that he was a brute, Ma; don't you fret," declared Carl. "Mr. Coulter never does things by halves. When he starts in he finishes up a job in bang-up style. Corcoran's learned his lesson; and if he has that is all ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... not at the speaker. My eyes before they could meet hers, were caught by an apparition the most beautiful I had ever yet beheld. And what—what—have I seen equal to her since? Strange, that I should love to talk of her. Strange, that I fret at myself now because I cannot set down on paper line by line, and hue by hue, that wonderful loveliness of which—. But no matter. Had I but such an imagination as Petrarch, or rather, perhaps, had I his deliberate cold self-consciousness, what volumes of similes and conceits I might ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... his bunk, but beginning to fret at staying there, when the familiar trembling of Acceleration Two started to run through the ship. It was, by now, so familiar to him that he hardly gave it a second thought, ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... considerably better, to-night," remarked Jan. "She'll get about now, if she does not fret ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Master, let me walk with thee In lowly paths of service free; Tell me thy secret; help me bear The strain of toil, the fret of care; Help me the slow of heart to move By some clear winning word of love; Teach me the wayward feet to stay, And guide them ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Tuppence, "especially when old man Rysdale backs the bill. But don't fret, son. If this goes well, you shall come in ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... knocked under presently, and a single glass dozed him. Some think these almonds have a penetrating, abstersive quality, are able to cleanse the face, and clear it from the common freckles; and therefore, when they are eaten, by their bitterness vellicate and fret the pores, and by that means draw down the ascending vapors from the head. But, in my opinion, a bitter quality is a drier, and consumes moisture; and therefore a bitter taste is the most unpleasant. For, as Plato says, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Only wait: and fret not yourselves; else shall you be moved to do evil. Remember the saying of the wise man—"Go not after the world. She turns on her axis; and if thou stand still long enough, she will ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... stupor and never stir until it was time to get up again, and dress by candlelight, and go back to the machines. They were so numbed that they did not even suffer much from hunger, now; only the children continued to fret ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... we read of battles tell us how these reserve troops fret, and fume, and worry, as they are kept resting idly while the roar of battle rages around them. It would seem as if the men became so eager and impatient that when at last the order to advance is given, they dash into the fray with a zest and fury ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 53, November 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... boy's character was his very real love for his mother. With two girls and five boys to bring up on a slender income, Mrs. Nicholson was sometimes worried as to their future, and at these times John, as her eldest son, would do his best to smooth away the wrinkles from her forehead. "Don't fret, mamma dear," he would say; "when I'm a big man I'll make plenty of money, and I'll give it all to you." The mother no doubt smiled her pleasure at these brave words, but she little guessed then how faithfully her son would keep his word in the ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... that we are never to fret, never to grumble, never to scold, and yet it being our duty in some way to make known and get rectified the faults of others, it remains to ask how; and on this head we will improvise a parable of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... 'Could you post a letter for me, certain sure?' Says I, 'You can depend upon me.' An' then she give me the arf-sovering, an' says, says she, 'Mind, it's VERY par-tickler; if the gentleman don't get it, 'e'll fret 'is 'eart out.' An' through 'aving a young man o' my own, as is a groom at Andover, o' course I understood 'er, sir. An' then, feeling all full of it, as yu may say, what with the arf-sovering, and what with one thing and what with another, an' all of a fluster with not being used ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... share. Nothing is going to harm Marie Louise. I thought about all that, do not fret. So the last time Pere Antoine passed in the road—going down to see that poor Pierre Pardou at the Mouth—I called him in, and he blessed the whole house inside and out, with holy water—notice how the roses have bloomed since then—and gave me ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... anxious, weeping crowd, outside the gates. The sentenced men came out looking eagerly at the people until they recognized their own and cried out to them to be of good cheer. "'Tis hanging for me," one would say, "but there'll perhaps be a recommendation to mercy, so don't you fret till you know." Then another: "Don't go on so, old mother, 'tis only for life I'm sent." And yet another: "Don't you cry, old girl, 'tis only fourteen years I've got, and maybe I'll live to see you all ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... nostra, quapropter daemonibus: and so belike that we have so many battles fought in all ages, countries, is to make them a feast, and their sole delight: but to return to that I said before, if displeased they fret and chafe, (for they feed belike on the souls of beasts, as we do on their bodies) and send many plagues amongst us; but if pleased, then they do much good; is as vain as the rest and confuted by Austin, l. 9. c. 8. de Civ. Dei. Euseb. l. 4. praepar. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... convey sterility! Dry up in her the organs of increase; And from her derogate body never spring A babe to honour her! If she must teem, Create her child of spleen, that it may live And be a thwart disnatur'd torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother's pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... THE BROKEN LEG:—I hope you will not fret or worry too much over your misfortune, because it will not be many days before you are out again, and in a short time be well and strong as ever. You have many happy days before you, when you can romp and run in the bright sunshine; and you must think of those days and not of the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... are boiling to rags, And the fish is all spoiled, And the butter's all oiled, And the soup's got cold in the silver tureen, And there's nothing, in short, that is fit to be seen! While Sir Guy Le Scroope continues to fume, And to fret by himself in the tapestried room, And still fidgets and looks More cross than the cooks, And repeats that bad word, which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... letters, reads a little; he sometimes smilingly accuses himself of being lazy; and yet his presence and his unconscious sweetness are the most powerful influence for good I have ever seen. He makes it appear unreasonable and silly to fret or fuss or fume; and yet he is shrewd and humorous, and enjoys the display of human weaknesses. He is never shocked at anything, nor ashamed of anyone. He likes people to follow their bent and to do ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... among the trade, where I am considered an author of all work, and am always sure of employ. That's the only reputation I want. I sleep soundly, without dread of duns or critics, and leave immortal fame to those that choose to fret and fight about it. Take my word for it, the only happy author in this world is he who is ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of that when it comes," said Simon: "fretting never propped a house yet; and if it did, I would rather see it fall than fret." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... of my stay at Alton I received a special post which put me into some fret of mind. The letter was from Nancy, and is ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... "Don't fret. What do we care?" was Van's easy answer. "We're not really after the view. I don't give a hurrah for what we see when we get to the top; what I want is the fun ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett |
