"Shrew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wifely obedience, and Brinsden, hoping for the best, was constrained to cut a hole in her skull. The next day she was as impudent as ever, until Matthias rose yet more fiercely in his wrath, and the shrew perished. Then was Thomas Pureney's opportunity, and the Sunday following the miscreant's condemnation he delivered unto him and seventeen other malefactors the moving discourse which ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... practical achievement." Without an exception they have all buttered this drama with extravagant praise as one of Shakespeare's masterpieces, though in reality it is one of the worst pieces of work he ever did, almost as bad as "Titus Andronicus" or "Timon" or "The Taming of the Shrew." Unfortunately for the would-be judges, Coleridge did not guide their opinions of "Henry V."; he hardly mentioned the play, and so they all write the absurdest nonsense about it, praising because praise of Shakespeare has come to be the fashion, and also no doubt ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... such scolds as they sound," answered Uncle Blair gaily. "If they would but 'tak a thought and mend' their shrew-like ways they would be dear, lovable ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... wrath, rage, indignation, ire, frenzy; virago, termagant, shrew, vixen, beldame, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... house; his arguments would not very unjustly lose much of their force, from the circumstances he lay under. So, when Milton writ his book of divorces, it was presently rejected as an occasional treatise; because every body knew, he had a shrew for his wife. Neither can there be any reason imagined, why he might not, after he was blind, have writ another upon the danger and inconvenience of eyes. But, it is a piece of logic which will hardly pass on the world; that because one man hath a sore nose, therefore all the town should put plasters ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife—shrill, vehement, and fluent. 'Rogue,' 'old miser,' 'old sneak,' and a great many worse names, she called him. Good Mrs. Irons was old, fat, and ugly, and she knew it; and that knowledge made her natural jealousy the fiercer. He had learned, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... so that only great knowledge and sagacity can identify them; yet upon ancient traits, though hidden, classification depends. The seal seems nearer allied to the porpoise than to the tiger, the shrew nearer to the mouse than to the hedgehog; and the Tasmanian wolf looks more like a true wolf, the Tasmanian devil more like a badger, than like a kangaroo: yet the seal is nearer akin to the tiger, the shrew to the hedgehog, and the Tasmanian ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... effect of rendering him at once and surprisingly prudent. As the poet puts it, "he had found out a flat for his fair," and as he himself put it, "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow: but be-shrew me, we never thought of making my bank-manager one of the party, to break him in to our ways; the consequence being that Elinor's maid will have to stick a bedroom-suite priced five-pounds-ten, while ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... two parts were held back, the child was passed through the opening, and then the tree was tied up again. Ash-trees that have been cut in this way to get a cure are still to be seen here and there about the country. There are also noticeable shrew-trees, as they are called, in which a hole had been cut to receive a shrew mouse, owing to an old notion that, by being hidden there, this little ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... attacking or defending theses solemnly approved for discussion by Congregation. These theses were themselves by no means always solemn, e.g. one of those appointed in 1600 was 'an uxor perversa humanitate potius quam asperitate sanetur?' ('whether a shrew is better cured by kindness or by severity'). This question, obviously suggested by Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, which was written soon after 1594, was answered by the incepting M.A.s in the opposite sense to the dramatist. It need hardly be said that all the disputations were ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... the ground of Man being a species of more modern date, I ought equally to doubt the co-existence of all the other living species, such as the red deer, roe, wild cat, wild boar, wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dormouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately through the same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The year after this conversation I cited Schmerling's opinions, and the facts bearing on the antiquity of Man, in the 3rd edition ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... in the camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; The while, one leaden got of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis and gentian, fern and long ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and of lore of talking and of speech, be the need never so great, neither of them understandeth other's speech no more than gagling of geese. For jangle that one never so fast, that other is never the wiser, though he shrew him instead of 'good-morrow'! This is a great mischief that followeth now mankind; but God of His mercy and grace hath ordained double remedy. One is that some man learneth and knoweth many divers speeches, and so between strange men, of the which neither understandeth other's ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... old shrew had given me pursued me everywhere. More than once, while climbing the almost perpendicular ladder to my loft, feeling my clothing caught on some point, I trembled from head to foot, imagining that the old wretch was hanging ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... whole chain of the Alps. The mountain hare (Lepus variabilis or timidus) replaces the common hare (Lepus europaeus) in the higher regions; though absent from the intervening plains it again appears in the north of Europe and in Scotland. Among the Insectivora, the alpine shrew (Sorex alpinus) is restricted to the Alps. Of the Cheiroptera (bats) only Vesperugo maurus ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "That thing is hooded; I could hear but that floweth The great hood below its mouth:" then the bird made reply. "If they know not, more's the pity, for the little shrew-mouse knoweth, And the kite knows, and the eagle, and ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... Raoul, with his broken-toned voice, cracked by many a hollo, "I am wont to leave the business of tale-bearing to my wife Gillian, who will tongue-pad it with any shrew in Christendom. But thou speak'st like one having some interest in these matters, and therefore I will tell thee plainly, that although this woman has published her own shame in avowing her correspondence with that same Randal ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... serious nation in lessons of policy and morality in the form of apologues. These stories have suggested many subjects for the Spanish stage, and one of them contains the groundwork of Shakspeare's "Taming of the Shrew." ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "The muckle shrew!" quoth Master Jonson. "Why, I'll have this out with him! By Jupiter, I'll read him reason with a vengeance!" With a clink of his rapier he made as if to be ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... hear of the whipster; Not merely because, as a shrew, he eclipst her, And nature had given him, to keep him still young, Much tongue in his head and no head in his tongue; But because she well knew that, for change ever ready, He'd not even to mischief keep properly steady: That soon even the wrong side would cease ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... behind them in the most aggressive fashion, exactly reproducing the threatening action of an angry scorpion. Now, as a matter of fact, the devil's coach-horse is quite harmless, but I have often seen, not only little boys and girls, but also chickens, small birds, and shrew-mice, evidently alarmed at his minatory attitude. So, too, the bumble-bee flies, which are inoffensive insects got up in sedulous imitation of various species of wild bee, flit about and buzz angrily ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... which I had been brought up, and in which I had always seen cleanliness and honest comfort. Here I found myself ill-treated, scolded, although it did not seem possible that any blame could be attached to me. At last the old shrew tossed a shirt in my face, and an hour later I saw a new servant changing the sheets, after which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the little shrew," he would say. "Neither man nor devil can bend or break her. If I smashed every bone in her carcass, she would die shrieking hell ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... are not uncommon, but more among birds than quadrupeds. I find among my notes the following: “Albino shrew mouse caught at Ackworth, near Pontefract, June, 1895; white robin at Whitby, Jan., 1896; ditto at Boston, Sept., 1898; white woodcock nested in Manby Woods, near Louth, with four young of the usual colour, July, 1892; buff woodcock shot at Bestwood, Nottingham, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... so!" exclaimed old lady Chia. "I always said that that girl wasn't anything like that artful shrew! Well, in that case, she is to be pitied, for she has had to bear the brunt of her anger, and all through no fault of hers!" Calling Hu Po to her, "Go," she added, "and tell P'ing Erh all I enjoin you; 'that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... books of the poetical kind which had been the property of his late father, including "Mr. Drayton's Poems," "Euphues's Golden Legacy," Meres's "Witt's Commonwealth," and also "Hamblett, a Play," "The Taming of the Shrew," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Love's Labour's Lost." This transaction, however, hardly implied that these books were in demand, but only that Smethwick wanted to secure his interest in them on succeeding to his father's business. Afterwards, while the war was actually raging, it is not till December ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... here is what I have sought for so long," he exclaimed, at last. "Hither! thou treasure, thou dear, defiant little shrew! Thou art more to me than all the wealth of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and the punt was free to one or two who knew all about it. There is an old story about the stick that would not beat the dog, and the dog would not bite the pig, and so on; and so I am quite sure that ill-natured cur could never have lived with that 'yang-yang' shrew, nor could any one else but he have turned the gear of the hatch, nor have endured the dog and the woman, and the constant miasma from the stagnant waters. No one else could have shot anything with that cumbrous weapon, and no one else could row that ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... of a creature!" said Chichikov to himself, for he was beginning to lose patience. "Bless her heart, I may as well be going. She has thrown me into a perfect sweat, the cursed old shrew!" ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... origin of the word Nursrow, a name applied by Plott, in his History of Staffordshire, to the shrew mouse, and by the common people in Cheshire at the present day to the field-mouse; or rather, perhaps, indiscriminately to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... of kings and emperors. What famous beauty embellished the court of Elizabeth or either Mary? Even Anne's Mrs. Masham was not a shining personality, and her Sarah of Marlborough was only a brilliant shrew. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... set on dishes and tasted them, Shaft-mon, handbreadth, Shaw, thicket, Sheef, thrust, Sheer-Thursday, Thursday in Holy Week, Shend, harm, Shenship, disgrace, Shent, undone, blamed, Shour, attack, Shrew, rascal, Shrewd, knavish, Sib, akin to, Sideling, sideways, Siege, seat, Signified, likened, Siker, sure, Sikerness, assurance, Sith, since, Sithen, afterwards, since, Skift, changed, Slade, valley, Slake, glen, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Gareth drew (And there were none but few goodlier than he) Shining in arms, 'Damsel, the quest is mine. Lead, and I follow.' She thereat, as one That smells a foul-fleshed agaric in the holt, And deems it carrion of some woodland thing, Or shrew, or weasel, nipt her slender nose With petulant thumb and finger, shrilling, 'Hence! Avoid, thou smellest all of kitchen-grease. And look who comes behind,' for there was Kay. 'Knowest thou not me? thy master? I am Kay. We lack ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... victim of the agricultural labours of spring—a Shrew-mouse, Field-mouse, Mole, Frog, Adder, or Lizard—will provide us with the most vigorous and famous of these expurgators of the soil. This is the Burying-beetle, the Necrophorus, so different from ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... worse and not the better parts of both their characters were getting the upper hand; and it was but too possible that after a while the hero might sink into the ruffian, the lady into a slattern and a shrew. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... publisher, and he told me that his son, just returned from Oxford, had developed a keen interest in osteology and was making a collection of mammalian skulls from the whale and elephant and hippopotamus to the harvest- mouse and lesser shrew. This reminded me of the long-forgotten skull, and I told him I had something to send him for his boy's collection, but before sending it I would find out what it was. Accordingly I sent the skull to Mr. Frank ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... sweetheart, means an early marriage and fidelity. To row on rough waters you will have to tame a shrew before you attain connubial bliss. Affairs in the business world will prove disappointing after you dream of rowing in muddy waters. If the waters are shallow and swift, a hasty courtship or stolen pleasures, from which there can be no lasting good, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... a jewel that too casually Hath left mine arm: it was thy master's. Shrew me If I would lose it for a revenue ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... night, Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, Slander her love, and he forgave ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... identification when found, for there would be nothing left but well-gnawed bones. And "time to spare," in this case meant twenty or thirty minutes. The Nipe had, if nothing else, a very efficient digestive tract. He ate like a shrew. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... from other treatment. He'd been forced to remove her inflamed tonsils a few months before. She'd whined and complained because he couldn't spend all his time attending her. She was a nag, a shrew, and a totally selfish woman. But that was her husband's worry, ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... My poor friends are not happy, and we are. To leave well alone is a golden rule worth all in Pythagoras. The ladies of Bubastis, my dear,—a place in Egypt where the cat was worshipped,—always kept rigidly aloof from the gentlemen in Athribis, who adored the shrew-mice. Cats are domestic animals, your shrew-mice are sad gadabouts: you can't find a better model, any Kitty, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... weazel-faced man, who had been plagued for twenty years by a shrew of a wife, who popped off one day from an overdose of whiskey. He came to beseech me not to bring back his plague to the world; and, pitying the poor man's case, I gave him my promise readily, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... wag said, Taylors were like Woodcocks for they got their substance by their long bills." Perhaps they understood also the point in this: "A certain lord had a termagant wife, and at the same time a chaplain that was a tolerable poet, whom his lordship desired to write a copy of verses upon a shrew. I can't imagine, said the chaplain, why your lordship should want a copy, who has so good an original." Other witticisms are ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... most humorous and effective contradictions of the popular judgment is that episode in Njla, where Kari has to trust to the talkative person whose wife has a low opinion of him. It begins like farce: any one can see that Bjorn has all the manners of the swaggering captain; his wife is a shrew and does not take him at his own valuation. The comedy of Bjorn is that he proves to be something different both from his own Bjorn and his wife's Bjorn. He is the idealist of his own heroism, and believes in himself as a hero. His wife knows better; but the beauty ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money all ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the worse for that Zeitgeist! The jade had to come to him, at last, completely subdued, as in the "Taming of the Shrew." ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... In making me a slave, and making yourself a laughing-stock. Its not fair. You get me the name of being a shrew with your meek ways, always talking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. And just because I look a big strong woman, and because I'm good-hearted and a bit hasty, and because you're always driving me to do things I'm sorry for afterwards, ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... fully blown, Or half its worth disclosed. Strange medley here! Here garrulous old age winds up his tale; And jovial youth, of lightsome vacant heart, 530 Whose every day was made of melody, Hears not the voice of mirth.—The shrill-tongued shrew, Meek as the turtle-dove, forgets her chiding. Here are the wise, the generous, and the brave; The just, the good, the worthless, the profane; The downright clown, and perfectly well-bred; The fool, the churl, the scoundrel, and the mean; The supple statesman, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... ate their supper, Lizzie tried to bring the child round again to that prettier and better state. But the charm was broken. The dolls' dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew, of the world, worldly; ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Edward, Edward! Kiss me, you minx! Fair, I wish that my dear friend, your father, were alive. Well, well, patience does it, and the Lord knows, Unity, he's been patient! Oh, you black-eyed piece, you need a bit and bridle! Here's Edward! Edward, the shrew's tamed at last! Such a wedding as ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... room, which served for dining-room, library and parlor. Godwin had married again—Shelley had heard that, but he was a bit shocked to find that the great man who was once mate to Mary Wollstonecraft had married a shrew. The sound of her high-pitched voice convinced the visitor at once that she was a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... benevolence was official, which did not prevent her from being a shrew at home. She founded a hospice—the Marie Therese Infirmary—visited the poor, succoured the sick, superintended creches, gave alms and prayed; at the same time she was harsh towards her husband, her relatives, her friends, and her servants, and was sour-tempered, stern, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Shrew. Apple, crab, chestnut, cypress, hazel, oats, onion, love-in-idleness, mustard, parsley, roses, rush, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the ceremony, she was asked if she willingly received Henry of Bourbon for her husband, she pouted, coquettishly tossed her proud head, and was silent. The question was repeated. The spirit of Marguerite was now roused, and all the powers of Europe could not tame the shrew. She fixed her eyes defiantly upon the officiating bishop, and refusing, by look, or word, or gesture, to express the slightest assent, remained as immovable as a statue. Embarrassment and delay ensued. Her royal brother, Charles IX., fully aware of ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Shakespeare's plays. Tempest, Midsummer night's dream, Winter's tale, Much ado about nothing, As you like it, Two gentlemen of Verona, Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline, King Lear, Macbeth, All's well that ends well, Taming of the shrew, Comedy of errors, Measure for measure, Twelfth night, Timon of Athens, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, and Pericles, ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various
... answered to many aliases. When Shakespeare called a man "humorous" he meant that he was changeable and capricious, not that he was given to a facetious turn of thought or to a "sportive" exercise of the imagination. When he talks in "The Taming of the Shrew" of "her mad and head-strong humor" he doesn't mean to imply that Kate is a practical joker. It is interesting to note in passing that the old meaning of the word still lingers in the verb "to humor." A woman still humors her spoiled child and her cantankerous husband when she yields ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... most regal array, seemed to have left her dignity downstairs with her opera cloak, for with skirts gathered closely about her, tiara all askew, and face full of fear and anger, she stood upon a chair and scolded like any shrew. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... in intelligence and in mental qualities their superior. Hira had been known in Govindpur from childhood as a widow, but no one had ever heard anything of her husband, neither had any one heard of any stain upon her character. She was something of a shrew. She dressed and adorned herself as one whose husband is living. She was beautiful, of brilliant complexion, lotus-eyed, short in stature, her face like the moon covered with clouds, her hair raised in front like ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... so, Ramsden, so don't attempt to dissuade me; we are not married yet, and I must not be thwarted in my short supremacy. Surely you ought not to be displeased at my desire to 'tame a shrew.' I give a fair promise not to fall into an error which I so ardently detest: now, send for the chaise, write a letter to Doctor Beddington, and leave me ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... behold; for betwixt those forces it filleth all the mountain ghyll, and there is no foothold for man, nay for goat, save at a hundred foot or more above the water, and that evil and perilous; and is the running of a winter millstream to the beetles and shrew-mice that haunt the greensward beside it, so is the running of that flood to the sons of Adam and the beasts that serve them: and none has been so bold as to strive to ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... What! sweeting, all amort?"—Taming of the Shrew, act iv. sc. 3, line 36. "Amort" is said to be a corruption of a la mort. Byron must have had in mind his silent ecstasy of grief when the Countess Guiccioli endeavoured to break the announcement of Allegra's death (April, 1822). "'I understand,' said he; 'it is enough; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... rich velvets, costly brocades, and other profitable returns to his foreign adventures. But, alas!—and whose heart holdeth not communion with that word!—Cornelius was unhappy. He had one daughter, whom "he loved passing well;" yet, as common report did acknowledge, the veriest shrew that ever went unbridled. In vain did his riches and his revenues increase; in vain was plenty poured into his lap, and all that wealth could compass accumulate in lavish profusion. Of what avail was this outward and goodly show against ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... till such time as she finally goes to live with him, she makes brief visits for festivals or on other social occasions, or to help her mother-in-law, if her assistance is required. If the mother-in-law is ill and requires somebody to wait on her, or if she is a shrew and wants some one to bully, or if she has strict ideas of discipline and wishes personally to conduct the bride's training for married life, she makes the girl come more frequently and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... The Taming of the Shrew, by Samuel Hickson Proverbial Sayings and their Origins William Basse and his Poems Folk Lore:—Something else about Salting. Norfolk Weather Proverb, Irish Medical Charms. Death-bed Superstitions Note on Herodotus by Dean Swift ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... thee who is master, O! shrew!" observed her master, as he surveyed his handiwork. "Thou wilt not walk, then shall thy sisters force thee to run; thou wilt lie down, then shall they drag thee until thy mouth ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... a single tear for her, and fell to composing an elegy in Latin verses over the rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads mourn and the river-nymphs deplore her. As her father followed the calling of Vulcan, he said that surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright's wife was an ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a long face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and are dead almost before ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... feminine sex (and indeed by no means to this class only) of a strapping and handsome footman is a commonplace of satire with eighteenth-century writers, both French and English. It is exercised possibly on both sisters, though the elder is a shrew; certainly on the younger, and also on their elderly bonne, Catherine. But it necessarily leads to trouble. The younger, Mlle. Habert (the curious hiding of Christian names reappears here), wants to retain Jacob in the joint ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... broom, but without washing, for fear of mouldiness. In Italy they arm the tops of long poles with nails and iron for the purpose, and believe the beating improves the tree; which I no more believe, than I do that discipline would reform a perverse shrew: Those nuts which come not easily out of their husks, should be laid to mellow in heaps, and the rest expos'd in the sun, till the shells dry, else they will be apt to perish the kernel: Some again preserve them ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... sleep had I, rather I lay that I might watch her (furtively, beneath my arm) where she sat head aloft, cheeks flushed and bosom tempestuous. And (despite her beauty) a very termagant shrew I thought her. Then, all at once, I saw a tear fall and another; and she that had sung undaunted to the tempest and outfaced its fury, sat bitterly weeping like any heart-broke maid, yet giving due heed to our course none ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... strange folks their faces? Out upon thy notion, Jessamine!" And my Cozzens laugh'd and said, Ever did Gentlemen dislike a Learn'd Female. Should have gotten me a good Husband this Ten Years since but for my Shrew's Temper & ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... you tell us, Emperor Jurgen," said they all, "your wife was an acidulous shrew, and the sort of woman who believes that whatever she does ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... medical knowledge of his time and as a review of the work of his predecessors. There is a great deal of information in his books about his own life. He was born at Pergamos in A.D. 130 in the reign of Hadrian. His father was a scholar and his mother somewhat of a shrew. Galen, in his boyhood, learned much from his father's example and instruction, and at the age of 15 was taught by philosophers of the Stoic, Platonist, Peripatetic, and Epicurean schools. He became initiated, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... at any rate have peace and quiet, and be free from hearing my mother lay plans of what she will do when I bring Dorothy as mistress of Hillside. Marry Dorothy, forsooth! I pity any man who is tied to that shrew for life.' ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... everything that flatters," returned he, "it would tell a falsehood. A shrew can provoke a man who detests her. As to Miss Dundas, notwithstanding her parade of learning, she generally espouses the wrong side of the argument; and I may say with somebody, whose name I have forgotten, that any one ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... that shrivelled old shrew. What you might expect. If I had thought of it in time, I'd've been willing to make a book on her laying it ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... would wear her Sabbath face, putting off the mask of the shrew, which hid not from him the angel countenance. To-night he could in very truth call his wife (as the Rabbi in the Talmud did) "not wife, but home." To-night she would be in very truth Simcha—rejoicing. A cheerful ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... vestments, had no tenderness, no embrace for him,—only a mockery and a prophecy, a cold and cynical prediction that I should soon tire of his shrill voice. Yes, Cheri, your sweet silver trills, your rippling June-brook warbles, were to him only a shrew's scolding. I took the bird wrathfully, his name had been Cherry, and rechristened him on the spot Cheri, in anticipation of the new life that was to dawn upon him, no longer despised Cherry, but Cheri, my ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... way—in benevolent objects—as men who set up to be clever are for selfish ones. Mrs. Hartopp was certainly a good woman, but a made good woman. Married to another man, I suspect that she would have been a shrew. Petruchio would never have tamed her, I'll swear. But she, poor lady, had been gradually, but completely, subdued, subjugated, absolutely cowed beneath the weight of her spouse's despotic mildness; for in Hartopp there ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sprited with a fool, Frighted, and ang'red worse. Go bid my woman Search for a jewel that too casually Hath left mine arm. It was thy master's. Shrew me, If I would lose it for a revenue Of any king's in Europe. I do think I saw't this morning; confident I am Last night 'twas on mine arm; I kiss'd it. I hope it be not gone to tell my lord That I kiss aught ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... flowers. But for the most part there is no finding her population without seeking for it. Hundreds of her flowers are hidden from the lazy eye, and we may pass a lifetime without seeing so common a bird as a tree-creeper or so common an animal as a shrew-mouse. How seldom it is one sees even a rat! There are human beings who will never discover an early flower, however many miles they cover in their country walks. They take no pleasure in finding a wild-strawberry ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... of English Mysteries Noah's wife is an untamed shrew, who refuses to enter the ark. In the York collection, Noah being ordered by "Deus" to build his boat, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Either it was too early for that—or it was too late. She was unreasonable, she was crotchety, she was contentious, she was incredibly intolerant of the opinions of others, and she was incredibly hardheaded. She had always been masterful and arrogant; now more and more each day she was becoming a shrew and a tyrant and a wrangler. She was frightfully noisy; she clarioned her hallelujah hymns at the top of her voice, regardless of what company might be in the house. She dipped snuff openly before friends of the girls and new acquaintances alike. She refused point-blank to wear a cap ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Meres, writing three years later, attributed to Shakespeare a piece called 'Love's Labour's Won.' This title, which is not otherwise known, may well be applied to 'All's Well.' 'The Taming of The Shrew,' which has also been identified with 'Love's Labour's Won,' has far slighter claim to the designation. The plot of 'All's Well,' like that of 'Romeo and Juliet,' was drawn from Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' (No. xxxviii.) The original source is Boccaccio's ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... few were once applied to both sexes alike, which are now restricted to the female. It is so even with 'girl', which was once a young person of either sex{212}; while other words in this list, such for instance as 'hoyden'{213} (Milton, prose), 'shrew' (Chaucer), 'coquet' (Phillips, New World of Words), 'witch' (Wiclif), 'termagant' (Bale), 'scold', 'jade', 'slut' (Gower), must be regarded in their present exclusive appropriation to the female sex as evidences of men's rudeness, and not ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... cried one, "here is an old dotard shrew to have so goodly a crutch! Use the leg that God hath given you, man, and do not bear so ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "The Taming of the Shrew," we see, what Mr. Collier himself notices in his "Notes and Emendations," that the prefix to the tinker's speeches, which in the folios is invariably Beg. [Beggar], is changed to Sly; and this is done in every instance. We have not counted Sly's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... about eighty-one species are found. They include three monkeys, eight of the cat tribe, two civet cats, one tree cat, two mongooses, two of the dog tribe, five pole-cats and weasels, one ferret-badger, three otters, one cat-bear, two bears, one tree-shrew, one mole, six shrews, two water-shrews, twelve bats, four squirrels, two marmots, eight rats and mice, one vole, one porcupine, four deer, two forest-goats, one goat, one sheep, and ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Last spring I had three young crows, all of which died, not from inattention, but because I did not know how to care for them. Again, I have come across animals that I could not find a name for. For instance, last summer I came across two animals, one that resembled a shrew, another that looked somewhat like a mouse. Now if I had had a book like this proposed one on hand, I would simply have looked up its habits, would have found its name, would have known how to tame and feed it, and would have had a new addition to my menagerie. At least, I could do ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... miseries. Wesley held patriarchal views on household matters, the proper subordination of the wife being a prime article of his faith. Mrs. Wesley, however, entertained different views. She is therefore described as a frightful shrew, and rated for her inordinate jealousy, although her husband's attentions to other ladies certainly gave her ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... was in ancient times thought) that those parts of the structure which determined the habits of life, and the general place of each being in the economy of nature, would be of very high importance in classification. Nothing can be more false. No one regards the external similarity of a mouse to a shrew, of a dugong to a whale, of a whale to a fish, as of any importance. These resemblances, though so intimately connected with the whole life of the being, are ranked as merely "adaptive or analogical characters;" but to the ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... exclaim'd: Oh shaft well shot! it galls thee. Would to heaven That it had pierced thy heart, and thou hadst died! So had the Trojans respite from their toils 465 Enjoy'd, who, now, shudder at sight of thee Like she-goats when the lion is at hand. To whom, undaunted, Diomede replied. Archer shrew-tongued! spie-maiden! man of curls![14] Shouldst thou in arms attempt me face to face, 470 Thy bow and arrows should avail thee nought. Vain boaster! thou hast scratch'd my foot—no more— And I regard it as I might the stroke Of a weak woman or a simple child. The weapons ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... his surprise, dropped the meat which he held, and walked over to comfort her. She, however, turned on him like a veritable little shrew. ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... how I will never get a clean shirt to my back; how my coat will always be out at the elbows; and how I never will get my breeches to stay up. I am thinking how I will be married to a shrew of a wife, who will beat me every evening and morning, and sometimes in the middle of the day. I am thinking what a d——d w—— she will be, and how my children will be most of them hanged, and whipped through towns, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... mad and headstrong humor. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak; 'tis charity to ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... "And marry a shrew," he would say mockingly; "for when the maidens heard my name, and knew for what purpose I had come, they would straightway smile their sweetest, and look their loveliest, and I would have no chance of knowing what manner of ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... sentiments, and so they might have been had Nanny uttered them. Thus easily Saunders built up a reputation for never complaining. I know now that he was a hard and cruel man who should have married a shrew; but while Nanny lived I thought he had a beautiful nature. Many a time I have spoken with him at Hendry's gate, and felt the ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... the agricultural labours of spring, a Shrew-mouse, Field-mouse, Mole, Frog, Adder, or Lizard, will provide us with the most vigorous and famous of these expurgators of the soil. This is the Burying-beetle, the Necrophorus, so different from the cadaveric mob in ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... the very second day after the wedding her evil nature began to manifest itself. Thou art well aware, O Prince of True Believers, that by Moslem custom none may look upon the face of his betrothed before the marriage contract? nor after wedlock can he complain should his bride prove a shrew or a fright: he must needs dwell with her in such content as he may and be thankful for his fate, be it fair or unfair. When I saw first the face of my bride and learnt that it was passing comely, I joyed with exceeding joy and gave thanks to Almighty Allah that He ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... how to lie, so, although trembling with terror when he saw the rage of the old shrew, he tried to ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... spavined old croakers. Old Plain Talk had a shrew for a wife, and that's made him shrewish; and Old Prudence, when a boy, broke down in an apple-stall, and that discouraged him for life. No better sport for a knowing spark like me than to hear Old Plain Talk wheeze out his sour old saws, while Old Prudence stands by, leaning ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... insisted that he must go out no more until he was cured. In the fight Constance was scarcely recognizable. She deliberately gave way to hysteria; she was no longer soft and gentle; she flung bitterness at him like vitriol; she shrieked like a common shrew. It seems almost incredible that Constance should have gone so far; but she did. She accused him, amid sobs, of putting his cousin before his wife and son, of not caring whether or not she was left a widow as the result of ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... saw the honours of his race, He saw their lineal glories rise, And touch'd, or seem'd to touch, the skies: Not the most distant mark of fear, No sign of axe or scaffold near, Not one cursed thought to cross his will Of such a place as Tower Hill. 680 Curse on this Muse, a flippant jade, A shrew, like every other maid Who turns the corner of nineteen, Devour'd with peevishness and spleen; Her tongue (for as, when bound for life, The husband suffers for the wife, So if in any works of rhyme Perchance there blunders out a crime, Poor culprit bards ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Dr. W. Bulleyne says "it keepeth clothes from moths and wormes." This is the great preventive used by cloth manufacturers. "Furthermore," adds Gerard, "taken in wine it is good against the biting of the shrew mouse, and of the sea dragon. It may be applied against the Squincie, or inflammation of the throat, with honey and water: likewise, after the same manner, to ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... my ecstasies, do, Kind critic, your "tongue has a tang" But—a sage never heeded a shrew In the reign ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... will not add a word to it. You, Eusebius, will not read a line more; you are in antics of delight—you cannot keep yourself quiet for joy—you walk up and down—you sit—you rise—you laugh—you roar out. Oh! this is better than the "taming of a shrew." And do you think "a brute of a husband" is so easily tamed? The lion was a gentle beast, and made himself submissive to sweet Una; but the brute of a husband, he is indeed a very hideous and untameable wild-fowl. Poor, good, loving ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... now. A few of them had tasted the bastinado and been tamed; most of them had been wise enough to tame themselves. If Shakespeare had been a Turk he would probably have written a very different version of the Taming of the Shrew! ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... that, if the truth was known, I know where the blame would lie—your daughter will not be the shrew and scold to him that my blister was to me—upon my ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Skipper John scolded. "I believes ye! Dang if I don't! Go to! Shift them wet clothes, sir, an' come t' supper. I hopes a shrew hooks ye. Dang ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... beech in the morning a shadow stretches to a bridge across the brook, and in that shadow my trout used to lie. The bank under the drooping boughs forms a tiny cliff a foot high, covered with moss, and here I once observed shrew mice diving and racing about. But only once, though I frequently passed the spot; it is curious that I did ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... young husband, the slattern Catherina Meigengra, the market-woman who plays the pandero in the market-place, the peasant girls with pretentious names coming down to market basket on head from the hills, the shrew Branca and the timid wife Marta, the two irrepressible Lisbon fishwives, the voluble saloia who sells milk well watered and charges cruel prices for her eggs and other wares, the country priest's greedy 'wife' who eats the baptism cake and is ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... streets beyond, from which few ever returned. Old birds are not caught with such wiles. I did succeed in gaining the ear of one of the gossips, and asking him what he could tell me of the good dame and her inn. It seemeth that she is somewhat of a shrew upon occasion, and that her tongue had more to do with her husband's death than the dropsy which the leech put it down to. Again, a new inn hath been started in the village, which is well-managed, and is like to draw the custom from her. It is, too, as you have said, a dull sleepy ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in pleasantry he sometimes was—"one of the least and worst among jesters as he was one of the best and greatest among poets," he could not have had a hand in the admirable comic scenes of "The Taming of the Shrew." For it is now, I should hope, unnecessary to insist that the able and conscientious editor to whom his fame and his readers owe so great a debt was over-hasty in assuming and asserting that he was a poet "to whom, we have reason to believe, nature had denied even a moderate talent ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... grandmother of yours, and when a man has that there's never any knowing where it will break out, or what dance it will lead him, especially when it comes to this love-making business. You are just as likely as not to lose your head over some little fool or shrew for the sake of her outward favour and make yourself miserable for life. When you pick you a wife please remember that I shall reserve the right to pass a candid ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... It is quite wrong to have any dread of them; as a matter of fact, the bird you have just seen is, like all its species, more useful than injurious to man, for it destroys a vast number of small mammals—jerboas, shrew-mice, dormice, and field-mice, which ravage the farmer's crops. You will recollect that the owl, among the ancient Greeks, was the bird of Minerva; with the Aztecs it ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The Merry Wives of Windsor. Measure for Measure. The Comedy of Errours. Much adoo about Nothing Loves Labour lost. Midsommer Nights Dreame. The Merchant of Venice. As you Like it. The Taming of the Shrew. All is well, that Ends well. Twelfe-Night, or what you ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... gave up sculpture and became a thinker he simply tried me beyond all endurance, he was so thoughtless, with the result that, having ventured once or twice to show my natural resentment, I have been handed down to posterity as a shrew. I've never complained, and I don't complain now; but when a woman is married to a philosopher who is so taken up with his studies that when he rises in the morning he doesn't look what he is doing, and goes off to his business in his wife's clothes, I think she is ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... wondered with what regularity—that is, for a shrew of my impatient temper—I have been able to keep this Journal. The use of the first person being, of course, the very essence of a diary, I conceive it is chiefly vanity, the dear pleasure of writing about the best of good fellows, Myself, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... there were who would not take even that hint. One was a shrew-mouse, thirsting for blood, but who got poison instead, and next morning was found running about with his mouth somewhere concealed behind his ear, if one may be pardoned the expression, in consequence; and the other ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... opposite dots across the snow were made by the whitefooted mouse, and the little continuous line between them was made by his dragging tail. The legend is like this, :-:-:-:-:-. Farther on are similar tracks, but alternate instead of opposite, like this,',',','. They were made by the short-tailed shrew. Still farther along a queer little ridge is seen in the snow across the wood road. It is the tunnel of the meadow mouse. Part of its fragile roof has fallen in and you may stoop and look into the little round tunnel which ran from the burrow to ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... here shall be perils dire and deadly. O bethink thee, lest she change thee into a swine, or black dog, aye, or even a small shrew-mouse—I've heard of such ere now—or blast thee with fire, or ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... with; by the way, by the by; whereas; for as much as, in as much as; in point of, as far as; on the part of, on the score of; quoad hoc [Lat.]; pro re nata [Lat.]; under the head of &c (class) 75, of; in the matter of, in re. Phr. thereby hangs a tale [Taming of the Shrew]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Clouds, like the plains, come and water the earth. Sun, embrace the earth that she may be fruitful. Moon, lion of the north, bear of the west, badger of the south, wolf of the east, eagle of the heavens, shrew of the earth, elder war hero, younger war hero, warriors of the six mountains of the world, intercede with the Cloud People for us that they may water the earth. Medicine bowl, cloud bowl, and water vase give us your hearts, that the earth ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... door for him. She had been sitting by the child's bedside, listening to the firing, and waiting for her husband's return without a murmur. Flirt, fribble, and shrew as she was, Julia Vickers had displayed, in times of emergency, that glowing courage which women of her nature at times possess. Though she would yawn over any book above the level of a genteel love story; attempt to fascinate, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... good three hours before a mirror trimming themselves, learning to smile, pinning and unpinning, making grimaces and striking attitudes. Many a coy wench was there who knew not how to open her lips to speak, much less to eat, or from very ceremony, how to look under foot; and many a ragged shrew who would contend that she was equal to the best lady in the street, and many an ambling fop who might winnow beans by ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... learning to smile, moving pins and making gestures and putting themselves in attitudes. There was many a vain creature there, who did not know how to open her lips to speak, or to eat, nor, from sheer pride, to look under her feet; and many a ragged shrew, who would insist that she was as good a gentlewoman as the best in the street; and many an ambling fop, who could winnow beans with the mere wind ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... Good Lord! you use this dalliance to excuse Your breach of promise to the Porpentine. I should have chid you for not bringing it, 50 But, like a shrew, you first begin ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... the world well lost for them, and lose it accordingly. Who are the men that do things? The husbands of the shrew and of the drunkard, the men with the thorn in the flesh. [Walking distractedly away towards the pantry]. I must think these things out. [Turning suddenly]. But I go on with the dynamite none the less. I will discover a ray mightier than any X-ray: a mind ray that will explode ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the bones and horns of their remote ancestors had been entombed long ages before, the feat would have been surely far beyond the power of such feeble natives of the soil as the mole, the hedgehog, the shrew, the dormouse, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... equal partner whose rights the modern law recognizes as the ancient law did not. She is no longer to be classed as exemplified by the famous words of Petruchio, when he claimed his wife, the erstwhile shrew, as his property in exactly the same sense as any domestic animal, linking the wife with the horse, the cow, the ass, as the chattels of the man. The law agreed to this attitude of the man, the Church supported it; woman, strangely enough, seemed ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... certainly was an industrious and thrifty man; but failure and the loss of an excellent wife had wrought a sad change in his character and temper; and having married a second wife, who turned out a virago and a shrew, there was little hope of his improving. He was still industrious, and owing to his former reputation for honesty and doing good work, he still retained many of his old customers. He had a small shop in a public part of the ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... Xantippe, the wife of Socrates, was a shrew, and had she lived in New England in Cotton Mather's time would have been a candidate for the ducking-stool. Socrates said he married her for discipline. A man in East Aurora, however, has recently made it plain to himself that Xantippe was possessed of a great and acute intellect. She ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... presence by seeing him approaching swiftly on silent, level wing. The shrike did not see him till the owl was almost within the branches. He then dropped his game, which proved to be a part of a shrew-mouse, and darted back into the thick cover uttering a loud, discordant squawk, as one would say, "Scat! scat! scat!" The owl alighted, and was, perhaps, looking about him for the shrike's impaled game, when I drew near. On seeing me, he reversed his movement precipitately, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... only a moment before Tony's brown eyes opened and she pulled herself up from the couch where they had laid her. But she would not speak or tell them what had happened and it was only when they had gotten her off in a cab with a motherly, big hearted woman who played shrew's and villainess' parts always on the stage but was the one person of the whole cast to whom every one turned in time of trouble that the rest searched the paper for the clew to the thing which had made Tony look like death itself. It was not far to seek. Tony looked like death because ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... foot if an inch, and massive in proportion. She was handsome too, in a swarthy way, though near at hand her face was sensuous and bold. Yet she had a suave, flattering manner and a coarse wit that captured the crowd. Dangerous, unscrupulous and cruel, I thought; a man-woman, a shrew, a termagant! ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... more, it will make my poor Muse sick. This night I came home with a very cold dew sick, And I wish I may soon be not of an ague sick; But I hope I shall ne'er be like you, of a shrew sick, Who often has made me, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... say there are special circumstances. Oddly enough, by the bye, at Cittareggio each separate member of my clergy was able to plead special circumstances for himself I have tried to give it up, and the effort has spoiled my temper—turned me into a perfect old shrew. For my friends' sake, therefore, I appease myself with an occasional pinch. You see, tobacco is antiseptic. It's an excellent preservative of the milk of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... species of mammals treated may have something to do with this, the skins of carnivorous animals bearing exposure better than those of the rodentia—hares, rabbits, squirrels, etc, and insectivora—bats, shrew-mice, and moles—indeed, the latter animals must be skinned almost as soon as they are dead, or the skin turns "green" and goes bad in a very short time. No doubt the vegetable and insect food consumed by these cause fermentation after ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the family from any share in it. Consequently I am made use of, and the fortune is placed in my hands with instructions to hasten to lay it at the feet of this 'fair lady.' Nothing seems easier or more natural. But suppose the 'fair lady' should be ugly, hunchbacked, a shrew, or a troublesome coquette. In this case, you know, with my ideas about women and marriage, I should feel myself bound to ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... young unmarried gentlemen, a wife is a very much harder pack to the back than the biggest heifer in Smithfield and, if I can prevent one of you from marrying, the 'Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.' will not be written in vain. Not that my Lady was a scold or a shrew, as some wives are; I could have managed to have cured her of that; but she was of a cowardly, crying, melancholy, maudlin temper, which is to me still more odious: do what one would to please her, she would never be happy or in good-humour. I left her alone after a while; and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... after groaning to think that he was dependent on this shrew and under the thumb of a peasant of the Vosges, was bewitched by her coaxing ways and by a maternal affection that attached itself solely to the physical and material side of life. He was like a woman who forgives a week of ill-usage for the sake of a kiss and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... brown fur, paler beneath and on the face, with a black stripe on each cheek. This made the third species of marsupial rat I had so far obtained— but the number of these animals is very considerable in Brazil, where they take the place of the shrews of Europe; shrew mice and, indeed, the whole of the insectivorous order of mammals, being entirely absent from Tropical America. One kind of these rat-like opossums is aquatic, and has webbed feet. The terrestrial species are nocturnal in their habits, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... afford a holiday. I long for bodily sloth, for the ragged intellectual companionship that only Paris can give me, for the resumption of study of the philosophy of the excellent Henri Bergson, for the absinthe that brings forgetfulness, for the Tanagra figured, broad-mouthed, snub-nosed shrew that fills every ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... of our tale befell, How long he lived, how wisely, and how well, It boots not that the Muse should tell; He plowed, he sowed, he bought, he sold, Nor once perceived his growing old, Nor thought of Death as near; His friends not false, his wife no shrew, Many his gains, his children few, He passed his hours in peace. But, while he viewed his wealth increase, While thus along life's dusty road, The beaten track, content he trod, Old Time, whose haste no mortal spares, Uncalled, unheeded, unawares, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... "You're a foul shrew, Mother Gargery," growled the journeyman. "If that makes a judge of rogues, you ought ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... done played out, Shrew ball, shrew ball, Ole Confederate has done played out Shrew ball say I, An' ole Gen'l. Lee can't fight no mo'; We'll all drink stone blind Johnnies ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... medicine venders whose grandiloquent advertisements take up so much space in our newspapers. Plato, in the "Laws," says that "The Gods, pitying the toils which our race is born to undergo, have appointed holy festivals in which men rest from their labors." Lucentio, in "The Taming of the Shrew," advances the same opinion in more definite ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... easily spoiled. Be that as it may, however, when she had grown to be a woman, there were, I dare say, no less than fifty young men who knew her well, any one of whom would have jumped at the chance to get her for a wife, and made but little account of the risk of her turning out a shrew. To be sure, when I first knew her, she had rather a high and mighty way with her, at which some people took offence, calling her proud and disdainful; but those whom she wished to please never failed to like her; and I used to observe she seldom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... sleeve? 'tis like a demi-cannon: What, up and down, carved like an apple-tart? Here's snip and nip and cut and slish and slash, Like to a censer in a barber's shop: Why, what i' devil's name, tailor, callest thou this! Taming of the Shrew, Act iv. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... a low voice.) I have got a shrew of a wife shut up there. For by that name I formerly falsely called myself, in order that you might not chance indiscreetly to blab it out of doors, and then my wife, by some means or other, might come to know ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... better state. But, the charm was broken. The person of the house was the person of a house full of sordid shames and cares, with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even innocent sleep with sensual brutality and degradation. The doll's dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... guess wrong this time, you clever shrew! I wormed nothing from you,' said he. 'I knew you kept particular letters in that receptacle of things of price: Aminta can't conceal. The man has worried you. Why not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... about and thought there was nothing on the land as lively as the fish in the water, so he made the shrew-mice, for he said, "They will skip about and enliven the ground and prevent it from looking dead and barren, even if they are not good ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... by without comment. "The Unknown Woman is brimful of possibilities to a bushman," he went on; "for although she MAY be all womanly strength and tenderness, she may also be anything, from a weak timid fool to a self-righteous shrew, bristling with virtue and indignation. Still," he added earnestly, as the opposition began to murmur, "when a woman does come into our lives, whatever type she may be, she lacks nothing in the way of chivalry, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... coquette, A brow of marble, but a heart of jet; An eye that shows no vestige of the deep And stained thoughts that in her bosom sleep: By day a vestal, but by night a bawd; Her ways a riddle, her whole life a fraud; At church an angel, but at home a shrew, Cheating her mother, to her sire untrue; Vain without talent, without merit proud; By all who see her, still a fool allow'd; Without all love, with but the show of truth, She stares and simpers at the scornful youth; Or ambling loosely on the village street, While ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... cudgell'd one day by his wife, He took to the street, and fled for his life: Tom's three dearest friends came by in the squabble, And saved him at once from the shrew and the rabble; Then ventured to give him some sober advice— But Tom is a person of honour so nice, Too wise to take counsel, too proud to take warning, That he sent to all three a challenge next morning. Three duels he fought, thrice ventur'd his ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... known from the urbanity of his manners, by the familiar name of Billy Havard) had the misfortune to be married to a most notorious shrew and drunkard. One day dining at Garrick's, he was complaining of a violent pain in his side. Mrs. Garrick offered to prescribe for him. "No, no," said her husband; "that will not do, my dear; Billy has mistaken his disorder; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... monto. Mountaineer montano. Mountainous monta. Mountain-range montaro. Mountebank jxonglisto. Mourn malgxoji, ploregi. Mournful funebra. Mourning (dress) funebra vesto. Mouse muso. Mouse, shrew soriko. Mouse-trap muskaptilo. Moustache lipharoj. Mouth busxo. Mouth (of river) enfluo. Movable movebla. Move movi. Move (furniture) translogxigxi. Move in (dwelling) enlogxi. Move out (dwelling) ellogxigxi. Move (feelings) kortusxi. Moved (to ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... no very searching character-study is attempted. The Taming of the Shrew no doubt passed for a light comedy in Shakespeare's day, though we describe it by a briefer name. Its rapid, bustling action is possible because we are always ready to take the character of a shrew for granted. It would have been a very different play had the poet required to account for Katharine's peculiarities of temper by a retrospective study of her heredity and upbringing. Many eighteenth-century ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Australia), and the true opossums of America, called implacental Mammals. Now the placental mammals are subdivided into various orders, amongst which are the flesh-eaters (Carnivora, i.e. cats, dogs, otters, weasels, &c.), and the insect-eaters (Insectivora, i.e. moles, hedgehogs, shrew-mice, &c.). The marsupial mammals also present a variety of forms (some of which are carnivorous beasts, whilst others are insectivorous), so marked that it has been even proposed to divide them into orders parallel to ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... old head like turnips through a slicer; And naught I ken who the bowdykite's to wed— Some bletherskite he's picked up in a ditch, Some fond fligary flirtigig, clarty-fine, Who'll turn a slattern-shrew and a cap-river Within a week, if I ken aught of Jim. Unless ... Nay, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... introduction of a new enemy more deadly even than the great carnivorous dinosaurs. Among such theories the most ingenious is that of the late Professor Cope, who suggested that some of the small, inoffensive, and inconspicuous forms of Jurassic mammals, of the size of the shrew and the hedgehog, contracted the habit of seeking out the nests of these dinosaurs, gnawing through the shells of their eggs, and thus destroying the young. The appearance, or evolution, of any egg-destroying ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... nothing which Mrs. Carbuncle would not endure from Sir Griffin,—just at present; and, on behalf of Mrs. Carbuncle, even Lizzie was long-suffering. It cannot, however, be said that this Petruchio had as yet tamed his own peculiar shrew. Lucinda was as savage as ever, and would snap and snarl, and almost bite. Sir Griffin would snarl too, and say very bearish things. But when it came to the point of actual quarrelling, he would become sullen, and in ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... personage in his early married life. His wife, while not a shrew, had undoubted force of character, but there was not much attrition; and his little daughter was, in John's estimation, the fairest child upon the continent. Personally, he was content with all the world, though his wife was somewhat ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... the magnificence of its public edifices, we found more than the usual amount of Galician filth and misery. The posada was one of the most wretched description, and to mend the matter, the hostess was a most intolerable scold and shrew. Antonio having found fault with the quality of some provision which she produced, she cursed him most immoderately in the country language, which was the only one she spoke, and threatened, if he attempted to breed any disturbance in her house, to turn the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... was the world! How beautiful, but how still! I walked slowly through the barley towards a line of elder bushes, wayfaring tree and bramble that made the hedge of the field. I noted as I passed along a dead shrew mouse, as it seemed to me, among the halms; then a still toad. I was surprised that this did not leap aside from my footfalls, and I stooped and picked it up. Its body was limp like life, but it made no struggle, the brightness of its eye was veiled, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... by small insect-eating Bats; and the order of the Insectivorous Mammals is represented by Moles, Shrew-mice, and Hedgehogs. ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... not the transient breath of poetic incense that women want; each can receive that from a lover. It is not life-long sway; it needs but to become a coquette, a shrew, or a good cook, to be sure of that. It is not money, nor notoriety, nor the badges of authority which men have appropriated to themselves. If demands, made in their behalf, lay stress on any of these particulars, those who make them have not searched deeply into the need. The want is for that ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... died, a happy thing to do, When twenty years united to a shrew. Released, he hopefully for entrance cries Before the gates of ...
— Standard Selections • Various |
