"Spitfire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fire Of sordid avarice or unchecked desire? Know, there are spells will help you to allay The pain, and put good part of it away. You're bloated by ambition? take advice; Yon book will ease you if you read it thrice. Run through the list of faults; whate'er you be, Coward, pickthank, spitfire, drunkard, debauchee, Submit to culture patiently, you'll find Her charms ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... steep slope into the yard where the children were marching in double file into the building, smiling as he saw Tabitha's long, lean legs keeping step behind the short, plump ones of little Carrie, and mentally hoping that the day would go well with the little spitfire sister. ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... (1911) Mr. Mayne turns away from County Down to the Galway bogs, admirably symbolizing the hot land feud between neighbors in his title. There are but five characters in the play, Martin Burke, farmer, and his spitfire of a wife; and his neighbors the Flanagans, father and son, who have won away from the Burkes, by the surveyor's decision, their bank of stone turf that had come to Mary Burke from her father; and an old fellow little ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... stinging sentences to be embodied in the letter; but he drew himself up with a start. Surely there was something very wrong with Mark Bower, the millionaire, when he gloated over such paltry details. Why, his reflections were worthy of that old spitfire, Mrs. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... told Lorraine. "And I'm behind yuh with a gun. Don't forget that, Miss Spitfire. You let Skinner go to suit himself—and if he goes wrong, you pay, because it'll be you reining him ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... which Eugenia represented, developed by the fact that it was not force but weakness that had vanquished his victorious opponent. Dudley Webb was a gentleman, and only a bully would strike a girl, even if she were a spitfire—the term by which he characterised Eugenia. He remembered suddenly her exultant, "an' you can't hit me back!" and it seemed to him that, even in the righteous cause of his deliverance, she had taken an unfair and feminine advantage of the handsome ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... in a third party—old Mrs. Reynolds, a regular spitfire, a she-Secessionist of the most rabid, cantankerous species—a tiger-cat in petticoats. This she specimen of the "Spirit of the South," of the demon of desolation, had bottled up her venom during ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... dimensions of the several features of the landscape that occupies the lower half of the picture. And next it we observe a very powerfully executed oil painting representing a schooner-yacht, with topmasts struck and all other top-hamper down on deck, hove-to under close-reefed storm-trysail and spitfire jib, in close proximity to an evidently disabled and sinking ocean steamer, over whose more than half-submerged hull the mountain seas are breaking with terrific violence, sweeping away boats, hencoops, deck-fittings, bulwarks, and even some of the unfortunate people, who are dimly seen through ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... in Buckinghamshire last week," said he; "a fine turn out—such a field! I got an infernal topper tho'—smashed my best tile; tell you how it was. There was a high paling—put Spitfire to it, and she took it in fine style; but, as luck would have it, the gnarled arm of an old tree came whop against my head, and bonneted me completely! Thought I was brained—but we did it cleverly however—although, if ever I made a leap in the dark, that was one. I was at fault for ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... still, by the way, practised in the Hebrides. Like Pliny, Scot recommended ceremonial spitting as a charm against witchcraft.[54] In China spitting to expel demons is a common practice. We still call a hasty person a "spitfire", and ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... men-servants found amusement in badgering her. To set Mistress Clorinda in their midst on a winter's night when they were dull, and to torment her until her little face grew scarlet with the blood which flew up into it, and she ran from one to the other beating them and screaming like a young spitfire, was among ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hay-stacks an' up to all sorts of mischief—Lord, Lord!" And Josey began to chuckle with a kind of inward merriment; "I'll never forget the day that child sat down on a wopses' nest an' got all 'er little legs stung;—she was about five 'ear old then, an' she never cried—not she!—the little proud spitfire that she was, she jes' stamped 'er mite of a foot an' she sez, sez she: 'Did God make the wopses?' An' 'er nurse sez to 'er: 'Yes, o' course, lovey, God made 'em.' 'Then I don't think much of Him!' sez she. Lord, Lord! We larfed nigh to split ourselves that arternoon;—we was all makin' 'ay ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... more than three yards off, the pretty, angry little spitfire looking up at her indignant, helpless husband. Coxeter, if disgusted, was amused; there was also the comfort of knowing that they would certainly pretend not to see him, even if by chance they recognized him, intent as they ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... unHilaryish young woman, she had seen the necessity for taking firm hold of an attitude in the matter and retaining it. No one, not even Neville, not even Frances Carr, had ever seen behind Pamela's guard where Rosalind was concerned. When Nan abused Rosalind, Pamela would say "Don't be a spitfire, child. What's the use?" and change the subject. For Rosalind was, in Pamela's view, one of the things which were a pity but didn't really matter, so long as she didn't make Gilbert unhappy. And Gilbert, so far, was absurdly pleased ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... Spitfire," turning to Inza, "you must feel proud to have a friend in a fellow of his class! Do not forget what I ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... out or the clouds lift. It would never do to go groping our way along with such currents as run among the islands. Put the last reef in the trysail before you hoist it. I think you had better get the foresail down altogether, and run up the spitfire jib." ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... "Christmas-time, you spitfire. So you ain't married yet? Lord! I don't wonder they fight shy of you; you'd be a handful, my vixen, for any man to tame. How's the ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Adieu, small spitfire of a Gulf! The change from the inside to the outside of the Birkat el-Akabah was magical. We at once glided into summer seas, a mosaic of turquoise and amethyst, fanned by the softest of breezes, the thermometer showing on deck 63 deg F. Perhaps the natural joy at our lucky escape ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Mistress," he snarled, without moving. "The old man isn't ridin' after me with a squadron of cavalry to-day. This happens to be my turn to give orders, and yer to obey! Do yer hear—yer'll obey! Those weren't pretty words yer spoke to Grant, but they don't hurt me none. You damned little spitfire, I'd marry yer myself if I could, just to break yer spirit. As it is, I'll show yer yer master fer once. So it's the spy yer ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... face. But in this matter of christening ships of war, Christian nations are but too apt to be dare-devils. Witness the following: British names all—The Conqueror, the Defiance, the Revenge, the Spitfire, the Dreadnaught, the Thunderer, and the Tremendous; not omitting the Etna, which, in the Roads of Corfu, was struck by lightning, coming nigh being consumed by fire from above. But almost potent as Moses' ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... hot blood. ill humor &c (sullenness) 901.1; asperity &c; churlishness &c (discourtesy) 895. huff &c (resentment) 900; a word and a blow. Sir Fretful Plagiary; brabbler^, Tartar; shrew, vixen, virago, termagant, dragon, scold, Xantippe; porcupine; spitfire; fire eater &c (blusterer) 887; fury &c (violent person) 173. V. be irascible &c adj.; have a temper &c n., have a devil in one; fire up &c (be angry) 900. Adj. irascible; bad-tempered, ill-tempered; irritable, susceptible; excitable &c 825; thin-skinned &c (sensitive) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... around once more to the place of the spring, to avoid exciting any suspicion on the part of their comrades, "we've just got to beat Marshall on Saturday. Why, it'd break the hearts of those pretty girls if we failed. I really believe they'd feel it more than any of us would. And that little spitfire Mollie is crazy to rub it into her boastful friend over at Harmony, too. Oh! we've got our job set out before us for a fact, and must ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... of a spitfire as your father, are you?" bellowed Davenport. And in a greater rage than ever he let go of Jack and hit him a stinging blow on the side ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... a little spitfire!" returned Juan, pulling the end of his thin mustache, yet not in the least disconcerted by her show of temper. "But supposing, my pearl of a housekeeper, that I bought a neat little rancheria—do you know of any one who might care to look ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... "Oh, ho! Leetle spitfire still!" Pancho laughed. He chucked her under her pretty chin. "So you marry ze man I pick for you, eh? Good! An' zis"—pointing to the baby—"zis ees ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... audacious, you lovely spitfire; go this minute and make up with her, or we've lost all chance of that new cotillion ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens |
