"Waspish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked on all his associates as wretches of depraved taste and narrow notions. Their conversation was, therefore, fretful and waspish, their behaviour brutal, their merriment bluntly sarcastick, and their seriousness gloomy and suspicious. They were totally ignorant of all that passes, or has lately passed, in the world; unable to discuss any question ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... a second wife Until a fairer I could find than she. And still she is so lovely in my eyes, Her equal cannot anywhere be found. You'd take her for a flow'r. Yet when arise Her storms of anger, long it takes to calm Her mind, so waspish is her character. The thought of this doth sadden me. Should one Not satisfy her heart's desire, she flies Into a passion and attempts to kill Herself. But 'tis my destiny—'tis writ. The Queen is like a gem with glint as bright As lightning's ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... man," says Miss Cann, who had a fine spirit of her own. "That boy half-witted! He has got more wit in his little finger than you have in all your great person! You are a very good man, Ridley, very good-natured I'm sure, and bear with the teasing of a waspish old woman: but you are not the wisest of mankind. Tut, tut, don't tell me. You know you spell out the words when you read the newspaper still, and what would your bills look like if I did not write them ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... your bondmen tremble. Must I budge? Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch Under your testy humour? By the gods! You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Though it do split you; for from this day forth I'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, When you are waspish. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... staircases, until the inmates shivered with horror and the terrified neighbours fled the haunted castle as a lazar-house. Once in possession of a family secret, he felt himself secure, and henceforth he was free to browbeat his employer and to flog his pupil to the satisfaction of his waspish nature. Moreover, he was endowed with all the insight and effrontery of a trained journalist. So sedulous was he in his search after the truth, that neither man nor woman could deny him confidence. And, as vinegar flowed in his veins for blood, it was his merry sport to set ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... room as if he had no care in the world. He hummed snatches of song. Mr. Jones raised his waspish eyebrows, at the sound. The secretary got down on his knees before an old leather trunk, and, rummaging in there, brought out a small looking-glass. He fell to examining his physiognomy ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... with; they hate trouble, and therefore do not trouble other people; they never beset the lives of their fellow-creatures with thorny advice and captious fault-finding; nor do they torment you with the waspish solicitude of excessive affection that must know all things ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... to the glass, and after some little delay got a sight of a long-bodied, waspish, shape, creeping, insect-wise, along a white chalk mark. His eye growing more accustomed to the glass, he made it out ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... "prominence" of blacksmiths, general store keepers, undertakers, notaries public, and other townspeople bright in local fame has been made a jest by urban persons of a humorous inclination, who take scorn of merit because it is not vast merit. Pleasing to contemplate in contrast to this waspish spirit is the noble nature of the country obituary, inspiration to humanism. Here was a man, to the seeing eye, of sterling stamp: "He attended public grammar school where he profited by his opportunities in obtaining as good an education as possible, etc." Later ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... not easily provoked—ou paroxynetai. Nothing more disturbs the peace and comfort of society than the being easily provoked. When a man is touchy and waspish, he is always looking out for, and catching at, ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... My work for the moment was complete and I could take it easy. I stood outside the test-box that had become a sort of Brigade H.Q. and listened to the waspish crack of our 18-pdrs. sending defiance to the enemy. The six signallers—plus a terrier—had crowded into the tiny sandbag shelter that protected the test-box. One of them, receiver to ear, waited for calls, a candle stuck on an inverted mess-tin shedding sufficient light for ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... astonishment, dread, or whatever the feeling was which moved him, to ooze forth in a cold and deathly perspiration which robbed his cheeks of color and cast a bluish shadow over his narrow and retreating temples; while the thin and waspish man, caught in the same trap (for trap I saw it was), shouted aloud in his ill-timed mirth, the false and cruel character of which would have made me shudder, if all expression of feeling on my part had not been held in check by the interest I immediately experienced in the display ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green |
