"Irritating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Away from its irritating context, that stanza is delightful; with the context it is to me wholly meaningless. The boy and girl had not fallen in love—there is no more to say; and I heartily wish that Browning had not tried to say it. The whole lyric is based on nothingness, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... her off into one of those long paths of wondering, paths which sometimes seemed to circle the whole of the globe. It was on those paths she frequently found the man who mended the boats waiting for her. Sometimes he was irritating, turning off into little by-paths, by-paths leading off to the dim source of things. Katie could not follow him there; she did not know her way; and often, as to-day, he turned off there just when she was most eager to ask him something. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... on the limestone crag, of almost miraculous hideousness. It is also in so-called Byzantine architecture. There is a dish-cover which serves as a dome, and a tower which would be comical if it were not irritating. It resembles the handle of a renaissance knife or fork stuck into a sheath and standing upright with a figure at top. We have made a blunder at South Kensington in setting side by side a depressed dome—the Albert Hall, and the acute ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... that these people were unhappy, not because they had not, so to speak, nourishing food, but because their stomachs had been spoiled, and because their appetites demanded not nourishing but irritating viands; and I did not perceive that, in order to help them, it was not necessary to give them food, but that it was necessary to heal their disordered stomachs. Although I am anticipating by so doing, I will mention here, that, out of all these persons whom I noted ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... certain charm to his manner. Without attaching any weight to the fancy Miss Wycliffe had told him of, he was sufficiently human to enjoy being liked and to make some response. At his first meeting with Mrs. Parr she had seemed merely insignificant; at Littleford's he had found her irritating; now, to his astonishment, he discovered in her worship of Felicity her attractive side. When they finally left the shop with their accumulated purchases, she insisted that he follow her into the sleigh and go to her home for a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... one garment, a shirt. Sometimes, however, my grandmother would be unable to get one for me and in that case she would take a crocus sack or corn sack and put two holes in it for my arms and one for my head. In putting on a sack shirt for the first time the sensation was extremely irritating. It seemed as if a thousand pins were sticking me all at once, but after a few days it would become all right and I could wear it comfortably. For several summers this was ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... just starve the mind a little, and nourish the heart more, you would be less of a philosopher, and more of a—" The Parson had the word "Christian" at the tip of his tongue: he suppressed a word that, so spoken, would have been exceedingly irritating, and substituted, with inelegant antithesis, "and more ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... inutile." With Casella, he writes a musical "A la maniere de," parodying Wagner, d'Indy, Chabrier, Strauss and others most wittily. Something of Eric Satie, the clown of music, exists in him, too. And probably nothing makes him so inexplicable and irritating to his audiences as his ironic streak. People are willing to forgive an artist all, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Atheist a courageous Agnostic. John Bull is infuriated by the red cloak of Atheism, so the Agnostic dons a brown cloak with a red lining. Now and then a sudden breeze exposes a bit of the fatal red, but the garment is promptly adjusted, and Bull forgets the irritating phenomenon. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... sensationally interesting story, let me recommend my readers to The Peril of Richard Pardon. Only one possible objection do I see to it, and that is a matter of my own private opinion, which is, that Richard Pardon is the most irritating idiot ever created by an author. For the sake of the story, it was necessary that he should be weak; but he is such a very backboneless man, and yet quite strong enough to support the fabric of the plot. Then one ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... townspeople liked him, but almost all considered him a joke, an oddity, a specimen to be pointed out to those of the summer people who were looking for "types." A few, like Mr. Gabriel Bearse, who distinctly did NOT understand him and who found his solemn suggestions and pointed repartee irritating at times, were inclined to refer to him in these moments of irritation as "town crank." But they did not really mean it when they said it. And some others, like Leander Babbitt or Captain Hunniwell, came to ask his advice on personal matters, ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... similar diseases in both sexes, and held in high estimation for this purpose; juice used as an ointment for sores and for sore nipples, and in connection with other herbs for cancer. Dispensatory: The juice of all of the genus has the property of "powerfully irritating the skin when applied to it," while nearly all are powerful emetics and cathartics. This species "has been highly commended as a remedy in dysentery after due depletion, ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... kept. A mud wall built around it was ornamented with skulls. The inside was very rough. Something like an altar stood in the center of the floor; and a fire of logs was kept burning before it, and never allowed to go out, filling the place with smoke, and irritating the eyes of two old Indians who tended it in half darkness. The Frenchmen were not allowed to look into a secret place where the temple treasure was kept. But, hearing it consisted of pearls and trinkets, Tonty ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... cleverness, even where most successful; clever attempted reproduction of what was conceived by another faculty, and foolishly let pass away. If I go on, even hurry the more to get on, with the printing,—it is to throw out and away from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, unlike the woman at her spinning-wheel, 'He thought of his flax on the whole far more than of his singing'—more of his life's ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Oxford, bespoke the attention of the English public to those elements in the national literature which come from the Celtic strain in its blood. Arnold knew very little Celtic, and his essay abounds in those airy generalisations which are so irritating to more plodding critics. His theory, e.g., that English poetry owes its sense for colour to the Celts, when taken up and stated nakedly by following writers, seems too absolute in its ascription of colour-blindness to the Teutonic races. Still, Arnold probably defined fairly ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the don'ts. Before beginning the massage have the face perfectly clean. Wash with tepid water and pure castile soap. Otherwise the dust and powder are kneaded into the pores and the result is frequently extremely irritating. ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... the life he led, by all his procession of sweethearts, by all his explorations in the kingdom of love, awoke before this singular child, so fresh, irritating, and inexplicable. He heard one o'clock strike, then two. He could not sleep at all. He was warm, he felt his heart beat and his temples throb, and he rose to open the window. A breath of fresh air ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... a candy parlor and watched people go by, swarming like bees along the walk. She remembered having heard or read somewhere the simile of a human hive. The shuffle of their feet, the hum of their voices droned in her cars, confusing her, irritating her, and she presently found herself hurrying away from it, walking rapidly eastward toward a thin fringe of trees which showed against a distant sky-line over a sea of roofs. She walked fast, and before ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... says Mr. Wilmarth, with a slow, irritating intonation that hardly conceals insolence, "feels able to advance for the three quarters, I can look after my share. I must confess that I am not an expert in mechanics, and may have been mistaken in some of my views. My late partner was very sanguine, while my temperament ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... would alone have been highly disturbing to Mr. Casaubon, but there were other reasons why Dorothea's words were among the most cutting and irritating to him that she could have been impelled to use. She was as blind to his inward troubles as he to hers: she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in her husband which claim our pity. She had not yet listened patiently to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... fact that Connor had to stay behind at Campote and could catch us up later, this attention on his part was one of the most generous things that ever happened to me, for certainly the pony he got from me was the most irritating piece of horseflesh imaginable. I am glad publicly to give him my warmest thanks again! Mr. Worcester was well mounted, too; he rode this day at two hundred and thirty-five pounds, and his kit must have weighed some thirty more, yet his little beast carried him soundly to Bambang, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... remain all the summer. 'Lina was glad, for since the fatal dress affair there had been but little harmony between herself and her brother. The tenderness awakened by her long illness seemed to have been forgotten, and Hugh's manner toward her was cold and irritating to the last degree, so that the young lady rejoiced to be freed from ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... cared for the earl's honour or her own. So little did he understand men! so tenacious was he of his ideas! She had almost forgotten the case of Dr. Shrapnel, and to see it shooting up again in the new path of her life was really irritating. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hesitation of the Imperial Government, and their indignation was roused by the fact that, in contravention of the settlement by Act of Parliament of the rights of Ireland, an Irish case had been heard in an English court of law, and decided by Lord Mansfield. The circumstances were irritating, and peculiarly calculated to shake the confidence of so sensitive a race in the sincerity of their rulers. Nor were there wanting persons who were ready to avail themselves, for factious purposes, of every fresh symptom of national disquietude to inflame the passions of the people. ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... accuse anyone, young gentlemen. It is very irritating, I know. But let us be slow about placing the charge at any man's door, be he copper colored ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... wooed and won despite her resistance, and in the teeth of strenuous rivalry; he was seized with a purely savage desire to wound her, to see her cry, to make her unhappy—anything, in fact, to rouse her from this irritating apathy. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... hunted, the irritating thought of the creature who had barked defiantly at him remained with Lupus, and was not softened by the fact that he missed two kills and failed to find other game. As a fact, he was in no real ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... artifice of intrigue that would find its opportunity between Cheddar and Bristol. The distance was not great—perhaps eighteen miles—by a fairly direct second-class road, and on this fine June evening it was still safe to count on three long hours of daylight. It was doubly irritating, therefore, to think that by his own lack of diplomacy he had almost forfeited Smith's confidence. Twice had the man been on the very brink of revelation, for he was one of those happy-go-lucky beings not fitted for the safeguarding ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... dressed Bruce put the last touch to his irritating caprices by asking Edith to take out of her hair a bandeau of blue that he had first asked her to put in. Every woman will know what agony that must have caused. The pretty fair hair was waved and arranged specially for this ornament, and when she took it out the whole scheme seemed to her ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... in regard to a review he was writing: "I began to warm in my gear, and am about to awake the whole controversy of Goth and Celt. I wish I may not make some careless blunders."[379] The criticisms of "J.B." became more frequent and more irritating to him as he felt a growing inability to achieve precision in details.[380] When Lockhart pointed out some lapses in his style, he wrote in his Journal, "Well! I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... scene and the easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began. Not noble, massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regularity in their positions, and possessing, now and then, flat tops to sit upon, but little irritating, comfortless rocks, littered about anyhow, by Nature; treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts of small shapes and small sizes, bruisers of tender toes and trippers- up of wavering feet. When these impediments were passed, ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... mildness of the symptoms arising merely from the primary action of the virus on the constitution, and that those symptoms which, as in the accidental cow-pox, affect the patient with severity, are entirely secondary, excited by the irritating processes of inflammation and ulceration; and it appears to me that this singular virus possesses an irritating quality of a peculiar kind, but as a single cow-pox pustule is all that is necessary ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... next night at a Mrs. Miltown's, a sister-in-law of Mrs. Brandon, And among my good resolutions bad been that of excusing myself, on some pretext or other, from going to it, for I did not know how to comply with Mr. Middleton's orders with respect to Henry, without irritating the latter in a way which I dreaded to encounter. What made me most uneasy was, that quite contrary to his usual habits, my uncle had announced his intention of going with us to this ball, and I could not help thinking that it was for ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... Oil "Kangaroo" Brand Recommended by the highest medical authorities for sick-room and household use as a general Antiseptic, Disinfectant and Deodorant. It is non-poisonous and non-irritating. Used the world over. Take no substitute but see that you get our ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... by these words, but she attributed them to the weakening and irritating influence of disease, and forgave them as quickly as they were uttered. She even yielded to his wishes so far as to offer to let him sit up in bed a little while. He gladly acceded to the proposal, and putting his arms around her neck, she slowly raised him ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... the room, looking at one object after another with what seemed to be a vacant stare, and then invariably bursting into an equally vacant laugh, a highly irritating process for those who had to watch it. He laughed very much over the hat, still more uproariously over the broken glass, but the blood on the sword point sent him into mortal convulsions of amusement. Then he turned ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... had one of his blind, sickening headaches. The familiar lumbering of wheels began, and the clanking of the wagon-chain. Despite jar and jolt he dozed at times, awakening to the scrape of the wheel on the leathern brake. After a while the rapid descent of the wagon changed to a roll, without the irritating rattle. He saw a narrow valley; on one side the green, slow-swelling cedar slope of the mountain; on the other the perpendicular red wall, with its pinnacles like spears against the sky. All day this backward outlook was the same, except that ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... That is natural enough, perhaps." She heaved another sigh. "His regiment—or rather the second battalion, to which he belongs—was ordered down to Plymouth last January, and since then has been occupied with drill and petty irritating duties at which he grumbles sorely—though I believe there is a prospect of their being ordered out ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... down in a day or two. It is very irritating. He can't "best" the law, as he calls it,' said George in ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... 'Has any one ever tried?' 'Oh yes, but it's never there when you look; he moves it away.'" His punchbowl may be seen here, his footprints there; but the greatest of his enterprises was certainly the Dyke. His purpose was to submerge or silence the irritating churches of the Weald, by digging a ditch that should let in the sea. He began one night from the North side, at Saddlescombe, and was working very well until he caught sight of the beams of a ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... and his manner were decidedly irritating. I had made a firm resolve to keep my temper, no matter what the result of this interview might be, but I could ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... at all from a lack of stirring news. Bonaparte's wonderful campaigns, (Austerlitz had just been heard of in New York,) the outrages on our sailors by English cruisers, our merchantmen plundered by French and Spanish privateers, the irritating behavior of the Dons in Louisiana, kept them abundantly supplied with this staff of mental life. But they did not care much for news in the abstract as news, unless they could work it up into political ammunition and discharge it at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... reason—is found to be an unnecessary, and not only a useless, but a pernicious addition, which simply impedes action, like a bridle fallen from a horse's head, and entangled in his legs and only irritating him. ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... who was stung to the quick by a certain indescribable yet most irritating superciliousness in Hawbury's tone—"Inglis milor, you sall see what you sall soffair. You sall die! Dere is no hope. You are condemn by de brigand. You also are condemn by me, for ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... but the tactual silence of the country is always most welcome after the din of town and the irritating concussions of the train. How noiseless and undisturbing are the demolition, the repairs and the alterations, of nature! With no sound of hammer or saw or stone severed from stone, but a music of rustles and ripe thumps on the grass come the fluttering leaves and mellow fruits ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... one's pockets diminished. And when the cable was finally dispatched it was either lost on the way, or reached its destination only to call forth, after anxious days, the disheartening response: "Impossible at present. Making every effort." It is fair to add that, tedious and even irritating as many of these transactions were, they were greatly eased by the sudden uniform good-nature of the French functionary, who, for the first time, probably, in the long tradition of his line, broke through its fundamental ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Matilda smiled in an irritating manner. "There was a resuscitation of the family portraits, too, dear," she remarked. "You must allow that Jack selected them ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... has anywhere shown itself unduly, or in a way irritating to others, I ask forgiveness. Whenever peace is made, the world will need a peace built on all the facts of human nature. I have tried to give here some of those which war passions inevitably obscure. That is the whole of ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... hours. Any good effects of tobacco become with me uncertain in proportion to the frequency of smoking. The good effects are those commonly ascribed to it: it seems to soothe away small worries, and to restore little irritating incidents to their true proportions. On a few occasions I have thought it gave me a mental fillip, and enabled me to start with work I had been pausing over; and it nearly always has the power to produce ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... I fell into a fierce argument, which became painful, mainly, I think, because of Hugh's vehemence and what I can only call violence. He reiterates his consciousness of his own stupidity in an irritating way. The point was this. He maintained that it was uncharitable to say, 'What a bad sermon So-and-so preached,' and not uncharitable to say, 'Well, it is better than the sickening stuff one generally hears'; uncharitable to say, 'What nasty ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... give their farewell dinner to Heavy Tree Hill. They talked but little together: since the rebuff his enthusiastic confidences had received from Van Loo, Barker had been grave and thoughtful, and Stacy, with the irritating recollection of Van Loo's criticisms in his mind, had refrained from his usual rallying of Barker. Oddly enough, they spoke chiefly of Jack Hamlin,—till then personally a stranger to them, on account of his ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... Tribunal, whose verdict could not be doubtful."—Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 431, 436, 441. Speech by Robespierre, Thermidor 8, year II... ". Machiavellian designs against the small fund-holders of the State.. .. A contemptible financial system, wasteful, irritating, devouring, absolutely independent of your supreme oversight.... Anti-revolution exists in the financial department.... Who are its head administrators? Brissotins, Feuillants, aristocrats and well-known knaves—the Cambons, the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... at the black figure inquiringly. It was not often that poor, cringing Jocko ventured to question him. "Yes, sloop," he said with an emphasis born of his irritating disappointment. ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... was substantially the same as the first, and the measure was carried rapidly through its preliminary stage, and on July 8 it passed the second reading by a majority of 136. The Government, however, in Committee was met night after night by an irritating cross-fire of criticism; repeated motions for adjournment were made; there was a systematic division of labour in the task of obstruction. In order to promote delay, the leaders of the Opposition stood up again and again ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... the useless and irritating things in this world, lines are probably the most useless and the most irritating. In fact, I only know of two people who ever got any good out of them. Dunstable, of Day's, was one, Linton, of Seymour's, the other. For a portion of one winter term they flourished on lines. The more ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... had an irritating habit of taking her a little way into his confidence and then leaving the rest to an imagination which was utterly inadequate to ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... you like, but hurry. Breakfast is almost ready;" then to Martha, "Leave the sweeping, deary, and run down to the spring for the cream." To her father, Mary explained: "The little girls are a great help. Betty manages to do for the boys without irritating them. Now we'll eat while the cakes are ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... a lustre to the Sun of Peace that should never be dimmed by the black clouds of Militarism! And all this was not to be? He had never even heard that Liege had fallen, let alone Brussels, and here were the Germans apparently right round the Allied flank. It was astounding, irritating. In a vague way he felt deceived and staggered. It was a disillusionment! If the Germans were across the Sambre, the French could scarcely launch their victorious attack on ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... 'successful after he was dead.' Then comes the great group, the 'middle-of-the-road' people, who walk along, slowly developing, supporting the churches and schools, holding today's standards and ideals—the people who live in today and who make up the fabric of the world. They are sometimes irritating but they hold what has been gained and they gradually grow. Then there is a group behind, what the French call the 'unfinished' infants—the defectives, the moral and physical imbeciles, the backward and incompetent. We must ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... for calling you by your name, but do you know I feel as if any prefix in your case would be irritating, from the fact that you strike me as a girl who is utterly above and beyond such idle conventionalities. One would almost as soon think of saying ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... fish dried in sugar, crabs in sugar, beans in sugar, and fruits in vinegar and pepper. All this is atrocious, but above all unexpected and unimaginable. The little women make me eat, laughing much, with that perpetual, irritating laugh which is peculiar to Japan—they make me eat, according to their fashion, with dainty chop-sticks, fingered with affected grace. I am becoming accustomed to their faces. The whole effect is refined—a refinement so entirely different from our own that at first sight I understand ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... almost entirely political and in no way threatens the commercial integrity. Both the Dutchman and the Englishman agree on the whole larger proposition and the necessity of settling once and for all a trouble that carries with it the danger of sporadic outbreak or worse. Now we come to the whole irritating labor trouble which has neither color, caste, nor creed, ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... of the victim. Rose, however, vowed she did not and would not believe it, and my mother made the same declaration, though not, I fear, with the same amount of real, unwavering incredulity. It seemed to dwell continually on her mind, and she kept irritating me from time to time by such expressions as—'Dear, dear, who would have thought it!—Well! I always thought there was something odd about her.—You see what it is for women to affect to be different to other people.' And once it was,—'I ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... and shake itself clear of sleep more swiftly, and to bestir itself with an activity unfamiliar even to a town of so active a character. The cause for this unwonted bustle was not easy to ascertain with precision. Somehow or other rumors, vague, fantastic, contradictory, perplexing, irritating, bewildering, had blown hither and thither as it were along the eaves and through chinks of windows and under doorways, as an autumn wind carries the dried dead leaves. These were rumors of some event of moment to the Republic that either had happened, or was about to happen, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Every bonne and every house-keeper struggles for the first chance to buy the fish;—young girls and children dance in the water for delight, all screaming, "Rhal bois-canot!"... Then as the boat is pulled through the surf and hauled up on the sand, the pushing and screaming and crying become irritating and deafening; the fishermen lose patience and say terrible things. But nobody heeds them in the general clamoring and haggling and furious bidding for the pousson- ououge, the dorades, the volants (beautiful purple-backed flying-fish with silver bellies, and fins ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... finally acquitted Edmee herself gave evidence for me. She was still far from well but answered clearly all the irritating and maddening questions that were put to her. When she said to the president of the court, "Everything which to you seems inexplicable in my conduct finds its justification in one word: I love him!" I could not help crying out, "Let them ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... coldness, hunger, and thirst of animals, these motions of vegetables in closing up their flowers must be ascribed to the disagreeable sensation, and not to the irritation of cold. Others close up their leaves during darkness, which, like the former, cannot be owing to irritation, as the irritating material is withdrawn. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... and mischievous, but I acknowledge I have sometimes felt a pleasure in irritating, by the cast of a pebble, those who stretch forward to the full extent of the chain their open and frothy mouths against me. I shall seize upon this conjecture of yours, and say everything that comes into my head on the subject. Beside which, if any collateral ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... But it is irritating to think what diamonds, what dazzling silver of Shavian wit has been sunk in such an out-of-date warship. In The Philanderer there are five hundred excellent and about five magnificent things. The rattle of repartees between the doctor and ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... why the two nations, having finally fought their differences to a finish, should not share the high seas in peaceful rivalry; but the irritating problems of protection and reciprocity survived to plague and hamper commerce. It was difficult for England to overcome the habit of guarding her trade against foreign invasion. Agreeing with the United States to waive all discriminating duties between the ports of the ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... then, I cannot but regard it as fortunate that you are only engaged to your obedient Microcosm: a biped inheriting some of the traits of his mother, the Kosmos, its untidiness, its largeness, its irritating imperfection and its profound and hearty intention to go on existing as long as it ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... was speaking he was performing the operation known as "washing the hands with invisible soap," a trick which always has an irritating effect upon ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... May there occurred one of those wet spells which are so irritating "growing weather" of course, but very tiresome to those who felt the joy of spring escaping them. Week after week it was too damp, or the winds were too sharp, or the roads too heavy for quick driving, and thus the month of all months went out of the calendar ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... to-morrow. The only fear I have is in the weather. All the other combinations are good. I want to keep up the delusion of an attack on Mobile and the Alabama River, and therefore would be obliged if you would keep up an irritating foraging or other expedition ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to change the current of his thoughts. They wanted round collars, and deep collars, and fichus, and edges, and a hundred little irritating things. Young Ried, usually so gracious and patient, had much ado to keep from showing his annoyance over the ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... afterwards told her that she should always avoid irritating the peculiar humors of her companions. "You," said she, "would not have minded waiting for the other bonnet a day or two, but to Louisa it ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... love her husband, for the mere reason, perhaps, that she was told it was her duty to love him and that it had become her second nature, a principle and a law of her conscience to resist inwardly all moral constraint." She affected a most irritating gentleness, an exasperating submissiveness. When she put on her superior, resigned airs, it was enough to unhinge an angel. Besides, what was there to complain about, and why should she not accommodate herself to conditions of existence with which so many ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... of inference went home. It was the first of many. Kenny fought back his temper. Affronted, he crossed the room and laid a roll of bills upon the table. Craig counted them with an irritating ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... infant, for so delicate and susceptible is the structure of its alimentary canal, that disease is but too frequently caused by that which was resorted to in the first instance as a remedy. The bowels should always be kept free; but then it must be by the mildest and least irritating means. ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... men aboard with a letter from the agent in San Francisco, which agent was irritating on account of slowness, and had weedy-looking ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... dragons, which have been the delight of the Italian gardener ever since the days of Pliny. He wore his hair neither long nor short, but the silky locks were carefully parted in the middle and smoothed back in rich dark waves. There was something almost irritating in their unnatural smoothness, in the perfect transparency of the man's healthy olive complexion, in the mouselike sleekness of his long arching eyebrows, and in the perfect self-satisfaction and confidence of his rather insolent reddish-brown ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... him that he had exterminated Hanno's last cohorts;—as to the elephants, they were being hunted in the woods, he was arming the foot-soldiers, the horses were on their way; and the Numidian rolled his eyes like a woman and smiled in an irritating manner as he stroked the ostrich feather which fell upon his shoulder. In his presence Matho was at a ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... rounding the great curves of the globe. The long deck made a white spot in the sharp black circle of the ocean and in the intense sea-light, while the shadow of the smoke-streamers trembled on the familiar floor, the shoes of fellow-passengers, distinctive now, and in some cases irritating, passed and repassed, accompanied, in the air so tremendously "open," that rendered all voices weak and most remarks rather flat, by fragments of opinion on the run of the ship. Vogelstein by this time had finished his little American story and now definitely judged that Pandora Day was not at ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... number of big masks in the corner. On the table was his belated breakfast, and it was a confoundedly exasperating thing for me, Kemp, to have to sniff his coffee and stand watching while he came in and resumed his meal. And his table manners were irritating. Three doors opened into the little room, one going upstairs and one down, but they were all shut. I could not get out of the room while he was there; I could scarcely move because of his alertness, and there was a draught down my back. Twice I strangled a sneeze ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... d'affaires, was intriguing to excite the north of Europe against France. He repeatedly received orders to obtain the insertion of irritating articles in the 'Correspondent'. He was an active, intriguing, and spiteful little man, and a declared enemy of France; but fortunately his stupidity and vanity rendered him less dangerous than he wished to be. He was universally detested, and he would have lost all credit but that the extensive ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... letters were answered a fortnight or so after they were received. There was no sense of urgency or hurry. We might have been corresponding about a monument to be erected at a remote date to some one still alive and quite young. This, if slightly irritating, gave me a feeling of great confidence in the Chaplains' Department of the War Office. It was evidently a body which worked methodically, carefully, and with due consideration of every step it took. Its affairs were likely to ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... in the most cool, high, irritating voice she could command, 'really, of votes for women hardly enters into our argument here. As a matter of fact, I take no interest in any kind of politics, and, I may be entirely wrong, but if I were compelled to take sides on the subject, I ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... insisted that Ireland was made the victim of our English parsimony; not once and away, but systematically. This happens to be a charge peculiarly irritating to all parties—to the authors of the parsimony, and to its objects. And, says Sir Robert, I am told to avoid it as secondary; but observe, it is quite substantial enough, as others say, to justify "an impeachment." This is the honourable barrister's word; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... rapidly filled; but, as she was not more than an oar's length from the shore, they (the crew) succeeded in reaching it before she sank. The keel, in all probability, had touched the back of the animal, which, irritating him, occasioned this furious attack; and had he got his upper jaw above the gunwale, the whole broadside must have been torn out. The force of the shock from beneath, previously to the attack, was so violent, that her stern ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... the back pages once more he encountered the golden-haired-girl story, and although one paper featured it a bit because of some imaginary clue, the others treated it casually, making public the information that the body still lay at the Morgue, a silent, irritating thing of mystery. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... in this brief review of Anglo-American relations to outline the more important controversies that have arisen between the two countries. They have been sufficiently numerous and irritating to jeopardize seriously the peace which has so happily subsisted for one hundred years between the two great members of the English-speaking family. After all, they have not been based on any fundamental conflict of policy, ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... scarcely entered before the telephone renewed its irritating clamor, like a fretful child which yelled whenever it heard his footstep. He responded to its fretfulness in very much the same mood, seizing hold of the receiver as though he ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... its forms the development was unpleasing and discouraging to Ibsen; the success of the blank-verse tragedies of Andreas Munch (Salomon de Caus, 1855; Lord William Russell, 1857) was, for instance, an irritating step in the wrong direction. The new-born school of prose fiction, with Bjoernson as its head (Synnoeve Solbakken, 1857; Arne, 1858), with Camilla Collett's Prefect's Daughters, 1855, as its herald; with Oestgaard's sketches of peasant life and humors ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... spends not much," says the second character. "So little," is the reply, "that I dare wager the French King spends more in Pages and Laquays, than he of Spain among all his Court Attendants." Buckingham's train jeered at the abstemious fare they received.[284] It was in such irritating contrast to the lofty airs of those who provided it. "We are still extream poor," writes the English Ambassador about the Court of Madrid, "yet as proud as Divells, yea even as rich Divells."[285] Not only ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... of the work of that Administration. It had been incessant work, and its great successes of later years had been checkered by some disappointments, which, although not deep-reaching, were irritating and disturbing. Some of his most capable colleagues had broken away from him, and he probably began to feel that the reformers all over the country expected more of him than he saw his way to accomplish. In 1834 he asked to be relieved from the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Book,' which contains the whole of the correspondence immediately preceding the war, will at once show the patient efforts put forth by the London Cabinet to maintain peace. There are no irritating words used, and the last despatch of importance before the outbreak of hostilities, dealing with the insinuations just alluded to, is not only most courteous and conciliatory in tone, but it states that the Queen's Government will give the most solemn guarantees against any attack ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... exclaimed in a tone caught from her brother, and which would have been irritating to Stanwell if it had ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... against it in vigorous fashion. Leaving Colonel Fry to follow with the main body of troops, Washington set out on April 2, 1754, with two companies from Alexandria, where he had been recruiting amidst most irritating difficulties. He reached Will's Creek three weeks later; and then his real troubles began. Captain Trent, the timid and halting envoy, who had failed to reach the French, had been sent out by the wise authorities to build a fort at the junction of the ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... last word of the rover's defiant answer. It was a very irritating word to the temper of the good Mrs. Sprowl. This was the first time (she thought) she had ever heard the mild and benignant schoolmaster swear; but she was not much surprised, believing that it was scarcely in the power of man to endure what he had that ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... from a messenger, and he conquers Government!' It struck me that the epitome of his life had been played in a day: I was quite incredulous of downright good fortune. He had been giving a dinner followed by a concert, and the deafening strains of the music clashed with my acerb spirit, irritating me excessively. 'Where are those men you spoke of?' I asked her. 'Gone,' she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sing; loud voices, singing in unison, fill the workshop; the song has no room there; it strikes against the stones of the walls, it moans and weeps and reanimates the heart by a soft tickling pain, irritating ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... all these features of the landscape with silent dissatisfaction, as he smoked steadily up and down the platform, waiting for the Maritime Express. It is usually irritating to arrive at the station on time for a train on the Intercolonial Railway. The arrangement is seldom mutual; and sometimes yesterday's train does not come along until to-morrow afternoon. Moreover, Hemenway was inwardly ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... truly irritating and annoying. Apparently Sir Charles must wait that gentleman's return. He wrote a line, begging Mr. Boddington to send him Lady Bassett's address in a cab immediately on ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... cares of the day fret you, and begin to wear upon you, and you chafe under the friction,—be calm. Stop, rest for a moment, and let calmness and peace assert themselves. If you let these irritating outside influences get the better of you, you are confessing your inferiority to them, by permitting them to dominate you. Study the disturbing elements, each by itself, bring all the will power of your nature to bear upon them, and you will find that they will, one by one, melt into nothingness, ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... learning on credible authority that Sir Charles's name was still one to conjure with in India, it clearly became his duty to bid his son seek out and secure whatever modicum of advantage—in the matter of advice and introductions—might be derivable from so irritating a source. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... disposition renders it frequently necessary to send detachments of the military to disperse them; but the utmost care is taken to prevent any fatal circumstances from attending these acts of needful hostility, and orders are uniformly issued never to fire upon the natives, unless any particularly irritating act should render such a measure expedient. They are amazingly expert at throwing the spear, and will launch it with unerring aim to a distance of thirty to sixty yards. I myself have seen a lad hurl his spear ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... her, "let me give you a little piece of wisdom from my own experience: The gnawings of ungratified curiosity are often very irritating, but we should remember that the gnawings of gratified curiosity are ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... benevolent despot, and with Morocco, accordingly, Congress succeeded in making a treaty. But nothing could be done with the other pirate states without paying blackmail. Few scenes in our history are more amusing, or more irritating, than the interview of John Adams with an envoy from Tripoli in London. The oily-tongued barbarian, with his soft voice and his bland smile, asseverating that his only interest in life was to do good and make other people happy, stands out in fine contrast with the blunt, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Herod of what he had heard. So when he related to the king Alexander's ill temper, as discovered by the words he had heard him speak, he was easily believed by him; and he thereby brought the king to that pass, turning him about by his words, and irritating him, till he increased his hatred to him and made him implacable, which he showed at that very time, for he immediately gave Eurycles a present of fifty talents; who, when he had gotten them, went to Archclaus, king of Cappadocia, and commended Alexander ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... She had rejected and still shuddered at her advice to remove the singer from her path; for an inner voice warned her not to burden her soul now with a fresh crime, which would disturb its peace. Besides, she had at first been much attracted by this charming, winning creature; but the irritating thought that Antony had bestowed the same gift upon the sovereign and the artist's daughter still so incensed her, that it taxed to the utmost her graciousness and self-control as, without addressing any special person, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... atmosphere; quite intangible, and quite perceptible. Larry was discovering that he was something of an anomaly. "Only an R.C. by accident," as he had heard someone say, in apparent extenuation (a benevolence that he found irritating). He was learning the meaning of the sudden silences, the too obvious changes of the course of conversation, that seemed to occur when he drew near. He had not, as yet, formulated these things to himself, but, on this turbulent afternoon, it was possibly some ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... defense of Shelley's abandoned wife. It had become the fashion to refer to her slightingly, and to suggest that she had not been without blame for Shelley's behavior. A Shelley biography by Professor Dowden, Clemens had found particularly irritating. In the midst of his tangle of the previous year he had paused to give it attention. There were times when Mark Twain wrote without much sequence, digressing this way and that, as his fancy led him, charmingly and entertainingly enough, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... affectionate mistress, but discreet rather by training than disposition the favours she accorded me were of the most insignificant description. She was lavish of nothing but her kisses, but kisses are rather irritating than soothing. I used to be nearly wild with love. She told me, like other virtuous women, that if she agreed to make me happy she was sure I would not marry her, and that as soon as I made her my wife she would be mine and mine only. She did not think I was married, for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... other and she felt sure that she was right. On the other hand she could not afford to show the least coldness to Del Ferice, lest he should suppose that she was annoyed at being disturbed in her conversation with Orsino. The situation was irritating to her, but she made the best of it and began to talk to Del Ferice about the speech he had made on the previous evening. He had spoken well, and she found it easy to be just and flattering at the ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... the major operations in Billings County. They had their cabin in a coulee west of the Big Ox Bow, forty miles south of Medora, in the wildest part of the Bad Lands, and "worked the country" from there north and south. They seldom stole from white men, recognizing the advisability of not irritating their neighbors too much, but drove off Indian ponies in herds. Their custom was to steal Sioux horses from one of the reservations, keep them in the Scoria Hills a month or more until all danger of pursuit ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... installed himself in August, in the midst of all the confusion and with the workmen still all around him. It was a dreadful condition of things, the upturned ground, the empty chambers, the chill of new plaster, and an irritating sense of things not finished and pushed along in haste; but he was exultant, and distracted his own attention by admiring the beauty of the ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... garlic-venders—may be as illustrious as you choose, but to me they are as irritating as the product of the country. This is a town ruled by people who teach distrust, superstition, and hatred of the whole human race. When we have leisure I will relate to you an occurrence—an adventure, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... his right hand. On his left, Netta, looking literally like 'a rose in June,' and receiving the very marked attentions of Captain Dancy, on one side, and of Mr Rice Rice, junior, on the other. He scarcely knew which was most irritating, 'the idioms,' or her affected giggle. Trite but true is the proverb, 'There is no rose without its thorn;' and Howel was pricked severely by the thorns surrounding the rose of his first ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... read only what we already think, or have been schooled into considering glorious, axiomatic, and British. As there are parts of Milton's prose-writings that would be even now as discomposing and irritating to an orthodox Briton as to an orthodox Spaniard or Russian, a genuine British reader might be expected perhaps to tend to those parts by preference. Hence there is something not wholly pleasing in the exclusive rush in our country now-a-days upon the Areopagitica as representative ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... do what they are told. It is not that they are not willing, but that they are stupid. No one would believe that people could be so stupid. They drive me well nigh to madness sometimes, and it is the more irritating because, against stupidity, one is powerless. Beating a man or knocking him down may do him good if he is obstinate, or if he is careless, but when he is simply stupid it only makes him more stupid than before. You might as well batter ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... to task for my irritating mannerisms! But let me tell you, you are no less unpleasant. You are ridiculous and thoroughly selfish. I know now what the trouble is: the wall— with it, we were happy, now we ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand
... as the danger continued not a cloud arose in our relation. I bear him this testimony with the most unfeigned satisfaction; nor am I without pride when I look back upon my own behavior. For surely no two men were ever left in a position so invidious and irritating. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... was thunderstruck. Also he was visibly annoyed. The salt which Mr. Jellicoe had so adroitly sprinkled on the constabulary tail appeared to develop irritating properties, for when Thorndyke had given him a brief outline of the facts he stuck his hands in his ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... old B. de Perthes (1788-1868. See footnote below.) was not rather more honourably mentioned. I would suggest whether you could not leave out some references to the 'Principles;' one for the real student is as good as a hundred, and it is rather irritating, and gives a feeling of incompleteness to the general reader to be often referred to other books. As you say that you have gone as far as you believe on the species question, I have not a word to say; but I must feel convinced that ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... good deal which I should otherwise, in the frame of mind in which I then was, have impatiently shunned. For it only too often happened that in the Councillor's characteristic extravagance there was mingled much that was dull and tiresome; and it was in a special degree irritating to me that, as often as I turned the conversation upon music, and particularly upon singing, he was sure to interrupt me, with that sardonic smile upon his face and those repulsive singing tones of his, by some remark of a quite opposite tendency, very often of a commonplace character. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... more complex. Since Jeremy Collier let off his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, there has never lacked a critic to chastise or to deplore—the more effective and irritating course—not simply the coarseness but, the immorality of our old comedies, their attitude towards and their peculiar interests in life. Without affirming that we are now come to the Golden Age of criticism, one may rejoice that modern ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Bundy's ear, but it was easy to see that it didn't reverberate in her fancy. She had no idea of the picture it would have been natural for him to desire that Mrs. Ryves should present to him, and she was therefore unable to estimate the points in respect to which his actual impression was irritating. She had indeed no adequate conception of the intellectual requirements of a young man in love. She couldn't tell him why their faultless friend was so isolated, so unrelated, so nervously, shrinkingly proud. On the other hand she could tell him (he knew it already) that she had passed ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... laughed would be to express the matter feebly. That his young opponent, who had been irritating him unspeakably since the beginning of the game with advice and criticism, should have done exactly what he had cautioned him, the farmer, against a moment before, struck him as being the finest example of poetic justice he had ever heard of, and he signalized ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... would, for example, direct him not to allow an examination into matters so remote in time from the case in hand that they can have no bearing on the credibility of the witness; not to allow questions to be put which are plainly malicious and asked for the purpose of irritating the witness; and not to allow any examination into transactions which, though they may have a bearing on the character of a witness, have none on his credibility, e.g., an inquiry, in a murder case, of a witness in good ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... deliberately, "that it is one of those cases where you should have exercised a little more discrimination. This is a small neighborhood, and I find it irritating to be continually running up against ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... most. There was a thought yet nearer, a more prevailing, more impetuous concern. How Henry would think, and feel, and look, when he returned on the morrow to Northanger and heard of her being gone, was a question of force and interest to rise over every other, to be never ceasing, alternately irritating and soothing; it sometimes suggested the dread of his calm acquiescence, and at others was answered by the sweetest confidence in his regret and resentment. To the general, of course, he would not dare to speak; but to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... poor animals have a stain in their pedigree. In summer time, when flies are troublesome, we may often see a long-tailed brood mare at grass protecting both herself and her suckling foal from these irritating pests by the free use of her tail; but docked mares are deprived of this means of driving away insects, and have been known to unwittingly injure their young by kicking and plunging violently in their ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... night-porter, and after some brief explanation, Pierrette got out, wished us a merry "Bon jour!" and disappeared. Then, with the Count mounted at my side, I backed out into the roadway, and we were soon speeding along that switchback of a road with dozens of dangerous turns and irritating tram-lines that leads past Eze into the tiny Principality of His Royal Highness Prince Rouge et Noir—the paradise of gamblers, thieves, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... wasn't the fashion to wear them when you were young. I mean younger than you are now," she added, patting my cheek. "I am glad, Fred, that you are reconciled to the house. I know that I have been a thorn in your flesh for the last eighteen months on account of it. I didn't mean to be irritating about the moving, but I was, and my soul has been wearing sackcloth and ashes ever since because I was so nasty. You see, Fred, in the first place, though I pretended to be pleased at your selecting the house, I was really dreadfully disappointed, ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... sitting; another snapped off a tree-trunk like—well, as a 4.2 does snap off a tree-trunk. Most ominous sign of all—when the seven shots had been fired, three ugly-looking holes ringed themselves round the colonel's hut. Next, a Hun aeroplane, with irritating sauciness, circled above our camp, not more than five hundred feet up. Our "Archies" made a lot of noise, and enjoyed their customary success: the Hun airman sailed calmly ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... though you've been making the pace a cracker. There is nothing that is irritating Barney in the least. If he's putting on any airs it is because he is frisky and not safe for you to drive. How did Julius happen to let you ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... a state of diseased susceptibility that the most innocent words from Captain Wybrow would have been irritating to her, as the whirr of the most delicate wing will afflict a nervous patient. But this tone of benevolent remonstrance was intolerable. He had inflicted a great and unrepented injury on her, and now he assumed ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... left the body by the way. Duff Lindsay, so eminently responsive and calculable, came running with open arms; in his rejoiceful eye-beam one saw almost a midwife to one's idea. But the comparison was irritating, and after a time she turned from it. She awoke once in the night, moreover, to declare to the stars that she was less worried by the consideration of Arnold's sex than she would have thought it possible to be—one hardly paused to consider that he was a man at all; a reflection which would ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... Oh how good, how good that was! No captious old woman flyting and complaining at every mouthful. No laughing noisy gossips. No irritating interferences. No constant demand on her attention or sympathy. She sat and drank and thanked God with every mouthful; and with grateful tears promised Him to live a good life, and do her ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... of him, that your misfortune, dreadful as it is, has not impaired his esteem; you, in return, owe him the same affection and confidence; I desire it of you as a friend, and demand it of you as a parent and a sovereign. Make good use of the pity that pleads in my breast in your behalf—-and dread irritating me, lest I throw aside the father, and act wholly as a prince." This discourse, so far from softening the Princess, redoubled her distraction, and she discovered so much rage of temper to the Count, that he deferred, ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... nothing that would give me any light whatever pertaining to the subject. It winds up thus, that it may be a germ that irritates the pneumogastric nerve. I go off as blank and empty as the fish lakes on the moon. I supposed writers would say something in reference to the irritating influence of this disease on the nerves and muscles that would contract or convulsively shorten the muscles that attach at the one end to the os hyoid, and at the other end at various points along the neck, and force the hyoid back against the pneumogastric nerve, hypoglossal, cervical, or some ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... becomes a luxury, the pursuit of game in a tropical country is attended with immense fatigue and exhaustion. The intense heat of the sun, the dense and suffocating exhalations from swampy districts, the constant and irritating attacks from insects, all form drawbacks to sport that can only be lessened by excellent servants and by the most perfect arrangements for shelter and supplies. I have tried all methods of travelling, and I generally manage to combine ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... a certainty of this being the case that he had come down, and now that there was nothing between him and the prize but a window and this spying lad, the position was irritating ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... terms of the Edict of Nantes in so far as to allow the establishment of Catholic worship in the places which were under their control. Their public attacks on the Blessed Eucharist and on the Pope were very irritating to their countrymen, but Henry IV., who was a good king deeply interested especially in the welfare of the lower classes, continued to keep the peace between both parties. His sympathies were, however, with the Protestants of Germany, and he was actually on his way to take part in a war against ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... elapsed between the opening and the closing of the door Jock's glance swept the three men—Bartholomew Berg, quiet, inscrutable, seated at his great table-desk; Griebler, lost in the depths of a great leather chair, smoking fussily and twitching with a hundred little restless, irritating gestures; Sam Hupp, standing at the opposite side of the room, hands ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... theories evolved in order to explain the mystery. The metaphysicians do not throw much light on the subject, and as for materialistic science, listen to what Huxley says: "How it comes about that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about by the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the genie when Aladdin ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... of war by France, now a republic, against England, precipitated upon the Government of the United States a number of difficult and troublesome questions of international law. They were especially irritating because of the personal feelings involved in their discussion and settlement. A profound sense of gratitude to France for assistance in the late revolutionary struggle, was felt by all classes in America, while the Republicans were especially open and undisguised in their expressions of sympathy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... cleaning up his ring, [1] and that he had better go to another goldsmith. Without further provocation he retorted that I was a donkey; whereupon I said that he was not speaking the truth; that I was a better man than he in every respect, but that if he kept on irritating me I would give him harder kicks than any donkey could. He related the matter to the Cardinal, and painted me as black as the devil in hell. Two days afterwards I shot a wild pigeon in a cleft high up behind the palace. The bird was brooding in that cleft, and I had often seen a goldsmith ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... he was exhibiting the brilliant combustion of phosphorus in oxygen gas. The white fumes of phosphorous acid floated out into the air, and began to diffuse themselves through the hall towards the ventilation outlets at the sides and rear. To one who knew the irritating nature of these fumes it seemed inevitable that the hall must be emptied of its crowded audience in a few minutes. Already coughing had begun on the front seats, when Mr. Hewitt, who was seated on the platform, ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... those aimless on-lookers, ever ready for the making of crowds, surged forward. The wagon was blocking the way. We realised with shame that Sudleigh, too, was here, to say nothing of sister towns less irritating to our pride. It was Uncle Eli Pike who stepped ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... for the attorney to retain his enigmatical smiles as he climbed the stairs to the TIMES office. He was angry, but he knew the value of that irritating smile that hinted superiority and a knowledge of hidden details. He needed it in ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler |
