"Nagging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over her cheeks. "Oh, you poor lamb—please don't look so awful! It was my fault. I put you up to this with my nagging about Gramps." ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... Clay, with a yawn. He put down his banjo, stretched, and stood up. Behind him the bullets pattered merrily against the iron plating. "Why on earth do you two keep on nagging? Look at me—I'm half drunk as usual, and I'm as happy as a lord. Take a peg, each of you, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... act revealed the stern and heroic Communist maintaining his views despite the reproaches of father and mother and the nagging of his wife. It showed also the Anarchist brother (as might be expected from the Bolshevik hostility to Anarchism) as an unruly, lazy, ne'er-do-well, with a passionate love for Sonia, the young bourgeoise, which was likely to become dangerous ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... in my eyes, and I knew that Madame Renard was boiling with rage, for she kept on nagging at me: 'Oh, how horrid! Don't you see that he is robbing you of your fish? Do you think that you will catch anything? Not even a frog, nothing whatever. Why, my hands are tingling, just to think ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... escaped the sin of despising the physically strong—a sin against which the physically weak must guard. But here was Dawes returning again and again to the subject of the University, full of transparent jealousy and petty spite, nagging, nagging, nagging, like a maiden lady who has not been invited to a tea-party. Rickie wondered whether, after all, Ansell and the extremists might not be right, and bodily beauty and strength be signs of ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... other." So he ceased not running and the other followed after him, but being unable to catch him he returned to his guests and served them with somewhat of bread and so forth, whilst the woman kept blaming him and nagging about the matter of the geese which she said had been carried off, but which had been given by her to her lover. The husband enjoined her to silence; however she would not hold her peace[FN489] and on this wise he was balked of the meal to feed his wife's friend. And now (quoth Shahrazad) ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... could be brought to England for trial, should be put into operation against the colonial agitators. When the Virginia legislature protested against this step, it was dissolved. Hillsborough and North acted as though they believed that a policy of scolding and nagging, if made sufficiently disagreeable, would bring the colonists to their senses. That the Whigs did not cease to pour contempt and ridicule on the folly of such behaviour was probably one reason why the government persisted in its course. ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... him to a finish. He was not the man to endure much pressure, and the more they urged the more resentful he became. Finally, he began to feel a bitter dislike for the prior, the man who annoyed him most. One day, when the prior was nagging him about the picture, wanting to know why he didn't get to work upon it again, and when would it be finished, Leonardo said suavely: "If you will sit for the head of Judas, I'll be able to finish the picture at once." ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... am, I tell you. I'm not grumbling, am I? I know as well as you do she's miles too good for me. Haven't I said so? Then what the devil do you keep on nagging at me for, eh? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... Mrs. Fraser did not like her husband's niece. He often heard her scolding or nagging Helen at her work, and noticed that the latter never answered back. But once, after Mrs. Angus's tongue had been especially bitter, he met the girl hurrying along the hall from the kitchen with her eyes full ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... regretted having forced him to leave? On my word, the poor Tuer deserved pity. Overcome by sea-sickness, he had not the will even to loosen his sash or rid himself of his weapons. The hunting knife with the big handle dug into his ribs. His revolver bruised his leg, and the final straw was the nagging of Tartarin-Sancho, who never ceased whining and carping:—"Imbecile! Va! I warned you didn't I?.... But you had to go to Africa!.... Well now you're on your way, ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... is far, alas, from having twenty thousand a year. The full enjoyment of these luxuries, on Ambrose Tester's part, was dependent naturally, on the death of his father, who was still very much to the fore at the time I first knew the young man. The proof of it is the way he kept nagging at his sons, as the younger used to say, on the question of taking a wife. The nagging had been of no avail, as I have mentioned, with regard to Francis, the elder, whose affections were centred (his brother himself ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... But, as I have said, I cannot see that this matter is of importance. The patch has to be hoed, the pie to be cooked; the one cannot do the both. Settle it between you, and, having settled it, agree to do each your own work free from this everlasting nagging. ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... Government rations unless they were worth having. The great point that has brought the Germans into disrepute with the natives employed by them is their military spirit, which gives rise to a desire to regulate everything; and that other attribute of the military spirit, nagging. You should never nag an African, it only makes him bothered and then sulky, and when he's sulky he'll lie down and die to spite you. But in spite of the Germans being over-given to this unpleasant ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... father's wishes. They could easily do that, or thought they could, by making life at the ranch unbearable for him. That, he was convinced, was the reason that Betty had adopted her cold, severe, and contemptuous attitude toward him. She expected he would find her nagging and bossing intolerable, that he would leave in a rage and allow her and Taggart to come into possession of the property. Neither she nor Taggart would dare make off with the money and the idol as long as he was at the ranch, for they would ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... through the school, I noted everywhere a happy and courteous relation between pupils and teachers. They spoke pleasantly to one another. I heard no nagging or scolding. I saw no one sulking or pouting or in bad temper. And yet there was every evidence of respect and obedience on the part of the pupils. There was none of that happy-go-lucky comradeship which I have sometimes seen in other modern schools, and which leads the pupil to understand ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... a long period of blessed darkness, of peace, of non-remembering, then his mind clawed upward toward consciousness. The fear and uncertainty were with him again—nagging, nibbling, gnawing ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... only a tiny, nagging, disturbing thought in his mind. It had to do with Mike Fueyo and the Silent Spooks, and a lot of red Cadillacs. But he pushed it resolutely away. It had nothing to do with the evening he was about to spend. Nothing ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... thinking that a year or so of town life would be a cure. If he missed the children, he was free from tears and nagging complaints, so that his content balanced his loneliness. Frank proved up and came down to live with him, and the partnership began to wear into permanency. Share and share alike, they lived and worked and wrangled ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... right moment what others feel, and what they should say or do. They have a great gift, but they lay down their price for it, and suffer for others as well as in themselves more than their share. But in general, the average boy and girl needs a "daily exercise" which in most cases amounts to "nagging," and in the best hands is only saved from nagging by its absence of peevishness, and the patience with which it reminds and urges and teases into perfect observance. The teasing thing, and yet the most necessary one, is the constant check upon the preoccupying interests of children, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... Rwanda. Despite substantial international assistance and political reforms - including Rwanda's first local elections in March 1999 - the country continues to struggle to boost investment and agricultural output and to foster reconciliation. A series of massive population displacements, a nagging Hutu extremist insurgency, and Rwandan involvement in two wars over the past four years in the neighboring DROC continue ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... charter at the going rates in a stiff market, but skippers are, in the final analysis, the Genii of the Dividends. And Cappy knew skippers. He could get more loyalty out of them with a mere pat on the back and a kindly word than could Mr. Skinner, with all his threats, nagging and driving, yet he was an employer who demanded a full measure of service, and never permitted sentiment to plead for an incompetent. And his ships were his pets; in his affections they occupied a position but one degree removed from that occupied by his only child, in consequence ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... said, "and after that, jump into the lake; were you once there, your virtues would float, and your husband would love them; but alive, your virtues are beneath water, and your nagging ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... lends retired officers a guise of excessive spick-and-spanness had gradually combined with an easier bearing to give his figure a natural elegance. To be sure, six years had passed since, displeased by a nagging major, he had definitely hung up the ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... to the end, till the visitors here begin to scorn you. And that will soon happen, don't rely upon your youth—all that flies by express train here, you know. You will be kicked out. And not simply kicked out; long before that she'll begin nagging at you, scolding you, abusing you, as though you had not sacrificed your health for her, had not thrown away your youth and your soul for her benefit, but as though you had ruined her, beggared her, robbed her. And don't expect anyone to take your part: the others, your companions, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... had her old influence," one read in another popular journal,[171] "the Great Powers would not be bringing pressure to bear on Rumania with the object of saving Hungary from richly deserved punishment." "Instead of nagging the Rumanians," wrote an eminent French publicist, "they would do much better to keep the Turks in hand. If the Turks in despair, in order to win American sympathies, proclaim themselves socialists, syndicalists, or laborists, will President Wilson permit them to renovate Armenia and ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... and beauty, and gives her everything she can want in the world, and in less than a year she's a wreck?" The injury done to himself, implied in this last reflection, caused a certain amount of irritation, which betrayed itself in the politely "nagging" tone ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... reproach or complaint. On the other hand, Pirkheimer's words probably had some slight basis; and as Duerer's sickness increased upon him, while at the same time he applied himself less and less to making money, the anxious Frau may have become fretful or even nagging at times; and Pirkheimer, whose companionship was probably a cause of extravagances to Duerer, may have been scolded by Agnes, or heard his friend excuse himself from taking part in some convivial meeting, on the plea that his wife found he was spending out of proportion to his ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... on connubial acquaintance. He was lazy and sloven of mornings, and since he had no office to go to he grew more neglectful of his appearance than ever. His end-to-end cigarettes got on Kedzie's nerves and cost a nagging amount of money, especially as she could not learn to like ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... revolved over visitation and care of their son. But Kelly had grit! While fasting, she confronted these tough issues in her life and unflinchingly made the necessary decisions. When she returned to Canada she absolutely decided, without any nagging doubts, reservations or qualifications, to make any changes necessary to ensure her survival. Only after having made these hard choices ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... not one of the nagging kind. I don't intend to rub it in, but I'll own it, once and for all. Go on, ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... father's custom to spend long hours in his library, sometimes far into the gray dawn. He found this preferable to the presence of his sharp-tongued second wife, who was always nagging him for more money, or to put his property into her name as proof positive of his unbounded, undying ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... husbands need not be discouraged, nor should husbands with nagging wives be cast down, for was it not Emerson who said, "It is better to be a nettle in the side of your friend than ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... accomplishment," retorted Hamilton. "We cannot go through life successfully with the bare gifts of the Almighty, generous though He may have been. If I find that I have need of cunning, or brutality,—than which nothing is farther from my nature,—or even nagging, I do not hesitate to borrow and ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Americans will have access to basic health insurance even if they change jobs or develop serious health problem We must bring costs under control, preserve quality, preserve choice and reduce people's nagging daily worry about health insurance. My plan, the details of which I will announce ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... feeling, on their own account, that they had come to town for better things than they had been getting; and likely enough they met his demands halfway. There was usually a certain element of cheeriness in his nagging; but the cheeriness was quite secondary to ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... father out in this gosh awful land of the grasshopper,—he is the limit. He never lets a day go by without some slur about my grandfather or some other member of the family who existed long before I was born. Thinks he's witty. He is always nagging at me about cigarette smoking. I wish you could see the way he mishandles a cigar. As you know, I seldom smoke more than a half dozen cigarettes a day, but he swears to God I am everlastingly ruining my health, and it has got on my nerves so that if I stay on ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... felt that it knew too much about her. The neighborly inquisition had fallen like a blight on the family fortunes. A vague migratory impulse was on her. She wanted to go somewhere and begin all over again. By dint of persistent nagging she persuaded her husband to move to Wyoming, then in the golden age of the cattle industry. Those were days when steers, to speak in the cow language, had "jumped to seventy-five." The wilderness grew light-headed with prosperity. Wonderful are ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... linen-room telephone jangling to the tune of a hundred damp and irate guests. And weaving in and out, and above, and about and through it all, like a neuralgic toothache that can't be located, persisted the constant, nagging, maddening complaints of the ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... had dragged along until everybody looked drowsy and tired but Joan, Brother Seguin, professor of theology at the University of Poitiers, who was a sour and sarcastic man, fell to plying Joan with all sorts of nagging questions in his bastard Limousin French—for he was from Limoges. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... occurred to you to put them together?" asked she. "They are impossible people; so, naturally, you have selected the very mildest and most Christian women to endure their nagging. They can't live with the saints of the earth. Experience has proved that. Put them into one room, and let ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... celebrated left it to somebody other than the emperor. When not even this sufficed, he hit upon the following third means of raising money. There was a senator, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, who had noticed that the roads during the reign of Tiberius were in bad condition and was always nagging the road commissioners about it and furthermore kept making a nuisance of himself before the senate regarding the matter. Gaius took him as a confederate and through him attacked all those, alive or dead, who had ever been road commissioners and had ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... a tiny, nagging disturbing thought in his mind. It had to do with Mike Fueyo and the Silent Spooks, and a lot of red Cadillacs. But he pushed it resolutely away. It had nothing to do with the evening he was about to spend. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... laid, and Tubby was not the only one who did it justice. But Bessie Lavine continued to act disagreeably toward the boys. She was "forever nagging," as Dave said; and sometimes there was a spark of fire when she managed to get one or ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... look at you women too; a man has a drink. Well, he swaggers about a bit, and sleeps it off, and everything goes on all right; but then the likes of you keep on nagging at him. ...
— The Cause of it All • Leo Tolstoy
... no matter how noble its motive, does not make for self-reliance. We must have self-reliance. A community is the better for being discontented, for being dissatisfied with what it has. I do not mean the petty, daily, nagging, gnawing sort of discontent, but a broad, courageous sort of discontent which believes that everything which is done can and ought to be eventually done better. Industry organized for service—and the workingman ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... over the table; with what a clatter and clamor and with what vain pride! Now the pride of those years in Harvey came with the railroad, and here, pulling at the paper, stands big George Brotherton with his ten stone heart. He has been sputtering and nagging for a dozen pages to swing off the front platform of the first passenger car that came to town. He was a fat, overgrown youth in his late teens, but he wore the uniform of a train newsboy, and any uniform is a uniform. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... pilot's head "up." There was something comforting about it. He'd driven a couple of the experimental jobs, one with the cockpit set on gimbals, and one where the whole ship rotated, and he hadn't cared for them at all. Felt disoriented, with something nagging at his mind all the time, as though the ships had been sabotaged. A couple of pilots had gone nuts in the "spindizzy," and remembering his own feelings as he watched the sky go by, it was easy ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... divorce his wife for one of the seven following reasons:—Want of children, adultery, neglect of his parents, nagging, thieving (i.e. supplying her own family with his goods, popularly known as "leakage"), jealous temper and leprosy. To the above, the humanity of the lawgiver has affixed three qualifying conditions. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... man to put his whole strength into drawing a cork, but unless you are a fool you do not, while the operation is going forward, keep nagging at him because the cork is too firmly jammed, nor do you jeer at him for his lack of prescience in not having selected a bottle with a wider neck. You do not ask him strings of useless questions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... matter, they display their sullen tempers in various ways, either by plunging, pulling, or setting up other defences against our authority. If we insist on our orders being obeyed, they show fight, or more usually a sullen nagging resistance that continues the whole time we remain on their backs, and they carry out the same programme every time we ride them. With such nasty tempered brutes, breaking is of no avail, for they are quiet as long as we allow them to set the pace and ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... exhausted and his much-tried endurance broke down under the petty gnatlike irritations of Fonseca and his myrmidons. It was on the deck of his own ship, in the harbour of San Lucar, that he knocked down and soundly kicked Ximeno de Breviesca, Fonseca's accountant, whose nagging requisitions had driven the Admiral ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... all his old self so quick. He has gone back on potations and poker, and it hasn't improved him a whit." There was another thing Blake growled at: Ray was mixed up in some garrison mystery, and wouldn't tell him anything about it. He had "pumped him," so to speak, because Mrs. Turner kept nagging him for information, and Ray had only colored and stumbled painfully, and finally burst forth with, "See here, Blake; something has happened that I accidentally got mixed up in, but it's a thing a man can't tell of, so don't ask ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... and action, and this, as he studied the individual gait of each, was not without its pleasure. Also, being, as he was, free from the weight of a man, he felt an airy lightness that was positively refreshing. And finally, since he was out of reach of the nagging white, this blessing alone made him grateful. So he followed along, working yet not working, with a feeling of complete composure such as had not been his for ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... his sides; now where his tapering tail In fish-like form is finish'd, bites the steel. High spouts the wounded monster from his mouth; The waves with gore deep purpling: drench'd, the wings Droop nagging; and no longer Perseus dares To trust their dripping aid. A rock he spies Whose summit o'er the peaceful waters rose, But deep was hid when tempests mov'd the main. Supported here, his left hand firmly grasps The craggy edge; while through his sides, and through, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... it was going to rain, and she had not let him have a nickel for car fare—she who had five thousand dollars. She let him walk the streets in the cold and in the rain. "Miser," he growled behind his mustache. "Miser, nasty little old miser. You're worse than old Zerkow, always nagging about money, money, and you got five thousand dollars. You got more, an' you live in that stinking hole of a room, and you won't drink any decent beer. I ain't going to stand it much longer. She knew it was ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... sure whether this repartee was friendly good spirits or a nagging feud. Like all the ungrateful human race, she considered whether she ought to have identified herself with the noisy Esther Lawrence on entering the Home. So might a freshman wonder, or the guest of a club; always the amiable ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... by it, too," I urged, "and has taken life easy, and has had more clients and bigger fees than he ever had before. I'd like to give him a jolt. I'd stop nagging him to put my name in a miserable corner of the glass in his door. I'd hang out a big sign of my own over my ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... down into her tense, suffering face, and paid no attention to her objections. As soon as he carried her off, Jim Edwards glumly took out that one of the twins I had at first supposed to be the elder, the remaining Thornhill girls moved on Dr. Bowman and began nagging him to ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... you stood with him. While Fisher is not at all dangerous, he has many undesirable traits that are difficult to overcome. He shirked all the way up from town. That may have been the fault of his training, or possibly he is naturally lazy; that is what I want to find out. At any rate nagging does not seem to worry ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... a lie?" says Terence, fiercely, feeling at this moment that death, when compared with nagging, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Saturday evening. We had just come from supper when Hendricks lit his pipe and gave vent to his feelings, as follows: 'If I had had a four-year-old club at the supper table to-night, I felt so boiling mad that I would have knocked hell out of him. To hear him go on a nagging and fault-finding with that little woman of his. There she has been a-working hard all day, set three good meals, doing the churning and all the housework besides; and all she gets for her patient labor is a growl.' 'Yes,' said another man, 'she has been working ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... you'll shut up the only wise man in the county," he returned. "If your sanity doesn't make you happy, I can tell you it's worth a great deal less than my craziness. Look at that dandelion, now—it has filled two hours chock full of thought and colour for me when I might have been puling indoors and nagging at God Almighty about trifles. The time has been when I'd have walked right over that little flower and not seen it, and now it grows yellower each minute that I look at it, and each minute I see it better than I did the one before. There's nothing in life, when you ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... while the shadow of a very real man followed her down the road—a shadow in grotesquely flapping rags, with head flung back. A dozen times she caught herself listening for the tramp of his feet beside hers, and flushed hotly at the nagging consciousness that pointed out each time only the mocking echo of her own tread. Like the left-behind cottage, the road ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... could he admire her liveliness; he could not even see that she was good-looking now. "She's nothing but chaff, chaff, chaff!" he thought. "Thank goodness, Matilda isn't given that way. Chaff before marriage means nagging after!" ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... the same moment they became aware that a common incident of Saturday night was occurring had got thus far on their way home, the wife's shrill tongue in the street below. A half-tipsy man and a nagging woman running over every scale of scurrility and striking every note of ingenious malice. The man was at length worked to a pitch of frenzy, and then—thud, thud, mingled with objurgations and shrill night-piercing yells. Fury little ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... I believe, as a general thing, more children are spoiled by what the Scotch graphically call 'nagging' than by indulgence. What do you think Josey would have been, if Mrs. Brooks had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... the constant nagging of his sour-visaged relative, the worry over his sick father, and the suspense as to his own future movements, Frank did not have a very happy time of it. He felt a good deal like a boy shut up in a prison. His aunt used her ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... This attitude on the part of some of the suffrage Members of this House is on an exact equality with the acts of these women militants who have spent the last summer and fall, while they were not in the district jail or workhouse, in coaxing, teasing, and nagging the Presi dent of the United States for the purpose of inducing him, by coercion, to club Congress into ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... condition, and the other men slapped Tom's big shoulders and said that he would put up a good game for the College. Diemann alone seemed sour-balled. The rest of them knew how Blake's death had broken him up, but that was no reason, Lyman said, why he need keep nagging the new fullback about Fred. The College realized that the two men were hopelessly different, and they were fairly reconciled by this time. If the boy played the best that was in him, the team might make it in spite of the odds. It was too bad to take the spirit out of him by constantly suggesting ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... was at once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not know the details, but I have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft, so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Grand had also tried to hurt Christine, and all about how you were living like a princess abroad. I waited until Grand came back from England, a couple of weeks later. Ernie had got me clear off my head by that time, nagging me day and night. He tried to get me to drink, but I was too wise for that. Well, I found Bob Grand and, like a fool, started in to tell him what I was going to do to him instead of doing it first. All of a sudden ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... grown-ups never learn that their minds don't work as ours do, and what may be poetry for some of us is cod-liver oil for them? Why must we be forever nagging them at home with "Don't do this" and "Don't do that," and forever preaching at them in school with ponderous prose platitudes cut up into lengths? How much wiser than we they are, who know that life is free and pleasant and full of melody and beautiful things, and dreams ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... Stuart made no answer to his nagging suggestions until Bivens got to the one thing that had evidently been ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... entered Edinburgh University. There he spent five miserable years, of which his own record is: "I was without friends, experience, or connection in the sphere of human business, was of sly humor, proud enough and to spare, and had begun my long curriculum of dyspepsia." This nagging illness was the cause of much of that irritability of temper which frequently led him to scold the public, and for which he has been harshly handled ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... of things was routine. Sergeant Madden had the traffic desk that morning. He would reach retirement age in two more years, and it was a nagging reminder that he grew old. He didn't like it. There was another matter. His son Timmy had a girl, and she was on the way to Varenga IV on the Cerberus, and when she arrived Timmy would become a married man. Sergeant Madden contemplated this prospect. By the time his retirement ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the vivisection in medical schools is done by women). In every autobiography which records a real experience of school or prison life, we find that here and there among the routineers there is to be found the genuine amateur, the orgiastic flogging schoolmaster or the nagging warder, who has sought out a cruel profession for the sake of its cruelty. But it is the genuine routineer who is the bulwark of the practice, because, though you can excite public fury against a Sade, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... perfect patience with quiet persistence—a combination which the Jesuits on a larger scale have turned into the characteristic of their order. It is especially remarkable when it breaks the bonds of silence, and takes the form of what in vulgar language is called "nagging." No form of torture which has as yet been invented, save, perhaps, the slow dropping of water on some highly sensitive part of the frame, can afford a parallel to this ingenious application of the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... began his nagging and complaining to the Richmond authorities. His most important message was an accusation of disloyalty against Joseph E. Brown. He telegraphed in ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... His eyes closed and he was only distantly aware of his handlers catching him as he fell, carrying him to his bench. While they massaged his limp body and cleansed the wound, all of his attention was turned inward. He was in reverie, sliding along the borders of consciousness. The nagging memory of the previous night loomed up then, and he turned it over and over in his mind, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... to glean but the bare outlines of the story, because Ebenezer and Helen had been abroad most of the time, and his impatient spirit chafed to know the intimate particulars of Tessibel's life. Jealousy of Young tormented him. Hopeless brooding over his situation, and Madelene's continual nagging had made him a neurasthenic wreck. Worn by insomnia and almost starved by a nervous dyspepsia, he could no longer maintain even a pretense of usefulness in the business. Madelene, thoroughly disillusioned, ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... you kept nagging me about "Who is the girl?" and I said you could search me, you wouldn't have it that way. But, honestly, until this morning I didn't know her myself. Now that I can put ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... couldn't be said for the unfortunates who swabbed the floors, scraped out the jets, realigned the drive mechanism, or did any other tidying work. Their jobs were never done; they always suffered from the nagging thought that just a little more work might bring the inspection rating ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... watching her, dodging her, nagging her, driving her, he got her off to bed at last. Being alone, he looked around, listened, shut the doors of the parlour and the kitchen, put the bolt on the door of the stairs, the chain on the door of the porch, took off his boots, and went about on tiptoe. Then he ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... not thought of his automobile escapade but now once more it came to his mind, causing a cloud to chase the joyousness from his face. Alas, was he never to be free of the nagging mortification that had followed that single act? Was it always to lurk in the background and make him ashamed to confront the world squarely? Well, it was no use regretting it now. He had made his choice and ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... and, soon after, the proprietor of a second-class vaudeville house. Just when the moving picture had passed out of the stage of a curiosity and become a promising industry he was an ambitious young man of twenty-six with some money to invest, nagging financial ambitions and a good working knowledge of the popular show business. That had been nine years before. The moving picture industry had borne him up with it where it threw off dozens of men with more ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... both for a month, with Italian, and tea, and manna of sentiment, and late hours, and every restful thing a young husband could need for the refreshment of weary limbs and a sore conscience, and a nagging sense ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... honestly loved, Abraham had nagged a little all his married life when things went wrong. And Angeline, fretted and nervous, herself worried almost sick over Father's condition, was guilty once in a while out of the depths of her anxiety of nagging back again. So do we hurt those whom we love best as we would and could ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... doubt of its being the case, for no sooner had Tom's beast given evidence of its power of scent, than similar manifestations followed from the others; and now, instead of nagging and labouring along, the hot and wearied beasts broke into a trot, and had to be restrained as they tugged ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... then very angry at his daughter's attitude, but he was stern and angry alike in vain. The more Messer Folco stormed, the less he effected. Though Beatrice seemed to grow paler and frailer at her father's nagging, she grew none the less stubborn, and Messer Folco's fury flamed higher at her unwonted obstinacy. His naturally choleric disposition got the better of his philosophic training and his habitual self-restraint, and he threatened, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... is also not efficacious. We are justified in having our indignation aroused at times and in letting the offender feel our displeasure. There is something calm and impressive about genuine indignation, while scolding is apt to become nagging and to arouse contempt in ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... way has eluded all screens and nettings comes singing its way about your face. It is just one. It seems so small. If it were only big enough to hit, something worthy of one's strength. But the mean little nagging specimen seems to elude every effort of yours. Maybe you take calm, deliberate measures to end its existence, but meanwhile you are thoroughly aroused and lose quite a bit of ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... daughter of the retired collegiate assessor Plemyanikov, was sitting on the back-door steps of her house doing nothing. It was hot, the flies were nagging and teasing, and it was pleasant to think that it would soon be evening. Dark rain clouds were gathering from the east, wafting a breath of moisture ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... other had been successfully turned from his purpose here. Yet now as he swung around and walked away down the alley Drew was left with a nagging doubt, a feeling that in some way or other Shannon had come off even in this encounter.... ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... Little Colonel was more embarrassed than ever. She could not tell Fidelia that it was because a little poodle received the fondling and attention that belonged to them, and that it was Fidelia's continual faultfinding and nagging that made the boys tease her. So after a pause she changed the subject by asking her what she wanted most ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Collins dead, but their grisly end seemed to have scared the others. Not a day went by that three or four of them did not come for their time, chiefly rockmen and teamsters,—for we had no ore chute at La Chance. Macartney thought it was Dudley's fault, for nagging around all the time, and was sore over it. Dudley said it was Macartney's, though when I pressed him he said, too, that he did not know why. The men I spoke to before they left just said they'd had enough of La Chance, but I could feel a sulky underhand ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... ought not to be read in a fierce, nagging spirit which demands, What is the good of this? or, Who cares for that? His talk, it must be admitted, is not of masterpieces. The books he takes down are—in some instances, at all events—sad trash. Smart's poems, for example, in an edition of 1752, which does ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... area for the tired soldiers to find relief from their monotony. War is a dreary thing. With one fixed idea in the mind—to wait, to watch for some careless head over the mounded earth, and then to kill—war is drearier than slave labor, more nagging than an imperfect marriage, more dispiriting than unsuccessful sin. The pretty brass utensils of the dwellings had been pillaged. Canvas, which had once contained bright faces, was in shreds. The figures of Christ and his friends ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... course Maurice is always 'the boy stands on the burning deck'; but you can't help seeing that he's fed up on poor old Eleanor! Sometimes I wonder he ever does come home! If I were in his place, when she gets to nagging I'd go right up in the air! I'd say, well,—something. But he keeps his tongue between ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... don't! I can't tell you because I don't know, and it's mean of you to keep nagging at me on the sly, when Father Bhaer told you not to plague me. You wouldn't dare ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... been nagging at him for two hours past. He always contended that the Missing Link's skin was provocative of a great drought. He pleaded with Matty, the bone man, appealing artfully to his professional pride, for Bonypart loved to feel ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... escaped, I would care not if never I saw him again, though I paid a pretty penny for him and love him better than ever I loved any woman, since he springs to order and stands without hitching, and with never a word of nagging in my ears to make me pay penance for the service. What a man with a good horse, and good wine, and good tobacco, wanteth a wife for, passeth my understanding, but I know thou art young, and the maid is a fair ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... what answers to the Lower Sixth of a boys' school rocking and whooping together. Given a week of warm weather, two stately promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice meal in the middle of the day, a certain amount of nagging from the teachers, and a few other things, some amazing effects develop. At least this is what folk say who ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Author and star had been upon the verge of rupture more than once during that heartbreaking period of preparation, but Phillips was supremely glad now that he had held himself in control. Leontine's constant nagging had borne fruit, after all, in that it had at least taught him to bite down on his words, and to smile ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... will take Tryst and the little ones in at present.' Good-hearted people, do a lot for the laborers, in their way. All the same, she's a bit of a vixen. Picture of a woman, too, standin' there; shows blood, mind you! Once said, all over—no nagging. She took the little girl off with her. And pretty small I felt, knowing I'd got to finish that job, and the folk outside gettin' nastier all the time—not sayin' much, of course, but lookin' a lot!" The agent paused in his recital and gazed fixedly at a bluebottle ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... me, he inspired me. Never was there such a delightful teacher! and he is the most sympathetic one I've had. You feel so free with him, and he develops the very spirit of music in you. He doesn't keep nagging at you all the time, but he leaves you your own conception. Now and then he will make a criticism or play a passage, and with a few words give you enough to think of all the rest of your life. There is a delicate point to everything he says as subtle as he is himself. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... demanded much more. Had she but known that the only reason he gave her what she wanted, was the qualm of conscience he felt. He was really glad to have his daughter so eager to join her mother in the East, so that he would be relieved of the nagging and unhappiness he was always subjected to when his wife and oldest daughter ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... even though it isn't really wrong ethically, he will probably concede the point, provided,—and don't overlook this,—you "go about it in the right way, and in the right spirit." It isn't likely you will be given a patient hearing, if in the past you have been in the habit of nagging and browbeating him. Don't look upon tactful ways of gaining your point as evidence of weakness. It is distinctly an evidence of strength of character, and, each time you win a point in a friendly debate with your husband, you will have gained much. He will respect ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... long clamored that their men should break up Jeb's still; and the men had stood the nagging and remained inactive through the hanging-together selfishness of the sex, for with Jeb gone where then would they drink their drams and play Old Sledge? But now Jeb was "a-detainin' of a female," and that was going too far. For a full ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... being, the vindication achieved of two ordinarily rather maligned novels, The Old Curiosity Shop and Little Dorrit, and the insight shown into Dickens's portraiture of women, more particularly those of the shrill-voiced and nagging or whining variety, the 'better halves' of Weller, Varden, Snagsby and Joe Gargery, not to speak of the Miggs, the Gummidge, and the M'Stinger. Like Mr. Swinburne and other true men, he regards Mrs. Gamp as representing the quintessence ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... resolution, particularly in a man of his position in Society. But when the cause at last came to be known, he was more pitied than blamed, for it was understood that the Major's mind had become unbalanced owing to the unbridled nagging of Mrs. Bonnet. Referring to this, the historian Captain Johnson writes as follows: "He was afterwards rather pitty'd than condemned, by those that were acquainted with him, believing that this Humour of going a-pyrating proceeded from ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... nostrils quivered. He understood in that moment how a man might actually wish to strike a nagging virago of a woman, no matter how beautiful. And he wondered with a sickening heaviness of heart how he was to go on with the wretched business of his engagement. But he pushed the question out of his mind, fiercely. He was in for this thing now. He ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... had discovered such a view of insurance in her brain. She now recalled expressing it—and regretted. But she was silenced. She tried to take her mind of the subject of money. But, like Mildred, she could not. The thought of imminent poverty was nagging at them like toothache. "There'll be enough for a year or so?" ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... pleasure and a privilege to pay it myself, and I'm sure the Bear Cat is good for the amount, or if you prefer you may hold back my allowance, and I shall go without clothes and everything until it is paid. It's a perfect outrage to keep nagging Johnny when he's doing his level best and not asking any help from you or any one else. I'm sure I honor and respect him all the more, and you would too if you had a drop of human blood—now what are you grinning for—and ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... MacNeil may not have had a top-level grade of intelligence, but by the end of the second week, his conscience was nagging him, and he was beginning to wonder who was goofing and why. After much thinking—if we may so refer to MacNeil's painful cerebral processes—he decided to ask ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... perfectly adorable," said she, and was at once aware of a guilty, nagging impression that she would not have said it to him half an hour earlier for ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... love. He smiled exultantly. It was nobler and infinitely more rare. Love, as he had read of it and mistaken it in his experience, was a devastating energy, greedy and devouring. It was a continual, nagging contention between self-abasement and hostility. It was a humiliating attempt on the part of a man to barter something, which was persistently undervalued, for the feminine equivalent which was as persistently hoarded. It was an amalgam of physical yearning, wounded vanity and resentment of contempt. ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... now, Stan! You've been nagging me ever since last camp. Why'n thunder can't you see I'm doing my best? Other men don't row me as you do, or stand up for the 'tacks.' I tell you that fellow Lee never loses a chance of skinning me: he takes chances, by gad, and I'll make his eyes pop out of his ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... strain during the last eight hours had been almost insupportable: the brief sharp debates, the prosing of bores, interrupted by angry cries of "Vote! Vote!" the reiterated announcement of the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations that the conferees could not agree, the perpetual nagging of two Democrats and one Populist, the long trying intervals of debate on matters irrelevant to the great question torturing every mind, during which there was much confusion on the floor: the Senators ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... the start, both Dave and Solleks flew at him and administered a sound trouncing. The resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck took good care to keep the traces clear thereafter; and ere the day was done, so well had he mastered his work, his mates about ceased nagging him. Francois's whip snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honored Buck by lifting up his feet and carefully ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... seemed everlastingly nagging at the children. It was a habit, but they didn't seem to mind. Most Bushwomen get the nagging habit. I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most willing, and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged that child from daylight till dark—and after ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Fourth Avenue, Harry was beset with one nagging question. Why had Paula Ralston never brought any of her clients to see him before? He was the dispenser of over a hundred good jobs that offered high salaries. The answer was just as persistent as the question. Lab Technician ...
— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg
... intimacy of the engagement period may indeed be trying. Tact is required to avoid fault-finding, nagging, and jealousy. A few "lovers' quarrels" do not matter—they give flavor to a romance—but scolding and criticism do. Romance dies when thoughtless quarreling enters. An engaged man should be even more of a gentleman than the courting swain; the girl with a ring on the third ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... in my eyes, and then I knew that Madame Renard was boiling with rage, for she kept on nagging at me: 'Oh! how horrid! Don't you see that he is robbing you of your fish? Do you think that you will catch anything? Not even a frog, nothing whatever. Why my hands are burning, just ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a quiet old maiden aunt, who saw the mischief brewing, and tried to cure it by suggesting more liberty and less 'nagging,' as the boys call it. But Mr. and Mrs. F. always silenced her ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... Praise your body and it will serve you. Take air-baths, cold water plunges, or cold water sponges, every morning. Fix your mind upon having a sound and energized body and you will attract it. Exercise, walk, run, play, work, and learn to rest. Change your habits of living. Cut out the grouch. Stop nagging. You're sour because your pores are stopped up; get a buck-saw and take a sweat. You're morbidly blue because your solar plexus has gone to sleep; give it half an hour of internal vibration. Don't knock the weather, like it, get into it, let it put iron into your blood. Plunge ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... "Stop your nagging, Sis, and let ma alone," commanded Benny, patting his mother's arm affectionately. "I'm home only once a month. Let her feed me what she pleases. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... student can stand without becoming a drone. Criticism? Yes, but no quibbling, no nagging. Criticism is something more than fault-finding. The teacher exalts his profession, ennobles his art, and begets consideration for himself when he maintains the highest standards for himself and for ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... absolutely wrong to punish or to crush the spirit of these children. Constant nagging and taunting, even if done in the hope of shaming the child into a cure, will simply make a coward of him and will not aid in improving matters, but will ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... pessimistic, even for a man who sees the traffic which is his keenest interest threatened by a marauding gang of land pirates. Maybe it was the wearing hours of McLagan's nagging that caused his mood. Maybe it was an inclination brought about by the long train of disappointments that had been his as he trod his one-way trail. Maybe, as the cynical might suggest, his liver ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... matron. That dear soul has difficulties of locomotion, being buried under the Pelion on Ossa of a mountain of fat. She inhabits a cave of Adullam on the edge of the Inferno—i. e., the 'theatre'—below stairs, and has a small dog with a bad heart and broken wind always nagging on her knee. I call her the Chief Broker in Breakages and Head Dealer in Diseases, and she is only seen once a day when she comes round to take stock. You have to be nice with her Majesty,' for she can haul you up at the weekly board, and put a score against you ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... if I do!" exclaimed Abel without moving, and his tone implied that the ceaseless nagging had got at last on his nerves. He was a robust, well-built, red-brown young fellow, who smelt always of freshly ground meal, as though his body, from long usage, had grown to exhale the cleanly odour of the trade he followed. His ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... "What are you always nagging at Toad for?" inquired the Badger, rather peevishly. "What's the matter with his English? It's the same what I use myself, and if it's good enough for me, it ought to be ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame |
