"Pestering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only here have I been jealous of my own shadow, and pestering her who 'your puppy' was: and she never would tell me. All I could get from her," added he, turning suddenly from gratitude to revenge, "was that he was no greater ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the horses of the party; but it is impossible for his lordship to govern well with such colleagues as he has—colleagues which have been forced upon him by family influence, and who are continually pestering him into measures anything but conducive to the country's honour and interest. If Palmerston would govern well, he must get rid of them; but from that step, with all his courage and all his greatness, he will shrink. Yet how ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... that the signification of this particular symbol had escaped my memory. There it was, staring me in the face from my note-book, but what it meant for my very life I could not at the moment tell. And the telegraph messengers were pestering me for my copy, and, worst of all, the reporters from London seemed to my guilty conscience to be eyeing me askance, and wondering what the delay meant. In a desperate moment I made a guess, not ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... disposition than might be gummed on with a play-actor's mustachios! Why, she is my cousin, Stephen,—my cousin and good friend, to whom I came at once on reaching England, to find you, favored by her father, pestering her with your suit, and the poor girl well-nigh at her wits' end because she might not have Pevensey. So," said Master Mervale, "we put our heads together, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... of you and your geese," he shouted. "I wish you were all at the devil together. If you come pestering me any more with your silly talk I'll set the dog at you. You bring Mrs. Oakshott here and I'll answer her, but what have you to do with it? Did I buy the geese ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Overweg, Madame En-Noor is still very unwell with her lip. It is cut right across under her nose, penetrating to the gums; she is, nevertheless, very lively, and is always pestering Overweg to read the fatah with, or marry a young girl, one of her relations. She endeavours to warm my worthy friend to comply with her match-making wishes by luxurious descriptions of the beauties of the ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... that I was a kind of over-affectionate pestering dull dog, who made this brilliant youth's life a burden to him. It was really not so; we had very many tastes in common; and with all his various temptations, he had a singularly constant and affectionate nature—and was ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... for the beggars who infested the route, they must long since have perished of inanition—not that they needed what travellers gave them in the way of alms, but that, like Othello, their occupation being gone, they must cease to exist. Never again could they look forward to pestering a tourist; never exhibit a withered arm or an artistic ulcer; never mutter anathemas against the obdurate, or call down blessings upon the profuse. What was left them in life? And what has become of the wayside inns, and what of ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... hats and short coats, and they have a villanous propensity of following you home from your club of an evening, and inveigling you every now and then to Bow Street, thrusting a broken knocker or two into your pocket as you go along, and then pestering your bewildered memory with all sorts of nocturnal misdemeanors; truly they are a race of noxious vermin; pretty well, perhaps, for the protection of the swinish multitude; but for us gentlemen, why, they "come betwixt the wind and our nobility," and their remembrance stinks in our nostrils! One ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... difficulty. So tired were the horses that even the General's gallopers, who were continually traversing the column's half-mile front, were often unable to spur their horses to anything better than a walk. Very quickly the enemy returned to the attack, pestering French on the right. Realising his peril, he changed his course suddenly and headed away from the Klip Kraal Drift. Naturally, the enemy rushed off to block his way. For an hour and a half the Drift appeared to be the division's urgent objective. ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... cross the creek, and were accompanied to that place by Brahe, who would return to take charge of the depot. Down to this point the banks of the creek are very rugged and stony, but there is a tolerable supply of grass and salt bush in the vicinity. A large tribe of blacks came pestering us to go to their camp and have a dance, which we declined. They were very troublesome, and nothing but the threat to shoot them will keep them away. They are, however, easily frightened; and, although fine-looking men, decidedly not of a warlike disposition. ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... is thus summed up by Dr. Dexter: "In all strictness and honesty he persecuted them—not they him; just as the modern 'Come-outer,' who persistently intrudes his bad manners and pestering presence upon some private company, making himself, upon pretence of conscience, a nuisance there; is—if sane—the persecutor, rather than the man who forcibly assists, as well as courteously requires, his desired departure." [Footnote: As to ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... such a pestering bankrupt as that since the world began, I do believe!' said Lowten, throwing down his pen with the air of an injured man. 'His affairs haven't been in Chancery quite four years yet, and I'm d—d if he don't come worrying here twice a week. Step this way, Mr. Pickwick. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... dear! haven't they been pestering me to sell them my land all along, and when the ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... in Elaine, as if she had been thinking aloud, "is that Berenice has been pestering Eloise for ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... couple of hours everyone whom the surgeons had told of my obstinacy came pestering me. Even the prince-palatin wrote to me that the king was extremely surprised at my lack of courage. This stung me to the quick, and I wrote the king a long letter, half in earnest and half in jest, in which I laughed at ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... admiration.] — How would a lovely handsome woman the like of you be lonesome when all men should be thronging around to hear the sweetness of your voice, and the little infant children should be pestering your steps I'm thinking, ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... old. I want a home of my own; and lately I've been pestering him to let me go. He'd always make excuse and talk plausible how 't he couldn't spare me nohow. I knew he told the truth, since if I left he'd have to get in strange help and it might get out 't his sister's sickness was plain want of brains. That'd have nigh killed him, he's so proud; to ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... proposed to you twice, Magdalen. Is not that enough?" His voice was very bitter. "I venture to prophesy that you will be safe from my pestering you with a ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... method of getting all the Congressmen and Senators of our state at work. Fred, I have just about all of the Congressional delegation from our state pestering the Secretary of the Navy until we get our order. The Congressmen from our own state will be glad to see me get ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... been consumed with anxiety," said he. "Julius came and warned me that your departure from Paris ought to be incognito. This is wise; so I remain King-elect till you reach Delgratz. The newspapers are pestering me to declare a program. They all expect that I shall leave Paris to-night or early to-morrow. Indeed, an impudent fellow representing 'Le Soir' says that if I don't bestir myself I shall be christened the Sluggard ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... talking about?" demanded Spencer. "Has he been pestering Miss Wynton this morning with some story ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... perfect, torn to pieces by a dozen wise old women, who claim the right of carrying the church on their shoulders; he must have dictated to him what sort of dame he may take for wife;—in a word, he must bear meekly a deal of pestering and starvation, or be in bad odor with the senior members of the sewing circle. Duly appreciating all these difficulties, Brother Spyke chose a mission to Antioch, where the field of his labors would be wide, and the gates not open to restraints. And though he could not define the exact character ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... making a noise like a puppy-dog, and laying eggs in hollow trees? To be sure, the toucan might retort, To what purpose were gentlemen in Bond Street created? To what purpose were certain members of Parliament created, pestering the House of Commons with their ignorance and folly, and impeding the business of the country? There is no end of such questions. So we will not enter into the metaphysics of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... gold, they can do their hunting somewhere else. They can't go digging up the whole blamed country just on the chance of finding another pocket like this one. I'm in the cattle business myself. If I find any gold, it'll go into cattle and stay there; and there won't be any long-haired freaks pestering around here if I can help it, and I reckon maybe I can, ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... disagreeable idea that this was a human pathway. I didn't want to come upon any human beings. The less our expedition saw of the African population the better for its prospects. Thus far we had been singularly free from native pestering. So I turned back and was making my way over mud and roots and dead fronds and petals scattered from the green world above when abruptly I saw ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... till I'm tired," Brown answered, with sudden heat. "This is pestering a man at a very unfortunate time. Look! the people are coming. I must go. My poor mistress! and poor Miss Carmel! I liked 'em, do ye understand? Liked 'em—and I do feel the trouble at the house, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... brought her home to the Mazet, and there she has lived her whole lifelong. Esperit is waiting only until he shall be established in the world to speak the word. And the scamp is in a hurry. Actually, he is pestering me to put him at the head ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... reach, now rising, now lowering, to avoid collision; hackney-coaches in active sloth, their miserable cattle plodding along with their backs arched and heads and tails drooping like barn-door fowls crouching under the cataract of a gutter; clacking of pattens and pestering of sweepers; not a smile upon the countenance of one individual of the multitude which passed him;—all appeared anxiety, bustle, and selfishness. Newton was not sorry when he turned down the narrow court which had been indicated to him, and, disengaged ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a good first impression, as there were no pestering crowds, as there are in Singapore, and there were many carriages waiting for hire, all two-horsed ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... then I'll leave off and quit a-pestering you," he exclaimed. "If you won't make them two fellows give back the plunder they have stolen from me, you won't raise any row if I go to work and get it back in my ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... my disdain, how can I prevent any lover, such as thyself, from persuading himself of what he wishes to believe? For all of them resemble thee, behaving like unreasonable bulls, the very moment that they see me, and pestering me like flies, to my torment, and yet would blame me for driving them away. And every one of them, exactly like thee, imagines me his own, for no reason that I am ever able to discover, although I tell them all, exactly as I told thee, that I ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... wouldn't." His smile became more pronounced. "If I were more energetic, I should be for ever pestering you to marry me. And, you know, you wouldn't like that. As it is, I take 'No,' for an ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... poem, Krishna is shown pestering the cowgirls for curds. Radha decides to stand this no longer and partly in jest dresses herself up as a constable. When Krishna next teases the girls, she descends upon him, catches him by the wrist and 'arrests' him as ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... schoolfellow of mine) has been pestering me through you with poetry and petitions. I have desired him to call upon you for a half sovereign, which place to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of herself it was caressing. Her heart had gone out to the child the moment she had seen her enter the school-room. She was as helpless before her as before a lover. She was wild to catch her up and caress her instead of pestering her with questions. "Ellen, you must answer me," she said, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sunshine. Men by the dozen are washing their blistered feet and grimy hands and faces in the cool, refreshing water; men by the dozen lie soundly sleeping, some in the broad glare, some in the shade of the little clump of willows, all heedless of the pestering swarms of flies. Out on the broad, grassy slopes, side-lined and watched by keen-eyed guards, the herds of cavalry horses are quietly grazing, forgetful of the wild excitement of yester-even. Every now and then some ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... "Quit pestering us to come to church. If you don't let us alone, we'll hurt you," shouted Duncan, the leader of a group of ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann
... Peter, with a difference. You'd have wed Jim: I just let Peter travel With me, to keep the others from pestering; And scooted him when Michael ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... or her family's to earn by it was justified in spending her time in fiddling than he would have approved of her spending it in dancing. I have heard him take a text out of the Imitation and lecture Rose when she was quite a baby for pestering any stray person she could get hold of to give her music-lessons. "Woe to them"—yes, that was it—"that inquire many curious things of men, and care little about the way of serving me." However, he wasn't consistent. Nobody is. It was actually he that brought Rose her first violin ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... natural.[116] However this may be, the poet does not hesitate to state in a letter to Emilie Reinbeck: "Ein Hund in Schwaben hat mehr Achtung fuer mich als ein Polizeipraesident in Oesterreich."[117] And although he professes to have become hardened to the pestering interference of the authorities, as a matter of fact it was a constant source of unhappiness to him. "So aber war mein Leben seit meinem letzten Briefe ein bestaendiger Aerger. Die verfluchten Vexationen der hiesigen Censurbehoerde haben selbst jetzt noch immer kein Ende finden koennen."[118] ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... presented by an unknown donor to the Bow Break o' Day Club, and it was to be a great function. The whole affair was outside the lines of party politics, so that even Conservatives and Socialists considered themselves justified in pestering the committee for tickets. To say nothing of ladies. As the committee desired to be present themselves, nine-tenths of the applications for admission had to be refused, as is usual on these occasions. The committee agreed among themselves to exclude ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... rose to depart. Lord Orville and that man both came to me. The first, with an attention I but ill-merited from him, led me to a chair; while the other followed, pestering me with apologies. I wished to have made mine to Lord Orville, but was too ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... all!' said Harry, drawing a long breath. 'For my part, all I know is, that I would these great folks who rule us now had let my father end his days in peace, without pestering him about surplices and Prayer-Books and the sign of the cross, all which he holds for rank Papistry, I suppose; and I cannot wish him to lie, even about such foolish trifles as these things appear to ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... I probably shall be pestering you with telephone calls, urging you to have pity upon me in my loneliness. Now goodnight again. I'm as full of farewells as a Bernhardt." And to end it I ran up the stairs. At the bend, just where Frau Nirlanger had turned, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... the other flank is Sebosus, that friend of Catulus! Which way am I to turn? I declare that I would go at once to Arpinum, if this were not the most, convenient place to await your visit: but I will only wait till May 6: you see what bores are pestering my poor ears."[402] ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... that Val and I had set that rick on fire, and so got us into a row through the man's speaking to us at Melchester. And last year, when we met him, you made out you didn't know why he should be always pestering us for money." ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... No, he's down at the stables or else he's sneaked in through the kitchen; the way he did that other time when he made a grandstand exit after I'd ventured to lecture him on his general rottenness. Remember how worried about him you were, that time; till we found him sitting in the kitchen and pestering the ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... great-grandmothers cherished it as a sacred religious principle till their tea was taxed. I dare say that if the truth could be got at, we should find that little Victoria was at times trying enough to mother, masters, and attendants; that she was occasionally passionate, perverse, and "pestering," like all children who have any great and positive elements in them. I dare say she was disposed, like any other "only child," to be self-willed and selfish, and that she required a fair amount of wholesome discipline, and that she got it. Had she been the prim and pious ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... face, and clutched at the Arab's jibbeh, clawing with his brown fingers at the edge of the cotton skirt. The Emir tugged to free himself, and then, finding that he was still held by that convulsive grip, he turned and kicked at Mansoor with the vicious impatience with which one drives off a pestering cur. The dragoman's high red tarboosh flew up into the air, and he lay groaning upon his face where the stunning blow of the Arab's ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... sensitive and secluded minds, a continual dwelling upon the subject had magnified to colossal proportions the space she assumed herself to occupy or to have occupied in the occult critic's mind. At noon and at night she had been pestering herself with endeavours to perceive more distinctly his conception of her as a woman apart from an author: whether he really despised her; whether he thought more or less of her than of ordinary ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... himself possessed of the greatest Talents, and fully persuaded that he gave all he convers'd with a particular Pleasure;— Upon such an Attack, no Resentment or Anger could have been decently shewn by Horace, As the Person thus pestering him, was all the while intending the highest Compliment; And must therefore be received, and attended to, with perfect Complaisance; The Humour of this Person would have been very entertaining, in the strange Conceit which he held of his own ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... like a toad, with importance and low remarks about woman that, at last, I just ignored him, pretending I hadn't the least curiosity about his evil secret. It hurt his feelings when I quit pestering him about it, but he'd been outraging mine right along; so ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... is. No good paying any five dollars to any Indian when he's got as good a thing as that. These engineers want to see our camp so Matty's to bring 'em up this afternoon while everybody's at the swim. He doesn't want the crowd around to be pestering 'em ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... that Kipping," he said sadly. "I've tried to use him right. I've done everything I can to help him out and I'm sure I don't want to quarrel with him, yet for all he goes around as meek as a cat that's been in the cream, he's always pecking at me and pestering me, till just now I was fair drove to give him a ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... to participate to the greatest extent possible in the government and administration of the company, and by not hampering and pestering them with unnecessary instructions about details, the captain will get out of his lieutenants the very best that there is ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... he said. "Of course you must do what you think best. But it really won't do any good. I could do things a great deal worse than this, and still, with the money I happen to have, people would keep on fawning on me, and pestering me with their attentions and their invitations as ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... peace, pestering me to tell him why I had signed. I signed, that's all about it. I didn't do it on purpose. They brought the papers to the shop and I signed them. I am no ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... I want a dog for my daughter, sir, to keep off a worthless, good-for-nothing dude who comes pestering around here after her because he knows that her father has a lot of money, and thinks that if he marries his daughter he ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... do is to keep them from going to the church next Thursday fortnight, and from pestering you with presents in the mean while. When you've headed them off on that you'll feel more free to—to give your mind to ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... thou be vexed with me? But whatever happen I will bear patiently with thee in memory of the much kindness thy father shewed me." "By Allah," cried I, "O thou with tongue long as the tail of a jackass, thou persistest in pestering me with thy prate and thou becomest more longsome in thy long speeches, when all I want of thee is to shave my head and wend thy way!" Then he lathered my head saying, "I perceive thou art vexed with me, but I will not take it ill of thee, for thy wit is weak ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... "That idiot has been pestering me for the last half-hour," said Captain Trimblett, after walking for some distance in wrathful silence. "I wonder whether it would be brought in murder if I wrung old Sellers's neck? I've had four people ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... of her? Did you let her go?' came pestering remarks, too absurd for replies if they had not been ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him, he was perhaps inclined to attribute too much importance. But he would not have agreed with this view at the time; he looked upon himself as a painter and upon Erewhon as an interruption. It had come, like one of those creatures from the Land of the Unborn, pestering him and refusing to leave him at peace until he consented to give it bodily shape. It was only a little one, and he saw no likelihood of its having any successors. So he satisfied its demands and then, supposing that he had written himself out, looked forward ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie—no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Besides, we need not imagine that it is possible to go on like this until our patience is exhausted. Sooner or later, flurried by my pestering, the Scarites refuses to sham dead. Scarcely is he laid on his back after a fall, when he turns over and takes to his heels, as though he judged a stratagem which succeeded so indifferently ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... forward with hateful assiduousness with a stool for her to sit on, as soon as she entered the shop. He would entice Franky, who had a great admiration for Mr. Pretty, to sit in the cellar with him of evenings to talk about the younger sister. There was Reggie always pestering; and now here again were the unwelcome attentions of ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... bad if he got into one of his tantrums directly afterwards," said Nurse: "and with people pestering for Christmas-boxes, and the pudding and turkey, and so many things that might go wrong, it would be as likely as not he would. It's a sad thing too," she added, "for his neck's terribly short, and they say all his family have gone suddenly with the apoplexy. ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... sermon, seeing that he meant to inform his princely Grace the Duke of Pomerania of the blasphemous lies which I had vomited against him, and which must sorely offend every Christian heart. Item, what an avaricious wretch I must be to be always wanting something of him, and to be daily, so to say, pestering him in these hard times with my filthy letters, when he had not enough to eat himself. This, he said, should break the parson his neck, since his princely Grace did all that he asked of him; and that no one in the parish need give me anything ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... have shipped her by mistake, either," he went on, confused. "For we'd sold her, that same day, to a kid in our town. I ought to know. Because the kid kept on pestering us every day for a month afterward, to find if she had come back to us. He said she ran away in the night. He still comes around, once a week or so, to ask. A spindly, weak, sick-looking little chap, he is. I don't get the ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... "Stop pestering me ... let's talk ... read me some of that Tennyson you gave me...." and I began reading aloud, for there was nothing else she would for ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... on the road. No drinking, to find the king's cursed shilling at the bottom of the glass, like poor Bill, for thy mother to come crying and pestering. Thee hasn't got one, eh? So much the better, all women ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... councils, just the same as we have; but surely there are other and proper means of obtaining their rights and privileges without resorting to such childish and unwomanly tactics as chaining themselves up, pestering high officers of state, and forcing their way ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... "There is a pestering fellow at the door," he said, "who will not be satisfied till he has spoken with you. He says he has a message for you from some one in Venice, which he must ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... and at peace. He could not have put his finger on the moment of their death; there had been no moment; like good soldiers they had never died, but faded away, and till to-night he had not known that they had gone. He would show Nan now that she need fear no more pestering from him; she need not keep on talking without pause whenever they were alone together, which had been her old way of defence, and which she was beginning again now. They could drop now into undisturbed friendship. Nan was the most stimulating of friends. It was refreshing to talk things ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... insistent pestering and maturing years evoked from my uncle the hoarded lore I sought, there lay before me a strange enough chronicle. Long-winded, statistical, and drearily genealogical as some of the matter was, there ran through it a continuous thread of brooding, tenacious horror and preternatural malevolence ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... at a first meeting, I should have thought at once, "This man is a sensualist and a ruffian!" His answers were distinctly rude; he said the question was foolish (probably it was)—that people had been pestering him with that kind of thing ever since he left India; in short, he gave me to understand that he regarded me as a nuisance. I had never before seen in him any approach to this manner; indeed, I had continually marvelled at his patience with fools, his urbanity with bores, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... hours afterwards, he mounts his horse, is thrown on to his head. When he wakes again to his senses, the last thing he remembers is—what? A sign, perhaps, over a shop in the street he walked down, or a leper pestering him for alms. The intervening hours are lost to him, and forever. It is no question of an abeyance of memory. There is a gap in the continuity of his experience, and that gap he ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... hut, while her friend Julienne, who was a colourman's daughter, set her palette. A swarm of children pressed about her, watching her paint, whom she would scold out of her light at intervals, calling them pestering gnats and giving them lollipops. The citoyenne Thevenin, picking out the pretty ones, would wash their faces, kiss them and put flowers in their hair. She fondled them with a gentle air of melancholy, because she had missed the joy of motherhood,—as ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... neither the master, the old gentleman nor M. Antonino take the head of the dinner-table with the best grace. It is true that our guests are not very particular if the wine flows freely. I do not think the young lady likes the position, for I know the old, be-spectacled professors are as pestering with their attentions as the insolent officers. She would have been so delighted at the relief promised by your return that she would run to meet you and you would not have been repulsed at ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... hypothetical child in the history of his character development, lost sight of him as he struggles in a morass of desires and purposes of power, fellowship and superiority. His situations become still more complex as we watch him seek to unify his life around permanent purposes, against a pestering, surging, recurring, temporary desire. He desires, let us say, to conform to the restriction in sex, but as he approaches adolescence, within and without stimuli of breathless ardor assail him. He must inhibit them if he proposes to be chaste, and his continent road is beset with never-resting ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... some truth in this, for the old gentleman was perpetually pestering me with petitions, and I know for a certainty, from his own charities, was often without a shilling in his pocket; but I suspect the good dinners at Hackton had a considerable share in causing his regrets at the dissolution of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have," she answered. "Do you think a girl can walk about London without some man pestering her. Old men!..." She shuddered and said "Oh!" in tones of disgust. "Why are ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... blame for tricks the field-workers put out so that they can earn their money quick and easy. What's the good of pestering me with questions at this awful time? I'm going to die! I'm going to die!" ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... look steadily. "No, I can't forget," he said. "But I shan't pester you. I don't believe in pestering any one. I shouldn't have done it now, only—" he broke off faintly smiling—"it's all Tommy's fault, confound him!" he said, and rose, giving her shoulder a pat that was somehow more reassuring to her than ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... and a buzzard that wheeled high in the blue above, there was no living, moving thing within his range of vision, and the only sounds were the soft rattle of bit-chains as the horses thrashed lazily at pestering flies, and the sullen gurgle of the swollen river. Again he swore. His lips drew into a snarl of hate as his glance once more sought the face of the woman. In his eyes the gleam of hot desire commingled with a glitter of revenge as his thoughts flew swiftly to Wolf River—the Texan's open insult ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... they rise like some soft strain of perfect music, cleaving its way amid the jangle of discordant notes. Here, where the voices of the world sound faint; here, where the city's glamour comes not in, it is good to rest for a while—if only the pestering guides would ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... I walked on slowly, pestering my memory with fruitless calls upon it, hopelessly trying to recover the place where I could have seen the stranger before. In vain memory traveled over Europe in concert-rooms, theaters, shops, and railway carriages. I could not recall the occasion ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... call attention to the fact that enough of Mrs. West remained for all practical purposes, regarded her friend with kindly concern. "My, is Annabel Sinclair pestering ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... brook like mad and up through the woods. Marilla and I run down and helped the minister get up and brush his coat. He wasn't hurt, but he was mad. He seemed to hold Marilla and me responsible for it all, though we told him the pig didn't belong to us, and had been pestering us all summer. Besides, what did he come to the back door for? You'd never have caught Mr. Allan doing that. It'll be a long time before we get a man like Mr. Allan. But it's an ill wind that blows no good. We've never ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and after I had stumbled on them without pestering the Lord, either! Just as slick as anything! Mine! I never ever thought of it. But when I did think, I liked it. The more I thought, the funnier ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... commission, such as buying for him the cargo of a French prize, if he could get it cheap. Or thus: "If you would procure for me a hogshead of the best Clarett, and a hogshead of the best white wine, at a reasonable rate, it would be very grateful to me." After pestering him with a few other commissions, he tells him that "Andrew and Bettsy [children of Pepperrell] send their proper compliments," and signs himself, with the starched flourish of provincial breeding, "With all possible Respect, Honoured Sir, Your Obedient Son and Servant." [Footnote: Sparhawk to Pepperrell,-June, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... genteel Equipages are to be seen. At the Play Boxes are all English. At the Hotels, Restaurations—in short, everywhere—John Bull stalks incorporate. I see an Englishman with his little red book, the Paris guide, in one hand and map in the other, with a parcel of ragged boys at his heels pestering him for money. "Monsieur, c'est moi," who am ready to hold your stick. "Monsieur, c'est moi," ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Grimaldi, who found it as difficult to keep his countenance as I did. The young roue was hurt at her silence, and continued pestering her, giving her all the best pieces on his plate after tasting them first. The lady refused to take them, and he tried to put them into her mouth, while she repulsed him in a rage. He saw that no one seemed inclined to take her part, and determined to continue ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... deplorable, pitiable, lamentable; sad, affecting, touching, pathetic. irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling; unaccommodating, invidious, vexatious; troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome; plaguing, plaguy[obs3]; awkward. importunate; teasing, pestering, bothering, harassing, worrying, tormenting, carking. intolerable, insufferable, insupportable; unbearable, unendurable; past bearing; not to be borne, not to be endured; more than flesh and blood can bear; enough to drive one mad, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to answer for. He was all right when I left him, two hours ago, with not a sign of fever. Has the Countess been pestering him?" ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... never can give up a joke, once he thinks he has one," said Mary. "But I'll tell him to stop pestering Uncle Jasper." ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... lie down for a time during the heat of the afternoon, but thoughts of the suffering all about her banished power to rest. She went down and found the old colonel lying with closed eyes, feebly trying to keep away the pestering flies. Remembering the bunch of peacock feathers with which Zany, in old monotonous days, had waved when waiting on the table, she obtained it from the dining-room, and sitting down noiselessly by the officer, gave him a respite ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... would call upon him and offer such consolation as was in his power; and when he had called on Claudius, he would call on the Countess Margaret and tell her what sad sceptics these legal people were, everlastingly pestering peaceable citizens in the hope of extracting from them a few miserable dollars. And he would tell her how sorry he was that Claudius should be annoyed, and how he, Barker, would see him through—that is, ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... the coulee road, they went—when Simon saw the grove at the landing. Among those trees many a pestering buffalo-fly had been outwitted; there, where grapevines tangled, many a mosquito had been rubbed away. Quick as a flash, Simon made for the cut, with Matthews coming ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the king's intentions. In spite of all my questions as to his horses, his agricultural affairs, whether he was satisfied with his five farms, whether he meant to cut the timber of the old avenue, he returned to the subject of politics with the pestering faculty of an old maid and the persistency of a child. Minds like his prefer to dash themselves against the light; they return again and again and hum about it without ever getting into it, like those big flies which weary our ears as they buzz ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... 'there's a widow woman here that's pestering the soul out of me with her intentions. I can't get out of her way. It ain't that she ain't handsome and agreeable, in a sort of style, but her attentions is serious, and I ain't ready for to marry nobody ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... The flies were pestering him, and he was thirsty—not with that thirst of the mouth which may be quenched with a long draught, but with the thirst of the throat that sands and sears. He felt thirsty all over. He had been thirsty, like this, ever since he struck ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... he did. You have been pestering him for the last half-hour, and he is getting tired of it; but I may say, Howard, I shall hardly be able to sleep to-night, I am so anxious ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... the valorous little fellow meant to attack the three city lads, who were pestering him not only with stones, but with taunts that ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... to give me my dinner?" he quizzed, his lips' lifting humorously at the corners. "I kinda thought, from the way you turned me down cold when we met before, you'd shut your door in my face if I came pestering around. How about that?" ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... Patsy played Juliet at Brambleside, and more than satisfied George Travis. While his mind was racing ahead, planning her particular stardom on Broadway, and her mind was pestering her with its fears and uncertainties into a state of "private prostration," the manager of the Brambleside Inn was telephoning the Green County sheriff to come at once—he had found ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... ravished him. It was the heyday of wonderful flights on the Somme. Yet he wanted something even better; but before pestering M. Bechereau he ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... heard her from her bed exhorting her husband to close the window and not let in the draught upon her for the sake of any little Volunteer whipper-snapper in creation. "What next?" she should like to know, and "Tell the pestering man there's a bed of spring bulbs planted close under the wall, an' if he goes stampin' upon my li'l crocuges I'll have the ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Catholic correspondent," by "a nurse," by any number of anonymous people. Indeed, names have been mentioned. A lady's name has been drawn, most unwarrantably as it appears to me, into the discussion, and I have no doubt that this lady has been subject to a good deal of pestering and annoyance. She has written to the Editor of The Evening News denying all knowledge of the supposed miracle. The Psychical Research Society's expert confesses that no real evidence has been proffered ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... your ship, lieutenant," said Captain Keogh. "To be sure, the carpenter has been pestering me this morning about the timbers; but I told him he'd probably only make things worse by patching. You can't put new wine into old bottles, you know,"—here he poured himself out a fresh glass—"and we shall hold well enough together till we ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... save them for the carriers. He thought about this some while mending the moccasin, and decided to take the bug gun. It might not kill the stingers, but it ought to discourage them enough so they wouldn't keep pestering him. ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... the rose, "these suitors are pestering me beyond all endurance. How can I have any patience with the south wind, who is forever importuning me with his sentimental sighs and melancholy wheezing? And as for that old hoptoad, Mr. Roughbrown,—why, it is a husband I want, not ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... only stand so much, and then it makes me nervous," the guide went on, in a matter-of-fact tone. "I don't care what you do when you get back to town. I just don't want you pestering me any more with your complaints. I've stood a lot for Miss Tremont's sake—she probably wouldn't like to see anything happen to you. But just a few more little remarks like you made before lunch, and you're apt to find yourself standing in mud up to ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... aid to William's knee in the form of chewed tobacco, which if it did no more at least discouraged the pestering flies. Now he collected a ride for his pay. He had reasoned that William was probably subdued to the point of permitting the liberty, and that he had other things to think of more important than protecting his mulish dignity. Casey guessed right. ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Miuesov called her an 'abandoned creature.' He's worse than a tom-cat in love. At first she was only employed by him in connection with his taverns and in some other shady business, but now he has suddenly realized all she is and has gone wild about her. He keeps pestering her with his offers, not honorable ones, of course. And they'll come into collision, the precious father and son, on that path! But Grushenka favors neither of them, she's still playing with them, and teasing them both, considering which she ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ear forward and the other one back, and switched at a pestering fly. Behind him Sunfish and Stopper waited with the patience they had learned in three weeks of continuous travel over country that was rough in spots, barren in places, with wind and sun and occasional, sudden thunderstorms to punctuate ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... these nestle closest to my heart, be they grimy little cockneys or their trim and dainty country cousins. They come day by day for their meed of crumbs spread for them outside my window, and at this season they eat leisurely and with good appetite, for there are no hungry babies pestering to be fed. Very early in the morning I hear the whirr and rustle of eager wings, and the tap, tap, of little beaks upon the stone. The sound carries me back, for it was the first to greet me when I rose to draw water and gather kindling in my roadmender days; and if I slip back ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... single book the secret of the wonderful literary production of the half-century which followed. The Arcadia, especially when contrasted with Euphues, has the great merit of abundant and stirring incident and interest, of freedom from any single affectation so pestering and continuous as Lyly's similes, and of constant purple patches of poetical description and expression, which are indeed not a little out of place in prose, but which are undeniably beautiful in themselves. But when this is said all is ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... having, by the greediness with which this little bait was swallowed, tested the extent of Mrs Wititterly's appetite for adulation, proceeded to administer that commodity in very large doses, thus affording to Sir Mulberry Hawk an opportunity of pestering Miss Nickleby with questions and remarks, to which she was absolutely obliged to make some reply. Meanwhile, Lord Verisopht enjoyed unmolested the full flavour of the gold knob at the top of his cane, as he would have done to the end of the interview ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... have the refusal, and, if she will not do it herself, I hope she will advise you how to place it. Here in England we are at the dead-lock. The provincial theatres and the second-class theatres are pestering me daily for it. But I will not allow it to be produced except at a first-class theatre. I have wrested it by four actions in law and equity from the hands of pirates, and now they shall smart for pirating me. At the present time, therefore, any American manager who may have the sense ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the green and black flies came pestering and tormenting like a host of wicked jinn. The glare of sunlight on the yellow sand hurt the eyes. The deadly silence of the place was oppressive—especially when you had strung yourself up to concert pitch to face the crash and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... began to read everything she could lay her hands on about the business of building construction, and very soon when she asked a question it was a fairly intelligent one, because it had some knowledge back of it. She didn't make the mistake of pestering him with questions before she had any groundwork of technical knowledge to build on, and I'm not sure that he ever guessed what she was up to, but I do know that gradually, as he found that he did not, for instance, have to draw ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... more than secure from the danger of dying of hunger; but he had not held it a year before he returned to Piero and gave it back to him by public contract, declaring that he refused to lose his peace of mind by having to think of household cares and listen to the importunity of the peasant, who kept pestering him every third day—now because the wind had unroofed his dovecote, now because his cattle had been seized by the Commune for taxes, and now because a storm had robbed him of his wine and his fruit. He was so weary and disgusted with all this, that he would rather ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... of formation. Mr. Powers and myself were engaged in an animated and, to me, very agreeable conversation, which was constantly interrupted by these ill-bred women, who kept all the time mistaking the plaster for the marble, and asked the artist the most pestering questions on the modus operandi of sculpturing. I was astonished at the marvelous temper of Mr. Powers, who politely and patiently answered all their queries. By some lucky chance these women got out of the way during our slow progress ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... right good answer too. These middle-men and their wives and daughters are always pestering professional men to give their services to charities for nothing, but in cases like the one I have just cited they take very good care that they do not unloosen their own purse-strings to help the cause along ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... How it dwells In our houses! How it tells Of the folly that impels To the breeding and the speeding Of the Smells, Smells, Smells, Of the Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells— To the festering and the pestering of the Smells! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... is shrewd enough to know when the game is up. Frankly, Chirpy, I don't think the prospect of pestering you, or even of punishing me, will induce him to take the field again after we are married. No"—he smiled down at her—"I think I have cooled his ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... her taught songs, what a delightful singer she was capable of becoming, I really had not patience to hear her little French airs, and entreated her to give them up, but the little rogue instantly began pestering me with them, singing one after another with a comical sort of malice, and following me round the room, when I said I would not listen to her, to say, "But is not this pretty?—and this?—and this?" singing away with all her ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... ain't natural, Mr. Knowles—not in him, it ain't. Nor it ain't natural for him to be so all-fired polite to everybody, nor his pestering you to ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... flicked to the other two who had been pestering the little fellow. They weren't quite so aggressive and as yet had come to no conclusion about their stand. Probably the three had been unacquainted before their bullying alliance to deprive the smaller man of his place. However, a moment of hesitation ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... approach to the fire she passed close to where Pete sat, never looking at Phil above the level of his boots. And as often as she bent over the pot, Pete put his arm round her waist, being so near and so tempting. For thus pestering her she beat her foot like a goat, and screwed on a look of anger which broke down in a stifled laugh; but she always took care to come again to Pete's side rather than to Phil's, until at last the nudging and shoving ended in a pinch and a little squeal, and a quick ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... absence of their husbands, the musicians' wives hung around the building pestering the officials. Pobloff has been found, they were informed, in a solitary fit, on the floor of the auditorium. The stage was in the greatest confusion—chairs and music stands being piled about as if a tornado had visited the place. Not ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker |
