"Petulant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his young person, his pronounced features, and handsome face. There were gloomy depths in his big black eyes, although the slightest movement, the faintest play of expression would cause them to dance with vitality and fun; the petulant expression, round lips, curved and cut with the delicacy of a cameo, was very manifest. The lad was built in almost Herculean mould, so broad were his shoulders, so upright and tall his young figure. With his head thrown back, the listening attitude ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... secret between them, which they kept for a whole fortnight. There was no finding it out from the Story Girl. She had a knack of keeping secrets, anyhow; and, moreover, all that fortnight she was strangely cranky and petulant, and we found it was not wise to tease her. She was not well, so Aunt ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ever-varying whims of the peevish convalescent, whose powers of self-control have been prostrated by long bodily exhaustion. Nothing is more trying than to find anxious exertions for their comfort and amusement, either entirely unnoticed and useless, or met with petulant contradiction and ungrateful irritation. Those who have themselves experienced the helplessness caused by disease well know how bitterly the trial is shared by the invalid herself. How deeply she often mourns over the unreasonableness and irritation she is without power to control, and ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... by a light touch on the sleeve of my shirt, and a half-laughing, half-petulant voice ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... soon came to an end. One of my editors sent me a petulant note telling me that all I wrote he could easily find out himself, and that he required something more "graphic and personal." I could do no better, or rather I ought to say, no worse than I had been doing. These letters were a great trouble to me. I was ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... Satyrick songs, with which the antient Tragedians endeavoured to enliven the Dithyrambicks, gave rise to two different species of poetry. Their rude jests and petulant raillery engendered the Satire; and their sylvan character produced ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... Spanish Ministers either manifested sullen reserve or indulged in petulant complaints respecting the "Sant' Iago," Corsica, and Hayti. The conduct of the Marquis del Campo at London was equally sinister; his despatches represented the policy and conduct of England in the darkest colours. In the hope of softening these asperities Pitt and Grenville decided to ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... with a king over candle-ends?" Graham queried, pleasuring in the sight of her graceful abandon. Thirty-eight! It was impossible. She seemed almost a girl, petulant and flushed over some school task. Then he remembered Mrs. Tully's remark that Paula was the most mature child she ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... that she cannot befriend him. Then his cousin laughed, and in idleness talked with the children; Sometimes she turned to him, and then when the thistle was falling, Caught it and twined it again in her hair, and called it her keepsake, Smiled, and made him ashamed of his petulant gift there, before them. But, when the night was grown old and the two by the hearthstone together Sat alone in the flickering red of the flame, and the cricket Carked to the stillness, and ever, with sullen throbs of the pendule ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... and artificial fashion. But the effect of her grave little face and severe expression, with this opulent gold, and her red lips and round blue eyes, was very piquant. Even powder, earrings, and "clubbing" her hair did not rob Julia of the appearance of a sweet, wilful, and petulant child. Besides the powder and earrings, she indulged in cologne, in open-work silk stockings and high heels, in chains and rings and bracelets; she wore little corsets, at fourteen, and ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... hesitatingly, "the reason why I wanted to have you come out here, why I couldn't sleep, I wanted to tell you how ashamed I am for having been peevish, being petulant, last night. I'm so sorry, because you were very patient with me, you were very good to me. I don't want you to think of me just as a crochety woman who didn't appreciate you. You are very kind, and when I hear that ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... succeeded in making herself so thoroughly petulant and exacting to all her maids, that when she ordered them out of the room, and told them on no account to disturb her in any respect for the rest of the day, they "rejoiced with trembling," and had no anxiety to thrust their attentions upon so unreasonable a mistress. And a little while ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... me,—nothing more than telling what had happened at school one morning. No matter who asked it; but there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no heart to speak;—I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away, and the first battle of life was lost. What remorse followed I need not tell. Then and there, to the best of my knowledge, I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned my back on Duty. Time has led me to look upon my offence more leniently; I do not believe it or any other ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... boat!... You were my friend, then!" he added suddenly, with a note of question sounding through the affirmation, and she answered quickly, looking away with an air of petulant reproach. "Why, you know I was, Captain Kerissen. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... her "young chaps" in the kitchen, but Louis was too frightened to face them. He was too shy to go downstairs to carry up water or coal for Marcella, and she had to do it herself; in the undermined state of his nerves it was torture to him to face people, and he became petulant if asked to do what he called "menial tasks." Marcella understood him: Mrs. King had no hesitation in saying ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... have loved Socrates, and done battle with him staunchly and manfully owned his defeat; and the dialogue, arranged by Plato, would have shown even in Plato's gallery. He seemed in talk aggressive, petulant, full of a singular energy; as vain you would have said as a peacock, until you trod on his toes, and then you saw that he was at least clear of all the sicklier elements of vanity. Soundly rang his laugh at any jest against himself. He wished to be taken, as he took others, for what was good ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... timid and one asks him the cause, he is liable to hear in reply: "Me fright along you too much." Or the native may be fright along storm, or wild bush, or haunted places. CROSS covers every form of anger. A man may be cross at one when he is feeling only petulant; or he may be cross when he is seeking to chop off your head and make a stew out of you. A recruit, after having toiled three years on a plantation, was returned to his own village on Malaita. He was clad in all kinds of gay and sportive garments. On his ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... month Ralph's money ran out, and then he was petulant and often upbraided her. Those were the only times when he essayed to study, and he would not walk with her of evenings, so destitute. Then Fanchette amused her: "Sew in my room," she would say; "Ralph will come for you at eight o'clock." But Ralph never went, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... morning, T was probably one of the most thoughtful and judiciously-minded; yet of every one but myself the business in being abroad was sober and reasonable, while mine was utterly ridiculous and silly. And the girl whose banter had driven me to it—perhaps she had attached no seriousness whatever to my petulant vow and had even now forgotten it. With these reflections were mingled the pangs of parting from my home and family; and for a time ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... arose from a force of intellect, and quick-seeing, far-reaching sagacity, everywhere discerning his object and pursuing it steadily. Whether it was popular or professional, he grasped a point and held it with a strong hand. He was sarcastic sometimes, but not frequently; not frothy or petulant, but cool and vitriolic. Unfortunate for him ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... accordance with that same treaty, should first satisfy various claims of British subjects for restitution, indemnity, and relief. The regular diplomatic machinery stuck fast at this point, both at home and abroad. In one of his gossipy, confidential letters Fisher Ames remarked that Hammond was a most "petulant, impudent" man, habitually railing against the conduct of our government "with a gabble that his feelings render doubly unintelligible." But Pinckney, our representative in England, was equally undiplomatic. ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too, there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever disappointment he felt, and, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... on, a thunderstorm drove the king as he passed along the river to the house of the Bishop of Durham where the Earl was then sojourning. Simon bade Henry take shelter with him and have no fear of the storm. The king refused with petulant wit. "If I fear the thunder, I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world." But Simon had probably small faith in the cumbrous system of government which the Barons devised, and it was with reluctance that he was brought to swear to the Provisions of ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... pipe, down on the West Main wharf, where he seated himself on a stone mooring post, placed the bundle containing the loaf beside him, and then began to eat heartily? Nothing of the kind. Jem was thinking very hard about home and his little petulant, girlish wife. ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... her white sash: "But you said—you said you'd dance with me if I got my sash ..." or some such words, but only Miss Le Pettit caught all the muttered syllables, and she never spoke of them, save with a petulant reluctance to Mr. Constantine ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... papers in their hats, that show'd As if they to the pillory rode. Have all these courses, these efforts, 620 Been try'd by people of all sorts, Velis & remis, omnibus nervis And all t'advance the Cause's service? And shall all now be thrown, away In petulant intestine fray? 625 Shall we that in the Cov'nant swore, Each man of us to run before Another, still in Reformation, Give dogs and bears a dispensation? How will Dissenting Brethren relish it? 630 What will malignants say? videlicet, That each man Swore ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... to turn pedlar any day! The King's army will go to the dogs fast enough since the Governor commissions Recollets and Jesuits to act as royal officers," was the petulant remark of another ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... hands. With a miser's care she husbanded her strength, ate the most nourishing food they could afford, and rested every moment her duties permitted. The economy they were now compelled to practice amounted almost to daily privation. Belle and the children were often a little petulant over this change, Mrs. Jocelyn apathetic, but Mildred was inflexible. "We must not run in debt one penny," she would often ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... very eagerly. An impulse seized her to ask him to forgive all her petulant speeches and waywardness, but when she tried to do it she could not find her voice. Perhaps he read her thought in her tearful eyes and changeful face, and grew a little remorseful as he remembered how often he had vexed her during the first months of their acquaintance. ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... Who in the motion[6] have no share, But purely come to hear and stare; Have no concern for Sabra's sake, Which gets the better, saint or snake, Provided Punch (for there's the jest) Be soundly maul'd, and plague the rest. Thus, Tim, philosophers suppose, The world consists of puppet-shows; Where petulant conceited fellows Perform the part of Punchinelloes: So at this booth which we call Dublin, Tim, thou'rt the Punch to stir up trouble in: You wriggle, fidge, and make a rout, Put all your brother puppets out, Run on in a perpetual round, To tease, perplex, disturb, confound: Intrude ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... in the box opposite, "not a Frenchwoman. Her youth is too girlish, and she has too petulant an air ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... however it may soften and enlarge a petulant and wayward nature, instead of increasing, cuts short and crisp the patience of the patient. When Lancelot was as near as manners and prudence allowed to that lonesome house, he sat down quietly for a little while in a little niche of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... bushy shock of hair curling at the ends, such as the Italians call a zazzera. The eye is deeply sunk, with long venomous flat eyelids, like those which Leonardo gives to his most wicked faces. The nose is long and crooked, curved like a vulture's over a petulant mouth, with lips deliberately pressed together, as though it were necessary to control some nervous twitching. The cheek is broad, and its bone is strongly marked. Looking at these features in repose, we cannot but picture to our fancy what expression they might assume under a sudden ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... may observe, that as Tragedy, by painful emotions, elevates us to the most dignified views of humanity, being, in the words of Plato, "the imitation of the most beautiful and most excellent life;" Comedy, on the other hand, by its jocose and depreciatory view of all things, calls forth the most petulant hilarity. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... one expression, we should call it melancholy-musical. Even the more frivolous and equivocal songs have a tincture of this pensiveness. While the Servian songs of this description are the ebullitions of merry and petulant youth, the Russian are frequently not without a spice of sentimentality. Girls are often represented painting the unhappy consequences of their weakness with a very suspicious mixture of penitence and pleasure; ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... it cannot be settled by attributing it to a mysterious dispensation of natural depravity. The probability is that the home life is without harmony and full of discord, that the parents are themselves petulant and more anxious to assert their separate opinions than to find unity of action. Nothing is more effective to teach children peaceful living than to see it constantly before them in their parents. A harmonious home seldom has quarrelsome children. Such harmony is a matter of organization ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... said Hepsa, impatiently; "don't talk any more; it sounds odd." Genevieve looked at Hepsa, and the wild, petulant look of her face grieved and shocked her so much, that she ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... still before him the peril of financial embarrassment, that he was mortgaging the house, and that his colloquies with David Dain continued to be frequent and obviously disconcerting. When she saw him nervous, petulant, preoccupied, she attributed his condition solely to his thought of the one danger which she had secretly removed. She had a strange determined impulse ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... own good breeding," says Chesterfield, "is the best security against other people's ill manners. It carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duke of Marlborough, or a civil one to Sir ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... louder. This is Mr. Williams. Speak up. I can't understand you." The voice was petulant and so distinct that even Shirley could hear it, as he knelt by the side of the phonograph. Again Van Cleft insisted on his deafness. There was the suggestion of a break in the voice which brought to Shirley's eyes the sparkle ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... order of the Secretary of War, that he might go on this trip. He is scrupulously careful, and a little mishap works him into a passion, but when labor is needed he has a ready hand and powerful arm, and in danger, rapid judgment and unerring skill. A great difficulty or peril changes the petulant spirit ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... disregarded. The next morning, the surgeon having reported that Schriften was apparently quite recovered, he was summoned into the cabin. His frame was wasted away to a skeleton, but his motions and his language were as sharp and petulant ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Church Street, running from the river to St. John's Church, Westminster, that atrociously ill-mannered church of Queen Anne's day, built it is said on the lines of a footstool overturned in one of that lady's fits of petulant wrath. Down Church Street ran Martha, followed by Copperfield ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Foreigner, travelling among us, particularly in the western Counties, some Summers past, judge of our national Wisdom and Oeconomy? Would he not start even at our Humanity, on seeing the best arable Grounds in the Kingdom, in immense Tracts, wantonly enjoyed by the Cattle of a few petulant Individuals; and at the same Juncture, our high Ways and Streets crowded with Shoals of mendicant fellow-creatures! reduced, through Want of proper Sustenance, to the utmost Distress? Would not a Frenchman ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... myself with Levi's book, in answer to Dr. Priestley. It is a curious and tough work. His style is inelegant and incorrect, harsh and petulant to his adversary, and his reasoning flimsy enough. Some of his doctrines were new to me, particularly that of his two resurrections: the first, a particular one of all the dead, in body as well as soul, who are to live over again, the Jews in a state ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... at all," she answered after a pause, the corners of her red mouth drooping in petulant, spoilt-child fashion, "and if you go away I ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... thoroughly understands. The preacher taught me Latin, Greek, and history: two persons, however, occupied themselves with my religious education—the preacher and my old Rosalie. She is a good soul. How often have I teased her, been petulant, and almost angry with her! She thought so much of me, she was both mother and sister to me, and instructed me in religion as well as the preacher, although she is a Catholic. Since my father's childhood she has been a sort of governante in ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... and fed them—have never been held in a lover's arms, or held a child of their own against their heart. And so," she went on smiling, "many of them lavished their tenderness upon animals or crafty servants or selfish relations; and grew old and fanciful and petulant before their time. It seems a sad waste of life that! Because so many of them are spirits that could have loved finely and devotedly all the time. But here," she said, "they unlearn their caprices, and live a life by strict rule—and they ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... regularly crushed any proposal, if put to the vote without such previous deliberation, by means of the political or religious veto.(28) The revolution hadswept away thesebarriers; andin consequence that absurd system now began fully to develop its results, and to put it in the power of any petulant knave to overthrow the state in due form of law. What was under such circumstances more natural, more necessary, more truly conservative, than now to recognize formally and expressly the legislation of the senate to which effect had been hitherto given by ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... blackened with the smoke of the battle, it is unworthy of two mighty empires to carry on an ignoble war of words. If peace is their wish, let them manifest the great and enlightened sentiment in all its purity, and disdain to irritate each other by acts of petulant and provoking recrimination. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... dumb, spiritless and absolutely crestfallen, and who also observed the symptoms we spoke of, he began naturally enough to suspect that something had gone wrong. His interrogations, however, were fruitless. Val, on his inquiring the cause of these appearances, told him in a petulant fit of that ill-temper which is pecular to cowards, "to go be hanged;" a compliment which dutiful Phil returned to his worthy father with interest. This was all that passed between them, with the single exception of an observation which fell from Phil's lips as ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... much after the manner of a petulant child. "I won't leave it!—I won't leave Verner's Pride! You could not be so cruel as to wish me. Who says he is alive? Lionel, I ask you who it is that says he ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "Your petulant vehemence is both unbecoming and displeasing; and in future you would do well to recollect that, as a child submitted to my guidance by your mother's desire, it is disrespectful both to her and to me to insist upon a course at variance with ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... that Madame von Marwitz gave to her moods of sometimes tragic and sometimes petulant melancholy. Karen had told him all about Fafner and how, in the cave, Tante would lie sometimes for long hours, silent, her eyes closed, holding her hand; sometimes asking her to read to her, English, French, German or Italian poetry; their range ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... various rout Of petulant capricious sects, The maggots of corrupted texts.'' Hudibras, Part ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... gone out to the gate with his bird gun on his shoulder and found Will Fletcher and the spotted foxhound puppies awaiting him in the road. He saw again the boy's face, with the sunlight full upon it—eager, alert, a little petulant, full of good impulses readily turned adrift. There had been no evil upon it then—only weakness and a pathetic absence of determination. His own damnable intention was thrust back upon him, and he heard again the words of Carraway which had reechoed ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... her frame was relieved by more frequent sighs; there was more elasticity in her walk, more youthfulness in her attitudes; even in the stillness of her chamber, a pleasant though feverish agitation produced a petulant movement of her feet, and sent the words more hurriedly to her lips. In the evening Julie would undraw the curtains, and frequently lean forth from her window to take in the freshness of the water, the rays of the moon, and the breath of the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... disobedient school-urchin, he told himself, glowering sulkily in the presence of his tutor. Between this man and himself lay an enmity that was deeper than the grave, and yet to Quinton Edge he was merely the petulant boy to be scolded and punished or, even more contemptuously, ignored. Was he never to stand before him as ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the plays were over, kept her carmine saucer on the dressing-table, and put on her blushes, regularly as the morning. When stared and jeered at, she at first said she did it because she thought it made her look pretty; but, after a while, she became petulant about it,—would make no reply to any joke, but merely ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... from Mrs. Toplady. He knew the writing, and opened the envelope with a petulant grimace, muttering "No, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... had imitated Gila Dare's petulant childish accent to perfection. At another time the three young men would have shouted over it. Now they looked ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... no reply to the petulant words and action. An expression of tender pity crossed her face, as she stooped and lifted the torn barb, and examined the rent, with as much apparent calmness as if it had been damaged in the washing. ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... any padding—strength in the lean lithe figure; but it was always brute strength. There was no moral strength whatever in the restless fidgeting—the savage winding and unwinding of his left foot around the saber scabbard, or the attitude, leaning forward over the table, of petulant pugnacity. And the cruel voice was as weak as the hand was strong with which ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... with a dull light glowing about his head and fading away directly, then more darkness and stumbling on, and once more a dull yellow glow, and this fading away, with the darkness increasing. Then a slight struggle, and a few petulant remonstrances. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which through' the poem, or through the music, we attain to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... beside her. She had been chatting in a bright, rapid, desultory fashion about the book and a dozen other things—amusing herself really by a continual stream of playful talk—until she perceived that the girl's fancies were far away. Then she stopped suddenly, with this expression of petulant but good-natured disappointment. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... Lessingham's, calling to Matthews from the staircase, though, for an instant, I hardly recognised it, it was so curiously petulant. Pushing past Matthews, I stepped into the hall. A young man, I suppose a footman, in the same undress as Matthews, was holding a candle,—it seemed the only light about the place. By its glimmer I perceived Lessingham standing half-way up the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... that firmness of purpose, which gave him poise when all about him was tumult. Other men lost their heads; Paul kept cool. It was a critical moment around the temple court that morning; the Jewish mob was murderous, the Roman chief captain was petulant, and he was cold ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... would leave him very short-handed, and seriously embarrass him until he could obtain others to fill their places; and I formed this opinion from the fact that his many expressions of regret at being blown away from his boats were every one of them coupled with a petulant repetition of the remark that his hands would be completely tied should he fail to recover their crews. So persistently did he hang upon this phase of the mishap, that at length I ventured to ask him whether there were none ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... circumstance during this period to bind Jemima and Mr Farquhar together. They were still misunderstanding each other with all their power. The difference in the result was this: Jemima loved him all the more, in spite of quarrels and coolness. He was growing utterly weary of the petulant temper of which he was never certain; of the reception which varied day after day, according to the mood she was in and the thoughts that were uppermost; and he was almost startled to find how very glad ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... overturned. Thorpe's dry-eyed, burning, almost mad insistence on the importance of the day's task had not its ordinary force. They looked upon him from a standpoint apart, calmly, dispassionately, as one looks on a petulant child. The grim call of tragedy had lifted them above little ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... makes the silly goats guffaw at such a rate when I recite my 'Ode to a Dying Sparrow'," he said in a petulant tone to Nealie, one day when his audience had been more than usually convulsed. "It must be shocking bad form to double up in public as they did; a photograph of them would have served as an up-to-date advertisement ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... intent on the page along which Whinnie's stubbled finger was crawling like a plowshare beside each furrow of text. He was in the South Pacific, a thousand miles away from me. In my own house Struthers was putting a petulant-voiced Poppsy to bed, and Gershom, up in his room, was making extraordinary smells at his chemistry experiments. Susie I found curled comfortably up in front of the fire, idling over my ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... than to Alfonso, or Giovanni Tornabuoni. Mantegna's portrait of Gonzaga, though made later, shows a rather different type, less displeasing than the bronze. In the bust we have what is probably the portrait of a coarse and clumsy person; he is petulant in the mouth, weak in the chin, gross in the thick and heavy jaw. The bronze is extremely rough, and shows no signs of the nervous and individual touches which we find in Donatello's terra-cotta. Both the busts are unfinished; in the absence of chasing and hammering they are covered with ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... men in New York to inspire more passionate personal attachment than George Clinton. A patriot never lived who was more bitter in his hostility to English misrule, or more uncompromising in his opposition to toryism. He was a typical Irishman—intolerant, often domineering, sometimes petulant, and occasionally too quick to take offence, but he was magnetic and generous, easily putting himself in touch with those about him, and ready, without hesitation, to help the poorest and carry the weakest. This was the kind of man the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... remember of them was the general, yet not unpleasing, intimation of a devotional character impressed on each little party—formally assumed perhaps by some, but sincerely characterising the greater number—which hushed the petulant gaiety of the young into a tone of more quiet, yet more interesting, interchange of sentiments, and suppressed the vehement argument and protracted disputes of those of more advanced age. Notwithstanding the numbers who passed me, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... little, moved westward, westward, round the circumference of the planet, at last to overtake and dominate the fixed twilight of its primitive home— waited, ageless, tireless, acquiescent, her history a blank, while the petulant moods of youth gave place to imperial purpose, stern yet beneficent—waited whilst the interminable procession of annual, lunar and diurnal alternations lapsed unrecorded into a dead Past, bequeathing no register of good ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... results only from our own limited comprehension of it; and that St. James uses no meaningless phrase, but is stating a logical and scientific truth, when he speaks of "The perfect Law of Liberty" (Jas. i, 25). What we have to do is, to follow this up, not by petulant self-assertion, but by quietly considering the why and wherefore of the whole thing. In doing so we can fortify ourselves with another maxim, that "Principle is not limited by Precedent." When we spread the wings of thought ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... would be placed in the list of the natural criminals and lawbreakers, while in reality they are about as meek and docile a set of women as are to be found within the four seas. Pit a fiery little Welsh woman or a petulant Parisienne against the most regal and Junonic amongst them, and let them try conclusions in courage, in energy, or in audacity; the Israelitish Juno will go down before either of the small Philistines, and the fallacy of weight and color in ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the bar, a massive figure, beyond the age of a sea-going engineer, but still as light on his feet as a girl. "Where's she gone?" He pushed open one of the little glass screens, and put his petulant face, with its pale eyes set like aquamarines in bronze, into an opening too small to frame it. "Can you ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... has a habit of dropping to the floor. A piece of paper once folded tends to crease in the same place. These are examples of the force of habit in nonliving matter. Living matter shows its power even more clearly. If you assume a petulant expression for some time, it gets fixed and the expression becomes habitual. The hair may be trained to lie this way or that. These are examples of habit in living tissue. But there is one particular form of living tissue which is most susceptible to habit; that ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... much in this her first real trouble, and a little thing was enough to overset her. She had not readily recovered from the petulant tone of anger with which Janet told her not to ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Duncan came out with a book of flies in his hand, and he said in rather a petulant way, "And it iss no wonder Miss Sheila will be out. And it wass Miss Sheila herself will tell me to see if you will go to ta White Water ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... night, leaving her standing there, petulant, furious, yet with admiration in her eyes. Ten minutes later he heard her call. She was sitting on the edge of the improvised couch, smiling sweetly, ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... nought and continued gazing, while only the little smile, tilting the corners of her lips, betrayed that she had heard the petulant speech. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the numerous matters that would have to be settled up between them, especially Dan's responsibility in the new adventure, the transport of grain from Moab to Jerusalem. Dan's curiosity was not to be diverted, and seeing him give way to his rage like a petulant child, Joseph decided that he must tell him, and he began with a disparagement of his story, the truth of which he did not vouch for. At Capernaum they were all telling how some two or three weeks ago Jesus heard God speaking ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... when she wears Rich emeralds round her neck, and in her ears Pearls of enormous size,—these justify Her faults, and make all lawful in her eye. More shame to Rome! in every street are found The essenced Lypanti, with roses crowned; The gay Miletan and the Tarentine, Lewd, petulant, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... his own. I approved mildly of St. Claire; Michigan awed me from a little boy's summer; Huron was familiar from another summer, but Erie heretofore had meant only something to be crossed—something shallow and petulant. Here she lay in the sunlight, with bars of orange light darkening to ocean blue, and one far sparkling line in the West. Then I knew that I had wronged her. She seemed not to mind, but leisurely to wait. We faced ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... upon the ground—glancing, with a petulant expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I saw you were still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the little alley called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with the overlapping ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... more than admiration in the good sense, the right feeling, the worthiness of his counsels on conduct. And Diderot did not merely moralise at large. All that he says is real, pointed, and apt for circumstance and person. The petulant damsel to whom they were addressed would not be likely to yawn over the sharp remonstrances, the vigorous plain speaking, the downright honesty and visible sincerity of his friendliness. It appears that she had sense enough not to be offended with the frankness of her father's ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... she felt a trifle remorseful about her behavior. Some day she would marry him—she had got far enough to admit that—and perhaps it was unkind of her not to let the matter be settled. And at that she gave a petulant wriggle of her shoulders under her cotton blouse. Wasn't that his business? Wasn't he the one to end it, not wait on her pleasure? Were all men so ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... more particularly as almost all the persons animadverted upon became subsequently my acquaintances, and some of them my friends, which is 'heaping fire upon an enemy's head,' and forgiving me too readily to permit me to forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petulant, and shallow enough; but, although I have long done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or generality of many of its attacks. If Coleridge writes ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... a further reflected glory, due also to Jowett's kindness—a kindness which survived many outbursts of what I thought somewhat petulant disapproval. I received from him one day a curt invitation to dinner, and presented myself, wondering mildly to what this mark of favor could be due. But wonder turned to alarm when, on entering the Master's drawing-room, I ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... conditions remain what they are, the commercial supremacy of England is in no immediate danger. It is these great permanent geographical factors that make or mar a country, not Eight Hours Bills or petty social reconstructions. Said the Lord Mayor of London to petulant King James, when he proposed to remove the Court to Oxford, "May it please your Majesty not to ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... where his hard-earned guineas went—to keep in luxury this petulant, complaining woman whose entire thoughts were centred about her own bodily comfort, and whom Patrick Lovell, with his lucid recognition of values, would have contemptuously described as "a parasite woman, m'dear—the kind of female I've no ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Jean from bursting out with her petulant complaint, and it was Eleanor who replied with warm thanks. 'My Lord Cardinal would come to visit them on the morn,' the Prioress said; 'and in the meantime, she hoped,' looking at Jean, 'they would condescend to the hospitality of the poor ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... charming companions. Often as a carriage dashes by, the pedestrian is able to catch a glimpse of some jewelled and turbaned sultana, of dazzling beauty, attended by her maid, who does not always possess a sinecure, for the mistress is often haughty, proud, and petulant, very hard to please, and exacts great deference from her inferiors. Many of them live in regal splendour, and everything that wealth and pampered luxury can bestow is theirs, as long as their personal charms remain; but ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... captain takes his page's place, and lies with his faithless mistress, cuckolds his treacherous friend, thrusts his sword through his body, recovers his casket, and marries his page. You will observe that this play is also larded with a petulant, litigious old woman (a relation of the captain), who is the most comical character that was ever brought ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... time came when the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid, ungainly zealots, after having furnished much good sport during two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers. The wounds inflicted by gay and petulant malice were retaliated with the gloomy and implacable malice peculiar to bigots who mistake their own rancour for virtue. The theatres were closed. The players were flogged. The press was put under the guardianship of austere licensers. The Muses were banished from their own favourite ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in a martial hand; be curst and brief] Martial hand, seems to be a careless scrawl, such as shewed the writer to neglect ceremony. Curst, is petulant, crabbed—a curst cur, is a dog that with little provocation snarls and ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... our prayers thus? Do we try to bring our desires into harmony with Him, before we venture to express them? Do we go to His footstool to pour out petulant, blind, passionate, un- sanctified wishes after questionable and contingent good, or do we wait until He fills our spirits with longings after what it must be His desire to give, and then breathe out those desires caught from His own heart, and echoing His own will? Ah! The discipline ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... passionate and unrequited love. She was for a while the sole object of his reveries; and Perdita became aware that his thoughts and time were bestowed on a subject unparticipated by her. My sister was by nature destitute of the common feelings of anxious, petulant jealousy. The treasure which she possessed in the affections of Raymond, was more necessary to her being, than the life-blood that animated her veins—more truly ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... prescriptive right of holding us lingering in their chains; and Lord Greville would do well to remember that his services are too important to his country to be held on the caprices of a silly girl's affected coyness. But be it so—since you are so petulant a lover, be prepared when you join her Majesty's circle to-night, ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... little lesson in patience, to teach me not to think so much about myself. But, as a matter of fact, the little pain I suffered made me think more of myself than I had previously been doing; it turned me for the time from a bland and hedonistic philosopher into a petulant pessimist, because it seemed that no one was the better for the incident; certainly, if life is worth having at all, the beetle was no better off, and in my own case I could trace no moral improvement. I had been harmlessly enough employed in getting air and exercise in the middle of hard ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... won my love, you petulant boy!" she answered, archly. Then, dropping her voice to its tenderest music, she murmured: "What would you ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... been petulant and reminiscent. He had seemed perversely bent on committing a righteous suicide by forcing her to make him angry. He had cast into damnation all the "fads" and "isms" of an ungodly present and, since he judged the time had come to point a moral, ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... very low and the sky was dull; there was just enough water to lap against the sides of the boat, and make it rock up and down. The boat fretted like a petulant child, and pulled at the rope as a dog pulls against its chain, but it could not ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... yet another circumstance which increased the animosity of Louis towards his overgrown vassal; he owed him favours which he never meant to repay, and was under the frequent necessity of temporizing with him, and even of enduring bursts of petulant insolence, injurious to the regal dignity, without being able to treat him otherwise than as ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Judge Hyde was dead; nineteen years of petulant, helpless, hopeless wretchedness were at last over, and all that his daughter cared to live for was gone; she was an orphan, without near relatives, without friends, old, and tired out. Do not despise me that I say "old," you plump and rosy ladies whose life is in its prime of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... arrogant assailant assistant attendant clairvoyant combatant recreant consonant conversant defendant descendent discordant elegant exorbitant important incessant irrelevant luxuriant malignant petulant pleasant poignant reluctant stagnant triumphant vagrant warrant ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... mast-head called "Land ahoy!" much to the delight of the voyagers. The land in question was the island of St. Helena. This sea-girt rock had not at that time become classic ground. It had not yet become the prison and mausoleum of Napoleon the Great. The petulant squabbles between Sir Hudson Lowe and his illustrious prisoner had not been heard of. Little wotted then the proud ruler of France the fate that awaited him, for, when the Boudeuse touched at the island, all Europe, with the single exception ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... treaties made by their authority shall be the SUPREME LAW of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.'' These two clauses have been the source of much virulent invective and petulant declamation against the proposed Constitution. They have been held up to the people in all the exaggerated colors of misrepresentation as the pernicious engines by which their local governments were to be destroyed and their liberties exterminated; as the hideous ...
— The Federalist Papers
... he exclaimed with a sort of petulant dignity, and, pushing back his chair, half rose. Helen gave me a swift glance, and with our united strength we barely kept him from falling on his face. He staggered to his feet, looking at us angrily, and not releasing our hold we steadied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... habits; sleeping during the day in holes of trees, and coming out to feed at night. Sir William Jones describes one kept by him for some time; it appeared to have been gentle, though at times petulant when disturbed; susceptible of cold; slept from sunrise to sunset rolled up like a hedgehog. Its food was chiefly plantains, and mangoes when in season. Peaches, mulberries, and guavas, it did not so much care for, but it was most ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... in a petulant non sequitur, "is that YOU, my own twin-brother, never lets on about her comin' yer, permiskus like, when I ain't yer, and you and her gallivantin' and promanadin', ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... general so good as his Epistles. His enmity is effeminate and petulant from a sense of weakness, as his friendship was tender from a sense of gratitude. I do not like, for instance, his character of Chartres, or his characters of women. His delicacy often borders upon sickliness; his fastidiousness makes others ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... alacrity, cheerful rapidity. You could see, here looked forth a soul which was winged; which dwelt in hope and action, not in hesitation or fear. Anthony says, he was "an affectionate and gallant kind of boy, adventurous and generous, daring to a singular degree." Apt enough withal to be "petulant now and then;" on the whole, "very self-willed;" doubtless not a little discursive in his thoughts and ways, and "difficult ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle |
