"Vexing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Miss Pinkerton meant to be kind, but she did not manage to gain the children's hearts, and Bee soon came to understand why Rosy called her "pretending." She was so afraid of vexing anybody that she had got into the habit of agreeing with every one without really thinking over what they meant, and she was so afraid also of being blamed for Rosy's tempers that she would give in to ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... He shook his head as if to shake off a vexing thought. "I—it makes me feel like a brute to think I've been knocking out a half-starved man and throwing him into that water because he crawled under an old blanket in my boat for shelter. Why didn't I question him decently? I must put on the brake, or I'll spoil something ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... of their married life, her husband examined the accounts, he discovered that she had spent 14,000 francs instead of 10,000, and found himself constrained to declare that their purse was too light for her liberality. Not having anything else to do, and her uselessness vexing her, she took to doctoring the poor and concocting medicines. Hers, however, was not the spirit that allows itself to be fettered by the triple vow of obedience, silence, and poverty. No wonder, therefore, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... observing, "Aweel, aweel, that hen," looking upon the lamentable relics of what had been once a large fowl, "wasna a bad ane to be bred at a town end, though it's no like our barn-door chuckles at Charlies-hope—and I am glad to see that this vexing job hasna taen awa your ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... you the most peerless, the most beautiful, the most difficult and cold lady in all France. I drink to those her thousand graces, of which Fame has told us, and to that greatest and most vexing charm of all—her cold indifference to man. I pledge you, too, the swain whose good fortune it maybe to play ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... more and more distinct, that the owner of the old house was pining for his native air. Carpenters next appeared, making a tremendous racket among the outbuildings, strewing green grass with pine shavings and chips of chesnut joists, and vexing the whole antiquity of the place with their discordant renovations. Soon, moreover, they divested our abode of the veil of woodbine which had crept over a large portion of its southern face. All the aged mosses were cleared unsparingly away; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the murmurs of the opposition were sometimes met by appeals to its nobler sentiments. The rich, said Gracchus, if they had the interests of Italy, its future hopes and its unborn generations at heart, should make this land a free gift to the State; they were vexing themselves about small issues and refusing to face the greater ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... uncle, peace! Cousins of ours, be still! drag not to light from its grave the strife that we buried there. Hope not for honor from us, while ye heap upon us shame, or think that we shall forbear from vexing when ye vex us. Sons of our uncle, peace! lay not our rancor raw; walk now gently awhile, as once ye were wont to go. Ay, God knows that we, we love you not, in sooth! and that we blame ye not that ye have no love for us. Each of us has his ground for the loathing his fellow moves: a grace ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... annoyed—more, it is true, because of the emotion which he rightly judged the cause of her not joining him, than the necessity laid on him of eating his dinner without having first unburdened his mind; but the latter fact also had its share in vexing him. ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... think they were unhappy. On the contrary, they were rather spoilt and allowed to run wild. Of course I am telling you this just as a very little warning, in case Hugh and his sisters ever propose to do anything you do not think I should like. Do not give in for fear of vexing them; they will like you all the better in the end if they see you try to be as good and obedient out of sight, as when your Father and I are with you. Do ...
— The Christmas Fairy - and Other Stories • John Strange Winter
... these unblest stones protect From want, and the bleak freezings of neglect. Too long before the vexing Storm-blast driven Here hast thou found repose! beneath this sod! Thou! O vain word! thou dwell'st not with the clod! 20 Amid the shining Host of the Forgiven Thou at the throne of mercy and thy God The triumph of redeeming Love dost hymn (Believe ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... special benefit. The reforms whose fame now fills the land with temperance, anti-slavery, non-resistance, no-government, equal labor, fair and generous as each appears, are poor bitter things when prosecuted for themselves as an end." Again: "The young men who have been vexing society for these last years with regenerative methods seem to have made this mistake: they all exaggerated some special means, and all failed to see that the reform of reforms must be ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... said Croft, sitting down on the stump of a tree and wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Ned Sinton and Tom, who had done their utmost to assist their new acquaintance, sat down beside him and admitted that it was vexing. As if by one impulse, the whole party then sat down to rest, and at that moment, having, as it were, valiantly asserted his right of independent action, the bear turned slowly round and quietly scrambled through the hole. The men sprang up; the massive iron ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... house, between queens and ladies, plots and follies, but his own kinsfolk and retainers must come to him on every petty broil among the lads! I should have thought your boy and young Babington might fight out their quarrels alone without vexing a man that is near driven distracted ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these mortals be!" exclaims Puck in A Mid-summer Night's Dream. And well might the fairy marvel who sees folk vexing themselves over matters that nine times out of ten come to nothing. Much wiser is the man who smiles at misfortunes, even when they are real ones and affect him personally. Charles Lamb once cheerfully helped to hiss off the stage a ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... words that would soothe Jesus; but, as it often is on such occasions, the more we seek for the right words the further we seem to be from them, and Joseph did not know how he might plausibly unsay his story that he had carried him without vexing Jesus still further: he is sure an angel carried him, Joseph said: he felt the feathers of the wings brush across his face, and he is now asking himself why ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... not let my poor affairs be vexing you." He put, for the first time in his life, an arm about her waist, bending over her, with all forgotten for the moment save that she had longed for love and seemingly found it not. At the touch ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... (very late that year), and this upset his "guv'nor." He wrote to Mr. Spalding on the 4th September (Two Suffolk Friends, p. 115): "I would not meddle with the Regatta. . . . And the Day ended by vexing me more than it did him [Newson]. . . . Posh drove in here the day before to tan his nets: could not help making one with some old friends in a Boat-race on the Monday, and getting very fuddled with them on the Suffolk Green (where I was) at night. After all ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... delusive, purple night Whose darkness knew no vexing moon! Ah, cruel, needless, dawning light That trembled in the sky ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... bent on worrying me, swishing its flapping fins directly before my face, then darting upward, sending the spray cross-wise into my eyes. I made a snap or two at the vexing creature, but as I missed him he became bolder, and stopped a race I was having with one ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... read this hymn to "Isaiah," and tell him about the prayer-meeting. While the "friends of the slave," as you call them, are holding such humiliating meetings as you describe, in behalf of the slaves, and are vexing themselves and chafing under the imagination of their unmitigated sorrows and "oppression," the slaves themselves, all over the South, are holding prayer-meetings, and are blessing God that they are "raised 'way up to heaven's gate in privilege." As I sat in that prayer-meeting ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... pyramid Move wormlike; and I flutter all those sands Whereunder lost and soundless time is hid. I shape the hills and valleys with these hands, And darken forests on their naked sides, And call the rivers from the vexing springs, And lead the blind winds into deserts strange. And in firm human bones the ill that hides Is mine, the fear that cries, the hope that sings. I am that creature ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... had also been duly noted down at the Red Lilies and elsewhere, and acted upon. The Maluka was on the river, and when the Maluka was about, it was considered wisdom to be off forbidden ground; not that the blacks feared the Maluka, but no one cares about vexing the goose that lays ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... he began to think for the first time of his journey's end. He must leave Miss Catherwood somewhere in comparative safety, and he must get back to Richmond, his absence unnoted. These were problems which might well become vexing, and the exaltation of the moment could not prevent their recurrence. He stopped the wagon and took a look at the worthy Elias, who was slumbering as peacefully as ever. "A sound conscience makes a sound sleeper," he quoted, and then ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... was no denying that, though a clean, it was a very forlorn little room, with very few things for comfort or convenience. Tip had never seen this with such wide-open eyes as he did today; so coming home did not quiet the vexing thoughts. ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... behind, under the grey church spire, sleeping with his fathers, and vexing his soul with poetry no more. Mark has covered him now with a fair Portland slab. He took Claude Mellot to it this winter before church time, and stood over it long with a puzzled look, as if dimly discovering ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... dire hydra evoked by Mr. Pitt for the destruction of the regicide power of France, and sent back again to its gruesome limbo after the ruin of Napoleon. From 1842 until 1874 the question of the income-tax was the vexing enigma ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one, Like animal life, and though we can obscure not The soul which burns within, that we will dwell 485 Beside it, like a vain loud multitude Vexing the self-content of wisest men: That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain, And foul desire round thine astonished heart, And blood within thy labyrinthine veins 490 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Could he reach it before the train started? Possibly; but his horses were jaded; they needed feeding. And why didn't I tell him before that I wished to stop there? for we had come through the Rue St. Lazare, and actually passed the railway station there, on our way from the Cite Odiot! That was vexing to think of, but there was no help for it; so back we flew on our course, to catch, if possible the train, and my friend, who I was certain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the people, has gone in and out among them, has seen that the power of Letters never reaches them at all, and that the whole study of Letters is thereby discredited, and its power called in question, and yet has attempted nothing to remedy this state of things, cannot but be vexing and disquieting. He may truly say, like the Israel of the prophet, 'We have not wrought any deliverance in the earth'! and he may well desire to do something to pay his debt to popular education before he finally ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... "Who's been vexing my handsome son?" said he; "my son that I've been waiting up for all night. Death and gallows to them, whoever they are. Is it that pale-faced little parson's daughter? Or is it her tight-laced hypocrite of a father, that comes whining ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... as that of Howard? The premiers in the roll-call of our nobility have been also among the most persecuted and ill-fated. Not to dwell on the high-spirited Isabelle, Countess Dowager of Arundel, and widow of Hugh, last earl of the Albini family, who upbraided Henry III to his face with 'vexing the church, oppressing the barons, and denying all his true born subjects their right'; or Richard, Earl of Arundel, who was executed for conspiring to seize Richard II—we must think with indignation of the sufferings ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... sight of his face, fairly haggard with fatigue. She kept Ariadne quiet, the child having already learned that when Daddy came home from the city there must be no more noisy play; and she served Paul with a quickness that outstripped words. She longed unspeakably to put on one side forever all her vexing questions and simply to cherish and care for her husband physically. He had so much to burden him already—all he could carry. But she had been so long bringing herself to the point of resolution in the matter, she had so firmly convinced herself that her ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... with a quizzical glance. "I shan't tell you about that. But I'm hoping to be able to run home for an occasional week-end without vexing Scotland Yard. Why not ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... the praise which Voltaire gives to Zadig. "Il en savait ce qu'on en a su dans tous les ages; c'est-a-dire, fort peu de chose." The Book of Job shows that, long before letters and arts were known to Ionia, these vexing questions were debated with no common skill and eloquence, under the tents of the Idumean Emirs; nor has human reason, in the course of three thousand years, discovered any satisfactory solution of the riddles which perplexed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... comes to him.] Don't you love me enough to humour me a little—to put up with my vexing ways? I so want to help, to feel I am doing just a little, to make the world kinder. I know you can do it better, but I want so to be "in it." [She laughs.] Let us forget all this. Wake up to-morrow morning ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... its proper position; and, as she settled its costume, gave Daisy her answer, by putting into words the thought which was vexing the minds of some of her elders, but addressed herself to me, as ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... Austria-Hungary's position and influence amongst the great European powers was of little direct importance. In the first place the Dual Monarchy was occupied continuously with the most vexing internal questions caused by the incessant difficulties arising between its racially different population. These were responsible for the fall of one ministry after another, and frequently caused grave apprehension to all Europe. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... respect of appearance, attributes, and habits. If memory serves, one of the genera had the specific title of HIRUNDO, founded on the faith that the swift, by flying over the sea-slug exposed by receding tide, and vexing it by jeers, caused it to exude glutinous threads which the swift seized and bore away to its cave to be consolidated and moulded into a nest. To the fable was appended a retributive moral, viz., that the bche-de-mer occasionally revenged itself ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... upon the dangerous habit of allowing children to cultivate juvenile friendships indiscriminately, and I was not sufficient unto myself for distractions that would keep me quietly out of the way. What good was I? I was always ill-humored, vexing my step-mother and making baby cry. It was plain to see that I was one too many in the world, and whatever I did with myself I would be surely trespassing upon somebody's privilege, outraging somebody's patience, and making ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... read and thought more. As long as Queen Elizabeth lived they were contented, for they loved her and were proud of her, and she knew how to manage them. She scolded them sometimes, but when she saw that she was really vexing them she always changed, and she had smiles and good words for them, so that she could really do what she ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... water on the project, but that did not affect me. I had more experience of such follies than he, and my conscience approved me. A man may be justified in playing with his own life, but he should be slow in playing with the lives of others. He prepares a vexing responsibility for himself if he ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... God had certainly created him to amuse others, the poor country devils who have neither theaters nor fetes, and he amused them conscientiously. In the cafe people treated him to drink in order to keep him there, and he drank intrepidly, laughing and joking, hoaxing everybody without vexing anyone, while the people were laughing heartily ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... its full play without appearing to revenge himself. He therefore published "A Narrative of the Madness of John Dennis:" a performance which left the objections to the play in their full force, and therefore discovered more desire of vexing the critic than ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... not expect to have any news of the buccaneers until we had fetched past Orange Bay, but from thence onwards I knew that we should have to search every inlet save those that had an anchorage for large vessels; and our slow progress was the more vexing because I feared that the buccaneers might get wind of Mr. Benbow's return and sheer off. I hoped they would not do this, for I was burning to justify the admiral's confidence in me by bringing the pirate ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... pause, and then Glory said with a quivering mouth: "You are vexing me, and you will end by making me cry. Don't you see you are degrading me too? I am not used to being degraded. You see me with a weak silly creature who hasn't an idea in her head and can do nothing but giggle and laugh and make eyes at men, and you think I'm going to be led away ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... of these things no more. Gnats will sting; 'tis in their nature. I admit 'tis very vexing at the time; but it soon wears off if the flesh they have stung be healthy. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... belonged to, and who was the "Centre" of it. Such queries were so very pointed and direct that we were obliged to use all sorts of evasions and diplomacy to throw our interlocutor off his guard. Before we reached Buffalo another chap approached us, and began asking a series of vexing questions, but fortunately the conductor just then happened to come through the car, and we disposed of the inquisitive Fenian by halting the train official and asking him a lot of questions about ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... feel at times my mind decline,[186] But with a sense of its decay: I see 190 Unwonted lights along my prison shine, And a strange Demon,[187] who is vexing me With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below The feeling of the healthful and the free; But much to One, who long hath suffered so, Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place, And all that may ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... her suddenly off the main road into a by-path, helping her along, watching her stealthily, but going on with his disjointed, bearish growls. If it stung her from her pain, vexing her, he did ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... that in writing a chapter upon ways and means I may seem to many readers to be going over an oft-traversed road. Of articles and treatises on the ever-vexing subject there is no end. The whole human creation or, at all events, a vast majority of it, groaneth and travaileth together in the agony of trying to spread a little substance over a vast surface,—in the desperate endeavor to ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... continued, "children are the best medicine for a woman that I know of. They don't give you time to be sick, the creatures! Patrick John, I'll give you a smack on the side of the head if you don't let your little sister alone, and don't you, Norah, be vexing him or you'll deserve all you get. Run inside, Julia Elizabeth, cut a slice of bread for the twins, and put a bit of sugar on it, honey. Yes, alanna, you can have a slice for yourself, too, you poor child ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... the sense that at this joyful season a truce, probably limited in duration, and, even while it lasted, of the nature of a strongly-armed neutrality, was proclaimed, but the prospect was not wholly encouraging, for Lady Ashbridge added that she hoped Michael would not "go on" vexing his father. What precisely Michael was expected to do in order to fulfil that wish was not further stated, but he wrote dutifully enough to say that he would come ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... to the laborious and exacting duties attached to the position of stockholder in the New-York Tribune. Mr. GREELEY conceives some of his most brilliant editorial articles while churning the mercurial milk of the Chappaqua farm into butter; or vexing the gracious grain with the flying flail; or listening to the pensive murmurings of the plaintive pigs, and the whispered cadences of the kindly cattle. RICHARD GRANT WHITE can't write, it is said, until a towel moistened with Cologne ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... told me this. I have been turning it over in my mind; and it is particularly vexing not to know more. "Delightful" can be such jargon and mean nothing—or, at any rate, nothing more than amiability. Still, that is something, for one is not always amiable, even when meeting strangers. On the other hand it might be, from this man, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... and turmoil of a day when the children have been especially vexing, what mother does not smile in forgiveness upon the peaceful faces of her offspring, whose characters in sleep appear as spotless as the sheets which cover them? So smiled the sun upon the grown-up children of ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... much afraid of vexing me that I was obliged to encourage him to speak freely, and I found that he had always had a strong distaste to and dread of India. I told him I wished he had made me aware of it sooner, and desired to know what profession he really ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... band On loud-resounding Ocean's strand. To the fair wood that fringed the tide Came Dasaratha's son, and cried: "At length, my lord Sugriva, we Have reached King Varun's realm the sea, And one great thought, still-vexing, how To cross the flood, awaits us now. The broad deep ocean, that denies A passage, stretched before us lies. Then let us halt and plan the while How best to ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... of an extra mouth to feed was conveyed to the cook in the kitchen, Abdul surveyed three snipe among potato chips with a problem of multiplication vexing ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... to examine the damage. It was not very great, still under the circumstances of its being a new frock, it was vexing enough. ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... Reply to Hayne," had knocked it down. The feeling had been intense, but Webster's wonderful oration in defense of the Constitution and the Union had succeeded in meeting the crisis, and settling for a time the vexing problem. Yet the evil of slavery continued its fatal gnawing at the heart of the nation. By 1855-6 the old question was up again in much the same form. The atmosphere was clouded, the black shroud of the approaching storm already ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... when.... Now do not fancy that I do not understand. I understand perfectly, on the contrary. Only do you try not to dislike writing when you write, or not to write when you dislike it ... that, I ask of you, dear dearest—and forgive me for all this over-writing and teazing and vexing which is foolish and womanish in the bad sense. It is a way of meeting, ... the meeting in letters, ... and next to receiving a letter from you, I like to write one to you ... and, so, revolt from thinking it lawful ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... much indisposition in these days. It is all too vexing to your friends. The world will be surprised, if you allow a migraine to come between us. Indeed, it will be shocked. The world understands always so imperfectly, and I have no gift of explanation. Of course, I know the war has upset many, but I thought you could not be upset so ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Wildeve? I should call such a scandal humiliating if there was the least chance of its being true. How could such a gross falsehood have arisen? It is said that one should go abroad to hear news of home, and I appear to have done it. Of course I contradict the tale everywhere; but it is very vexing, and I wonder how it could have originated. It is too ridiculous that such a girl as Thomasin could so mortify us as to get jilted on the wedding-day. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... inexplainable according to any natural meteorological laws—the hands now thought, on being so suddenly summoned again on deck, and forced to leave their untasted meal just as they were in the very act, so to speak, of putting it into their mouths, and with its tantalising taste and smell vexing them all the more, that the 'old man' only roused them out again from sheer malice and devilry, to make another fresh tack or short board, with the object of 'hazing' or driving them, as only slaves and sailors can be driven in these ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in the Royal Guard, rode ahead by order of Colonel Quinnox. Truxton, therefore, had her back in view—at rather a vexing distance, too—for mile after mile of the ride to the city. Not so far ahead, however, that he could not observe every movement of her light, graceful figure as she swept down the King's Highway. She was a perfect horsewoman, firm, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... fathom the mind of the prisoner or conceive the myriad of vexing thoughts with which his brain is teeming? He exhibits no fear—he displays no excitement—but calmly and quietly and with watchful eyes he gazes around upon the scene before him—a scene in which he is an important actor, and in which ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... does it the wrong way; she gets her head so full of some one thing that she forgets everything else, and then she's awfully sorry. But Serry just doesn't think at all, though she's very good-natured, and, of course, when it comes to really vexing or hurting any one, she's sorry too—for about a minute and ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... dear, dear grandmother," it began, "Please do forgive me. I send you all my brooches. I don't deserve to keep them for vexing you so. Only I didn't, oh, indeed, I didn't mean to mock you, dear grandmother. It is that that I can't bear, that you should think so. It was a plan I had made to teach me to be careful, only I know it was silly—I am ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... surrounded by a formidable network of mediaeval taboos; their normal human desire for ease and freedom in intercourse is opposed by masculine distrust and superstition; they meet no strangers; they see and hear nothing new. In the house of the Most High they escape from that vexing routine. Here they may brush shoulders with a crowd. Here, so to speak, they may crane their mental necks and stretch their spiritual legs. Here, above all, they may come into some sort of contact with men relatively more affable, cultured and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... covers of the "Bismarck malade" color. There were also parcels of new music—though the piano (it had come years ago by the Sofala in the damp atmosphere of the forests was generally out of tune.) It was vexing to be cut off from everything for sixty days at a stretch sometimes, without any means of knowing what was the matter. And when the Sofala reappeared Mr. Van Wyk would descend the steps of the veranda and stroll over the ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... you have always been good to me. As far as I can remember, while the others took a delight in vexing me, you were the only one who always took my part. I don't forget that either. Command me! I will go through fire and ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... pain of prison he had not wept, nor for its shame. The vexing circumstance of being misunderstood, the dread threat of the future had not claimed a tear. But for a dream which had sprung like a sweet flower in his young heart and had passed away like a ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... conscious of her deserts, bullied eternal justice through its long postponements, never doubting, while ever vexing, the Spirit of God, until the number of her crimes crowded the tablet of her memory, and out of the hideous gulf of her past life gazed faces without names and deeds without memoranda; a procession the longer that strangers were in it, and, shrinking from her, yet pressing on, exclaimed her ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... and why not?" said grannie, too loyal to the old man to let Katie see that she was startled by her words. "It has been for a while's peace, as you say. And now you'll run up the brae after him, and take no heed, but wile him from his vexing thoughts, like a good bairn as ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... win—that he might have the satisfaction of vexing the Sheriff of Nottingham. Will had intended to send back this prize—a golden arrow—from his stronghold of Sherwood, snapped into twenty pieces, with a letter of truculent defiance wrapped about the scraps. He wished to make it plain to Master Monceux ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... six hours' notice. Think what preparation is required for a family of half a dozen to get ready to spend a month in the country—how tailors and milliners and dressmakers are put in requisition—how business arrangements must be made—how a thousand little vexing details constantly suggest themselves which need attention. Think of a thousand families—ten thousand—making these preparations! What a vast hurly burly! What an ocean of confusion! How many delays and disappointments! During the fortnight or month which ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Bird began to try to make peace. "It doesn't matter very much, does it, Mr. Macaw?" she said. "It's not a very big bite, though, of course, it must be very vexing. But I'm sure Mr. Cockatoo didn't do it, if he says he didn't. But, please, don't let us have any pecking. You'll find out, sometime, who did it, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... with increasing solicitude. When he woke on the sixth morning, he was resolved to send a scout into the Gap to learn what he could of the situation. The long silence, de Spain knew, portended nothing good. And the vexing feature of his predicament was that he had at hand no trustworthy spy to despatch for information; to secure one would be a matter of delay. He was schooled, however, to making use of such material as he had ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Strange enough, his reverence seemed to take no particular notice of me, nor of my coming. Instead of leaping out and devouring me, he scarcely seemed conscious of my presence. The fact is, he was occupied with matters more weighty and important than either looking after or vexing me. He probably thought as{57 "OLD MASTER" LOSING ITS TERRORS} little of my advent, as he would have thought of the addition of a single pig to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... narrow bars 95 To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; A seed of sunshine that doth leaven Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars, And glorify our clay With light from fountains elder than the Day; 100 A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching sense Of some more noble permanence; A light across the sea, 105 Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, Still glimmering from the heights of ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... displeased with the whole world. People were unkind and unjust. Even inanimate objects were unusually aggravating. He wasted half an hour trying to untie a knot, hunted for a package of papers which were finally found in their proper place, had a vexing ten minutes with his ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... entitled to know, within certain limits, where to find her in the scene. He began to regret having had anything to do with the rehearsal. It would have been so much more splendid to see the finished product of her art with no vexing memory of the prosaic processes of ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... everybody knew that it was the work of Louvois, and everybody knew equally well that the compliment paid to the duchess that day, was especially gratifying to the king, who himself had suggested it as a means of vexing ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... which will be set free will more than cover what we shall require, and thus, having gained an invaluable walk, we shall receive the interest of well-expended capital in substantial enjoyment—instead of, as now, in the summing up at the end of the year, vexing and fretting ourselves over the pitiful little income which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the 'little wench' between his knees. The child turns over the book with pictures which she wishes her father to explain to her, or that perhaps she prefers explaining to him. Her rebellious hair is all over her eyes, much vexing the pale, energetic mother who sits on the opposite side of the fire, cumbered with much service, letting no instant of time escape the inevitable click of the knitting-needles. The father is already proud of the astonishing and ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... In Maryland, an amendment prescribing a series of elaborate and vexing inquiries, investing the registration officers with judicial powers, and avowedly aiming at the elimination of the negro vote, was passed by the Legislature, at the instigation of Senator Gorman and against the opposition of a Democratic ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... a vexing thing then happed; Scarce had they gained the road, The rusty chains of iron ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... she felt, in her dreamy imaginative way, and though she allowed old Hugo to leave her without vexing him by any decided opposition to his plans, she was more than ever firmly resolved to abide by her own interior sense of what was right and fitting. She heard the wheels of the dog-cart grating the gravel outside the garden ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... what Mr. Roscorla wanted; but he said, "You must not be shy, Wenna. However, please yourself: you need have no fear of vexing me. But I must go, for the Weekeses are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... about it at once, and the sooner these things come from Cossimbazar the better. The delay is vexing, and I fear I'll have to ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... many rather than of one. And so the autobiographer does his work because he thinks that, at the cost of some unpleasantness to himself, he may throw light on some of the typical problems that are vexing the souls of his contemporaries, and perchance may stretch out a helping hand to some brother who is struggling in the darkness, and so bring him cheer when despair has him in its grip. Since all of us, men and women of this ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... sudden sadness, what more did it mean? Major Andre said of her later that Mistress Darthea was like a lake in the hills, reflecting all things, and yet herself after all. But how many such tricksy ways, pretty or vexing, she was to show some of us in the years to come did ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... dress, and the plumed hat, and the lace ruffles. Besides, she likes picking flowers, but she never liked grubbing. She would not really like the Weeding Woman's work; it was the bonnet that had caught her fancy, and I found it hard to smother the vexing thought that if I had gone on dressing the Weeding Woman of the Earthly Paradise like Bessy's aunt, instead of trying to make the story more interesting by inventing a marygold bonnet with yellow and white strings for her, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with the thought of Joan there came mingling the vexing wonder of the train of violence that had attended him into the sheeplands. He had come there to be a master over flocks, not expecting to encounter any unfriendly force save the stern face of nature. He had begun to muddle and meddle at the outset; he had continued to muddle, ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... Any further problems that are vexing the orchardist with regard to the Persian walnut? If not, I think this is a suitable time to bury it until next year. Col. Van Duzee, a man who has had more experience with the pecan than almost any one else in the room, has kindly ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... those long groans and unsatisfied complaints of your slaves, for vexing them with insulting words, placing them in the power of dogish and abusive overseers, or under your stripling, misguided, hot-headed son, to drive and whip at pleasure, and for selling parts or whole families to Georgia? They will all meet you at ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... other beings with hands or feet or cords or sticks, or brick-bats or clods of hard clay, or other means of wounding and paining, O beautiful lady, who practises diverse kinds of deceit for slaying living creatures or vexing them, who pursues animals in the chase and causes them to tremble in fear,—verily, that man, who conducts himself in this way, is certain to sink in Hell. If in course of time he takes birth in the order of humanity, he is obliged to be born in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... water now. "O, how vexing!" she exclaimed. "There's not a drop of water left for you, unless you draw it, and the well is I don't know how many furlongs deep; all that was in the pitcher I used for the kettle and this basin. Do you mind dipping the tips of your ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... the question she did not really seem to expect an answer from Faith; it was more like a spoken expression of thoughts that were vexing her, made to one whom she knew ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... be a step towards the settlement of this vexed and vexing question if girls would decline to classify each other by their occupations, which among us are usually only temporary, and are continually shifting from one pair of hands to another. Changes of fortune come so abruptly that the millionaire's daughter of to-day ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... manner of soul Socrates had: whether his disposition was such; as that all that he stood upon, and sought after in this world, was barely this, that he might ever carry himself justly towards men, and holily towards the Gods. Neither vexing himself to no purpose at the wickedness of others, nor yet ever condescending to any man's evil fact, or evil intentions, through either fear, or engagement of friendship. Whether of those things that ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... 'By Jove, Monsieur le Cure, it is very vexing not to have an Epiphany queen, for we have the bean. Come, think. Is there not a married mayor, or a married deputy-mayor, or a married municipal ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... persuaded, I could join with the fervour of a neophyte in the Stoic's profession: "Good and evil are in choice alone, and there is no cause of sorrowing save in my own errant and wilful desires. When these shall have been overcome, I shall possess my soul in tranquillity, vexing myself in nowise if, in the world's illusive good, all men have the advantage over me. For all outward things I will bear with equal mind, even chains or insults or great pain, ashamed of this only, if reason shall not wholly free me from the servitude of care. Let others boast of material ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... dutyes have been, under colour of his Majesty's Royal authority, unjustly imposed ... & that divers new unlawful, unpresidented & very burthensom and grievous wayes & devises have been of late made use of to the great impoverishing Vexing and utter undoeing of many of his Majesties ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... rivals, we will be friends," he pursued. "The examination shall take place, and I will choose a good moment; and instead of vexing and hindering, as I felt half-inclined ten minutes ago—for I have my malevolent moods: I always had from childhood—I will aid you sincerely. After all, you are solitary and a stranger, and have your way to make and your bread to earn; it may be well that you should become known. We will ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... I am not going to inflict upon you the unquiet retrospect with which I have just been vexing myself; no, I will rather speak to you of my acquaintance and host to be. I have said that I first met Mordaunt some years since at this inn,—an accident, for which his horse was to blame, brought us acquainted,—I ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... somewhat to living things. The world indeed is bent on large personal gain, and hard it is to share one's own with others. O! let your loving heart be moved with pity towards the world burdened with vexing cares." Thus having spoken by way of exhortation, with reverent mien he turned back to the Brahma heaven. Buddha, regarding the invitation of Brahma-deva, rejoiced at heart, and his design was strengthened; greatly ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... "It happens so sometimes—cruel vexing—and then people laugh at us and ask how we earn our money. Now and again, as you say, there's a danger signal to a case so clear as the nose on a man's face, and yet, owing to following some other clue, or sticking ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... usual serenity of the eminent specialist. There was another dating back only to that very morning. The thought that when called urgently to his Assistant Commissioner's private room he had been unable to conceal his astonishment was distinctly vexing. His instinct of a successful man had taught him long ago that, as a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement. And he felt that his manner when confronted with the telegram ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... problems, and innumerable vexing errors—the "bugs" that inhere with a new, mechanical job—yet the day came when the ship was a thing of sleek beauty, and her thousand feet of length enclosed a maze of latticed struts where ammunition rooms and ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... sight of the bird, the princess hastened her steps, and without vexing herself at the noise which by this time had grown deafening, she walked straight up to the cage, and seizing it, she said: "Now, my bird, I have got you, and I shall take good care that you do not escape." As she spoke she took the cotton ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... they often quarreled: "For pity sake, Tom, do take your hands out of your pockets," Nell would say in her most vexing manner. ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... time had been at war with the Spaniards, heard that the kings of France and Spain were warring with each other on the frontiers of Perpignan and Narbonne, and bethought himself that he could have no better opportunity of vexing the King of Spain. Accordingly, he sent a great number of light galleys and other vessels to plunder and destroy all such badly-guarded places as they could find on the coasts of Spain. (15)The people of ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... It was vexing to find so much gross superstition still extant in this last decade of the nineteenth century, certainly. Yet for all that, and though the notion of a spook dog was something too much for the materialistic ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... curves, concaves and convexities, and angles of every degree, in the stones that make up my tower. The vexing question is, What ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... All of our most vexing moral problems are those in which benefit to some must be weighed against benefit to others. Shall a man who is needed by his family risk his life to save a ne'er-do-well? Shall we insist that people unhappily married shall endure their wretchedness and forego the possibility of a ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... feel that it was "real mean" to eat so much and be so useless, and he said he would do anything to help me, but the men were so "down on him." I never saw men so patient with a lad before. He is a most vexing addition to our party, yet one cannot help laughing at him. He is not honorable, though. I dare not leave this letter lying on the table, as he would read it. He writes for two Western periodicals (at least he says so), and he shows us long pieces ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... profoundly relieved. "What are ye roaring and bellowing for? It is vexing—it is angering, but it is not like death, not even sickness. Boys will be boys. He will outgrow that disease: ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... nights had come weary, vexing days. And the worst was a vague shadow of family distrust and annoyance. Nobody thought any real harm, nobody disbelieved or suspected; but there it was. We could not think how such a declared determination and ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... private cruisers also have not ceased to annoy his commerce and to bring their rich prizes into our ports, contributing thus, with other proofs, to demonstrate the incompetency and illegality of a blockade the proclamation of which is made the pretext for vexing and discouraging the commerce of neutral powers with the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... Louisa tactlessly—much more tactlessly than she knew, never failing to do what she ought not to have done—Louisa, who knew only too well the reason of his grief, insisted on his telling her what it was. She worried him with her affection, uneasy, vexing, argumentative, reminding him every moment that they were very different from each other—and that he was trying to forget. How often he had tried to open his heart to her! But just as he was about to speak the Great Wall of China would rise between them, and he would ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Juan, although she knew that he could not stem the current. Her love and her sorrow were ready to believe in miracles. How is it possible, she often thought, that such a brief sweep of water should carry him so utterly away? In spite of her fear of vexing Coronado, she questioned him over and over as to the course of the stream and the nature of its banks, only to find that he knew next ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... offence. What use in life to make men fret, Part in worse humour than they met? Thus all society is lost, Men laugh at one another's cost: And half the company is teazed That came together to be pleased: For all buffoons have most in view To please themselves by vexing you. When jests are carried on too far, And the loud laugh begins the war, You keep your countenance for shame, Yet still you think your friend to blame; For though men cry they love a jest, 'Tis but when others stand the ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... degree operate to their advantage. Sir Boyle, eager to defend the measures of government, immediately rose, and in a very few words, put forward the most unanswerable argument which human ingenuity could possibly devise. "What, Mr. Speaker!" said he, "and so we are to beggar ourselves for fear of vexing posterity! Now, I would ask the honorable gentleman, and this still more honorable house, why we should put ourselves out of our way for posterity: for what has posterity ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... leave the sleeping street, Hie me forth on darker roads. Ah! I cannot stay my feet, Onward, onward, something goads. I will take the mountain path, Beard the storm within its den, Know the worst of this dim wrath, Vexing thus ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... mean?" and George surveyed her in some perplexity. "If any one's been bothering or vexing you, just you tell Phil all about it. Don't have any secrets from him,—he'll soon put everything ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... impetuous to attend. "I'll be back in a twinkling," she called out, and down she flew, in her speed whisking away, without seeing it, the basket with Margaret's knitting and all her notes and papers, which lay scattered on the floor far out of reach, vexing Margaret at first, and then making her grieve at her own ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... startled me, and you are cruel. Here I have been composing my soul to do without it, and here you are vexing ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... to Washington as a Democrat, but with full knowledge that my party does not contain all the right or all the wrong in it. And I hope that in the vexing questions of the future, that by a temperate course of thought and action, that my influence may be worth something, however small, to my people beyond even a ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... bed now; all was darkness and silence in the house; so she lay still, and presently forgot all vexing ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... "The deuce! that's vexing; I relied on seeing the general's father, to talk over some important matters with him. At any rate, they know where to write to him. So to-morrow you will let him know, my lad, that his granddaughters are arrived. In the mean time, children," added ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... foster-child. She instantly commenced an investigation into the cause of his distress, after the usual inquisitorial manner of matrons of her class. "What is the matter wi' my bairn?" and "Wha has been vexing my bairn?" with similar questions, at last extorted ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... weight was now lifted from Frank's mind. The vexing problem, how he was to retain the watch and yet satisfy Seth's rightful claims, was thus happily solved. He could have danced for joy, barefooted, in the grassy sand. And he yearned more than ever now to see Mr. Sinjin, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... by passing clouds oppressed, Should vexing thoughts distract thy breast? Turn thou to Him in every pain, Whom never suppliant sought in vain; Thy strength in joy's ecstatic day, Thy hope, when ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... it's those laughs you get in Court that make you so fond of talking. Don't you see how you're vexing your sister? ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... earnestly with Jimmy. They spoke of Raisuli and Kaid MacLean. But Jimmy was not to be stopped. The gad-fly was vexing him, ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... head as he poured out his complaints to her. Ida's contradictory behaviour was as much a puzzle to her as to him, and she deplored it scarcely less. But she insisted that he should not trouble the girl by demanding explanations of her, as that, by vexing her, would ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... then, in his confusion, Buckingham blundered so foolishly, and Richelieu profited by his blunders so shrewdly, that the fleet returned to England without any accomplishment of its purpose. The English were also driven from that vexing position in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... thoroughly tired and angry. "Hold your tongues over those questions, at least while I am with you. Odds! I care nothing as to your Catholic or Protestant, your popes or preachers. Be done, and bear yourselves like men. I will no longer have you vexing the air with controversy while our very lives are hanging by a thread. There are other things to talk about just now. So, Cairnes, if you cannot bide quietly in our company, then stay here alone while I take the Jesuit out into the sunlight, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... goes amiss. The affairs, one while of one house, and then of another, tear you to pieces; you pry into everything too near; your perspicacity hurts you here, as well as in other things. I steal away from occasions of vexing myself, and turn from the knowledge of things that go amiss; and yet I cannot so order it, but that every hour I jostle against something or other that displeases me; and the tricks that they most conceal from me, are those that I the soonest ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... replied her friend, "and does not seem to trouble herself about her position. Besides she declares that she will come back to you whenever she chooses, without making any advances and merely for the sake of vexing your friends." ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... abroad. They have some kind of claim upon her. I will do them that justice. The aunt brought her up, and she and the cousin have been like sisters. The thing vexing me, you see, is that I wanted to take her for a child of my own; and I am jealous of these people, who don't seem to value the privilege of their right. Now it would be different ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... off, leaving the house party grouped at one end of the platform, Judith and Jeff at the other. It was plain that something was vexing Mildred and the smart young beauty by her side. Jeff, however, was perfectly unconscious of being the cause ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... have heard of you that you don't mean to return to England before the spring—which news proved me a prophet, and disappointed me at the same time, for one can't enjoy even a prophecy in this world without something vexing. Indeed, I do long to see you again, dearest Mrs. Martin, and should always have the same pleasure in it, and affection for you, if my friends and acquaintances were as much multiplied as you wrongly suppose them to ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... and trilling some blithe air, Opened my wardrobe, wondering what to wear. Momentous question! femininely human! More than all others, vexing mind of woman, Since that sad day, when in her discontent, To search for leaves, our fair first mother went. All undecided what I should put on, At length I made selection of a lawn— White, with a tiny pink vine overrun:— My ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to him with a swift, shy movement. "It's the fear of vexing you," she said. "I don't mind vexing—other people. It's only you—only you. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... gifted mortal, to whom the triple portal Of Music, Art, and Poesy had opened years before, With a look of sombre feeling, depths within his soul revealing, Leaving room for no appealing, he decided o'er and o'er The old, old vexing questions of the why and the wherefore, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... you, sir, to find a pretty place for this, that I would make my apology, containing also promise, in years to come, to lose these outer signs of vexing presumption. ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... a time had fled since the children bad felt any curiosity to hear the sequel of this venerable chair's adventures! Summer was now past and gone, and the better part of autumn likewise. Dreary, chill November was howling out of doors, and vexing the atmosphere with sudden showers of wintry rain, or sometimes with gusts of snow, that rattled like small pebbles against ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... too the edges of the lurid mass— 50 Restless, as if some idly-vexing Sprite, On swift wing coasting by, with tetchy hand Pluck'd at the ringlets of the vaporous Fleece. These are sure signs of conflict nigh at hand, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Tobey. "This is vexing. To think of coming down town, Tobey, dear, with the expectations of going back rich, and then going back a hundred dollars poorer than we were. I really don't think we'd better ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... wise counsellor—'a brother born for adversity.' I have been vexing myself a good deal about my future, but now I will take heart. Perhaps, some day, neither you nor any one else ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik |
