"Irritating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have remained exempt from them. The whole country, as though we were at war, is exposed to the robberies, extortions, and cruelties in which an enemy indulges: this time, however, he comes in the garb of a friend, and, as our ally, he is irritating and impoverishing the farmers, and plundering the mechanics and manufacturers. And I am not only obliged to suffer all this in silence, but I must send my own soldiers, the natural defenders of our states, into a foreign country, and command them ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... father in a variety of ways. The Earl of Emsworth was so constituted that no man or thing really had the power to trouble him deeply; but Freddie had come nearer to doing it than anybody else in the world. There had been a consistency, a perseverance, about his irritating performances that had acted on the placid peer as dripping water on a stone. Isolated acts of annoyance would have been powerless to ruffle his calm; but Freddie had been exploding bombs under his nose since ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... to a solitary speculatist, that a human being can want employment. To be born in ignorance with a capacity of knowledge, and to be placed in the midst of a world filled with variety, perpetually pressing upon the senses and irritating curiosity, is surely a sufficient security against the languishment of inattention. Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects; and every moment produces something new to him, who has quickened ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... crabs in sugar, beans in sugar, and fruits in vinegar and pepper. All this is atrocious, but above all unexpected and unimaginable. The little women make me eat, laughing much, with that perpetual irritating laugh, which is the laugh peculiar to Japan,—they make me eat, according to their fashion, with dainty chop-sticks, fingered with mannered grace. I am becoming accustomed to their faces. The whole effect is refined,—a refinement so utterly different from our own, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... proceedings which cause and inflame this disorder, after many years' incessant struggle, we find ourselves wholly unable to oppose and unwilling to behold. All our endeavors having proved fruitless, we are fearful at this time of irritating by contention those passions which we have found it impracticable to compose by reason. We cannot permit ourselves to countenance, by the appearance of a silent assent, proceedings fatal to the liberty and unity of the empire,—proceedings which exhaust ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... incorrect, that the State can do business as well and as cheaply as private enterprise. It is much more likely that after a few years' time the public would find the business of paying in and getting out its money a very much more tedious and irritating process than it is at present, and that the expenses of the matter would have grown to such an extent that the taxpayer might be called upon annually to make good a ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... restlessness—even the raised hands may be supposed to remain in the same position for a second or two. This imaginary pause, however infinitesimal, is essential to the dignity of the sculptor's art, as nothing is more irritating to the mind than being forced to recognize the contradiction between a motionless image and its suggestion of restless action. It is necessary to observe the same rule in the expression of actual repose, as some clue must be given, some completed action ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... message. You must fetch him." Gerald Burton's stock of patience was giving way. Again there was an irritating pause, but ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... he said, rather eagerly; and a few minutes afterward Clarke entered the room, with an irritating ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... Province of Holland, to which his allegiance was due and whose servant he was. That there was but one church paid and sanctioned by law, he admitted, but his efforts were directed to prevent discord within that church, by counselling moderation, conciliation, mutual forbearance, and abstention from irritating discussion of dogmas deemed by many thinkers and better theologians than himself not essential to salvation. In this he was much behind his age or before it. He certainly was not with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Edith, in the most cool, high, irritating voice she could command, 'really, of votes for women hardly enters into our argument here. As a matter of fact, I take no interest in any kind of politics, and, I may be entirely wrong, but if I were compelled to take sides on the subject, ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... Girl." Occasionally, it is true, driven nearly to desperation by the haunting vision in his mind's eye, he picked up a brush and attempted to make his left hand serve his will; but a bare half-dozen irritating, ineffectual strokes were usually enough to make him throw down his brush in disgust. He never could do anything with his left hand, he told ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... me to acknowledge in my own heart that the murderous spirit had been set on foot by the Christian before it was taken up by the Buddhists, but I forbore to remark upon it, for fear of irritating my companion. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to take some part in this work. She was eager to teach the women better methods, but at last the patriarch told her to let them alone, as she was only irritating them. Unlike the men, who almost worshipped the revolvers, and would have handled them, and even quickly learned to shoot, if Stern had allowed, the women clung sternly to ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... part rather than that of his mother it was all very well. The second letter was more trying to her temper, as it contained one or two small morsels of advice as to conduct which had evidently originated with her ladyship. Now there is nothing, I take it, so irritating to an engaged young lady as counsel from her intended husband's mamma. An engaged young lady, if she be really in love, will take almost anything from her lover as long as she is sure that it comes altogether from himself. He may take what liberties he pleases with her dress. He ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... was upon the mulatto girl Fanny, particularly, that the tyrannical cruelty of Mrs. Wilde was poured out in all its severity. From some cause,—whether because her duties rendered her more liable to commit irritating faults, or whether, being always in sight, she was simply the most convenient object of abuse, or whether on account of the alleged former intimacy between this girl and her master,—certain it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... night he had been particularly irritating, and all my nerves were screaming. He had been maintaining that the human soul was itself a form, an eternal form, and that the light within his brain would go on forever and always. I took ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... what they are told. It is not that they are not willing, but that they are stupid. No one would believe that people could be so stupid. They drive me well nigh to madness sometimes, and it is the more irritating because, against stupidity, one is powerless. Beating a man or knocking him down may do him good if he is obstinate, or if he is careless, but when he is simply stupid it only makes him more stupid than before. You might as well ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... they have a present need for them, but on the chance that at some time in the future such volumes as they see for sale will solve a doubt or answer a need. The precise doubt or the pressing need rarely arises. I met a Celt who had bought a copy of Josephus in most irritating type, in the hope that it would help him to confute a Roman Catholic on the Power of the Keys. Then again, people of a wavering and bird-witted type of mind are constantly changing the subject of their interest: this month they are attacked by the furor poeticus, next month it will be a furor ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... her ignorance. In every way she formed a striking contrast to her friend, Miss Vincent. Every word they spoke betrayed the difference between them: the sharp tones of Lurida's head-voice, penetrative, aggressive, sometimes irritating, revealed the corresponding traits of mental and moral character; the quiet, conversational contralto of Euthymia was the index of a nature restful ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... some people harm, by inflaming, confusing, and irritating their minds; but that the experience of mankind had declared in favour of moderate drinking. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I do not say it is wrong to produce self complacency by drinking; I only deny that it improves the mind. When I drank wine, I scorned to drink it when in company. I have drunk many a bottle ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... the feelings which have been manifested since the beginning of the American contest—the judgments which have been put forth, and the wishes which have been expressed concerning the incidents and probable eventualities of the struggle—the bitter and irritating criticism which has been kept up, not even against both parties equally, but almost solely against the party in the right, and the ungenerous refusal of all those just allowances which no country needs ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... to an irritating thought came to Muldoon while he was waiting for an elevator to take him to the ground floor. He knew where he had seen the same kind of look as was in Robert Reeger's eyes when they had parted. In the eyes of a cat Muldoon had once seen ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer
... who was stung to the quick by a certain indescribable yet most irritating superciliousness in Hawbury's tone—"Inglis milor, you sall see what you sall soffair. You sall die! Dere is no hope. You are condemn by de brigand. You also are condemn by ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... two or three weeks there were many ludicrous accidents in my kitchen and some irritating ones. But on the whole Romoldo took hold of things very well; and though my menu broadened gradually, it was not long before he had learned a few simple dishes, and my labor of supervision was much lighter. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... words should have been made only at the moment, and they should come hot from the heart. There was much neatness and some acuteness in Mr. Daubeny's satire, but there was no heat, and it was prolix. It had, however, the effect of irritating Mr. Gresham,—as was evident from the manner in which he moved his hat ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... With tusks and horns and hoofs and stings, all the misfortunes of life seemed to come upon him at once. Bankruptcy, bereavement, scandalization, and eruptive disease so irritating that he had to re-enforce his ten finger-nails with pieces of earthenware to scratch himself withal. His wife took the diagnosis of his complaints and prescribed profanity. She thought he would feel better if between the paroxysms of grief and pain he would swear ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... afford any similar concessions. His own opinions can become established only by the displacement of the traditional opinions; and the way to displace a traditional error is not to be compromising and conciliatory, but to be as uncompromising and as irritating as one's abilities and one's vision of the truth will permit. The critic in his capacity as agitator is living in a state of war with his opponents; and the ethics of warfare are not the ethics of statesmanship. Public opinion can ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... brutal and vulgar statements, culminating in the deplorable mental and moral expressions contained in the speeches, messages and telegrams of William II. He was a perfect type of the miles gloriosus, not a harmless but an irritating and dangerous boaster, who succeeded in piling up more loathing and hatred against his country than the most active and intelligently managed enemy propaganda ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... comparable with the one of similar gaiety in "Lord and Lady Algy"—both having an undercurrent of serious strain. The tragedy motive is relieved at almost calculated times by comedy, which shows that Fitch held to the old dramatic theory of comic relief. Often this was irritating, discounting the mood he was trying to maintain. He was not as skilful in the use of these varying elements as Pinero, with whom he might be compared—not for strength of characterization, for fullness of story or for the sheer ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... and the charm of his own personality. He and the conditions had been warring upon the small obstacle for many months, and still it was as small as ever—but no smaller. The non-aggressive, feather-bed stubbornness of insignificant obstacles is often very irritating ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... face was long, like a sheep's, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflection; it fell on the ear with a hard monotony, irritating to the nerves like the pitiless clamour of ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... be added that while the boy's action is not consciously intelligent, it is by no means purposeless, and is therefore not quite parallel with the insect's. By vigorously irritating the sensory nerves of the hand the boy imparts a stimulus to his muscular system. His act belongs to a large group which has been especially studied by Fere. See his Sensation et Mouvement (1887), and Pathologie des ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... and seckel pears. There was something about all this magnificent plenty of the fruits of the earth which was impressive. It was to an ardent fancy as if Flora and Pomona had been that way with their horns of plenty. The sordid question of market value, however, was distinctly irritating, and yet it was justly so. Why should not a man sell the fruits of the earth for dollars and cents with artistic and honorable dignity as anything else? All commodities for the needs of mankind are marketable, are the instruments ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... lengthy and passionate "Conversations with a laundress" about articles that I blush to remember. Some twenty pages of the volume were devoted to silly dialogues between an extraordinarily patient shoemaker and one of the most irritating and constitutionally dissatisfied customers that an unfortunate shop-keeper could possibly be cursed with; a customer who, after twaddling for about forty minutes, and trying on, apparently, every pair of boots in the place, calmly ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... great need of doing so. Several pieces were wanting in the figure of Saint George, and in other places, where in the course of centuries panes that had been broken had been replaced by ordinary glass. Still, all this was irritating to her. She was so accustomed to the gaps of the saint who was piercing the dragon with his sword, and of the royal princess as she led the conquered beast along with her scarf, that she already mourned as ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... make discoveries to our advantage as well as our discomfiture. You, sir, might find that the talent for argument on which you pride yourself is to me only irritating wrong-headedness, and I might find that the bright wit that I fancy I flash around makes you feel tired. Jones's eyeglass would drop out of his eye because he would know it only made him look foolish, Brown would see the ugliness of his cant, and Robinson would sorry that he had been born ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... course under mystification, Anne was silent. Some men had that irritating way with women; Walter's smile suggested that he might have it. She was not going to minister to his male delight. Unfortunately her silence seemed to please ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... shall see. I don't know about Deb and Mary, but France can be all sorts of a cat when the fit takes her; and as she is certain to oppose it to the bitter end, she will never have done irritating his people and setting everybody at loggerheads. However, never mind that now." She enveloped Rose in a comforting embrace. "We'll just enjoy ourselves while we can. And until we MUST start the fuss with the girls at home, we'll keep things dark, shall we? Just ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... shrugged his shoulders at this piece of news which must have been irritating in the extreme. "Ah, well," he said easily, "one cannot think of everything. In our haste to get away, neither I nor my pilot thought of that possibility. Very clever fellow, this man Schwarz. We both made good guesses, and we both lose. Kismet! We both serve our country, and we both get ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... you drank it by itself. This is what nitrogen does. It puts the drag on the car of combustion; as in society, the large proportion of quiet people put the drag on the car of progress (let us for once indulge ourselves in talking like the newspapers!); and such people are of definite use, however irritating their interference may appear in some cases. The world would go on too rapidly if there were nothing but oxygen among men. We have quite enough in having a ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... unhealthy state of mind which had brought him to Dimchurch, and which had led him to speak to me as he had spoken on the previous evening, was, as I understood it, now irritating him against me as a person who had made his own quick temper the means of entrapping him into letting out the truth. How was I to deal with a man in this condition? I decided to perform the feat which you call in England, "taking the bull ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... more tangible and irritating cause of grievance at the North. Free blacks are constantly employed in the vessels of the North, generally as cooks or stewards. When the vessel arrives at a southern port, these free colored men are taken on shore, by the police or municipal authority, imprisoned, and kept ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Mormon town of Ogden we changed cars, and again traversed dusty plains, white and glaring, varied by muddy streams and rough, arid valleys, now and then narrowing into canyons. By common consent the windows were kept closed to exclude the fine white alkaline dust, which is very irritating to the nostrils. The journey became more and more wearisome as we ascended rapidly over immense plains and wastes of gravel destitute of mountain boundaries, and with only here and there a "knob" or "butte" [6] to break the monotony. The wheel-marks of the trail to Utah ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... and remarkable shrewdness; and though he did not understand what Obada said, more than once there was something in the man's tone that brought the blood into his face and made him set his teeth. The more kindly and delightful the effect of the Arab's speech and manner, the more irritating and repulsive was his subordinate; and Orion was conscious that he would have expressed himself more freely, and have replied more candidly to many questions, if he had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... successful; clever attempted reproduction of what was conceived by another faculty, and foolishly let pass away. If I go on, even hurry the more to get on, with the printing,—it is to throw out and away from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, unlike the woman at her spinning-wheel, 'He thought of his flax on the whole far more ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Victor. But, you see, I've a little scrap-book of those triolets upstairs." Then she burst into a peal of irresistible laughter. "I'm not laughing because I am piqued," she said frankly. "Though any one will admit that it is rather irritating to have a man who left you in a blasted condition recover with such extraordinary promptness. As a philanthropist, one of course rejoices, but as a woman, Victor, it must be admitted that one has a right to feel annoyed. But, honestly, I am not ungenerous, ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... a niche in the wall, which Thorn had not seen. Sylva was there, sleeping the same heavy, dreamless sleep from which Thorn himself had just awakened. He went to her swiftly. She was breathing naturally, though tears from the irritating gas still streaked her face and her skin seemed to be pinkened a little from ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... people really were. When would she leave off making mistakes about them? She hadn't suspected this side of Mrs. Fisher, and she began to wonder whether those other sides of her with which alone she was acquainted had not perhaps after all been the effect of her own militant and irritating behaviour. Probably they were. How horrid, then, she must have been. She felt very penitent when she saw Mrs. Fisher beneath her eyes blossoming out into real amiability the moment some one came along who was charming ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... martial law in the colony, and executed his long-threatened plan of giving freedom to all slaves who could bear arms and would flock to his standard. But these measures, though partially annoying, had the effect of irritating and rousing the people rather than breaking their spirit." (Tucker's Life of Jefferson, vol. i. p. 78). Before the middle of the next year Dunmore made his escape from Virginia, after setting fire to the town ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... sauce, ginger, spice, mustard, cinnamon, cloves, etc., are all strong irritants. This may be readily demonstrated by their application to a raw surface. The intense smarting and burning occasioned are ample evidence of the irritating character. Pepper and mustard are capable of producing powerfully irritating effects, even when applied to the healthy skin where wholly intact. It is surprising that it does not occur to the mother who applies a mustard plaster to the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... liquid, of specific gravity 1.541 at 0 deg. C., and boiling-point 97.7 deg. C. It has a greasy, somewhat bitter taste, and gives off a vapour at ordinary temperature which has a pungent odour and an irritating effect on the eyes. The word chloral is derived from the first syllables of chlorine and alcohol, the names of the substances employed for its preparation. Chloral is soluble in alcohol and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... tribute to the Doctor, this giving precedence to his son, and Bob so understood it. It was, therefore, irritating to have Pink thrust forward his red face and ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... "What an irritating sense of duty you have! It must be dreadful to be afflicted that way. Can't you suggest something?" she flashed. "Won't you do a thing to help me stay? I believe you don't ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... might be free to write. But the struggle was too exciting for her, and the flying insects seemed to increase. Moths of every description—large brown moths, small, delicate white millers—whirled about her, while the irritating hum of the mosquito kept on more than ever. Mr. Peterkin and the rest of the family came in to inquire about the trouble. It was discovered that each of the little boys had been standing in the opening of a wire door for some time, watching to see when ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... Dunstan; all the time Louie was unlocking the door there to let us out, instructing us to be sure to relock it and bring him the key, and to yell for him down the elevator shaft because the bell was busted, the quiet smile of Miss Barbara Wallace disturbed me. She followed where I led, but I had the irritating impression that she looked on at my movements, and Worth's as well, with the indulgent eye of a grown-up ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... thought one heard little Hurry crying very softly and bitterly, and it would turn out to be Mrs. Fulton, locked in her bedroom. Pressure of business, success, kept Mr. Fulton going. Sometimes the two tried to talk things over. But it was an irritating, mosquitoey house. Always their voices ended by rising to the point where they could be heard all over ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... Chopin, Wagner and Franck whose music seems to waft us along on a magic carpet of delight. But just as Unity depends upon a definite basic tonality, so Variety is gained by this very freedom of modulation. Without it is monotony; with too much modulation, an irritating restlessness. By the perfect balance in his works of these two related elements a ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... edge of the berth and put on the obnoxious tan shoes. The porter, called to his duties, made little excursions back to me, to offer assistance and to chuckle at my discomfiture. He stood by, outwardly decorous, but with little irritating grins of amusement around his mouth, when I finally emerged with the red tie ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... when I had finished my lunch and dessert of cold pears, was going to drag me into the midst of a circle of unprepared and astonished cousins. Vast sheep loomed through the mist a few yards off. The sheep dog kept up a perpetual, irritating yap. In the fog I could hardly tell where I was, though I knew I must have played there a hundred times as a child. After the fashion of woman directly she is not perfectly warm and perfectly comfortable, I began to consider the uncertainty of human ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... coming. Astounding as it may be, Mr. Wright contends that Defoe himself was the original of the story: that Defoe, provoked by his wife's irritating tongue, made a kind of vow to live a life of silence—and kept it for more ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to aggravate youth. With years, he assured Beardsley, men learned to value law and order in art, as in the state, at their worth; and, more and more inspired by his theme, as was his way, he grew preposterously wise and irritating, and he talked himself so successfully into every exasperating virtue of age that I could not wonder at the fierceness with which Beardsley turned upon him and denounced him roundly as conventional and academic and prejudiced and old-fashioned and all that to youth is most ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... How wilfully irritating you are! This Mr. Drake, of course. By the way, I suppose he will get on?' She spoke in a voice which implied regret for the supposition, and almost appealed ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... elements in our nature. In the morals which are called minor, though they affect deeply the happiness of mankind, the importance of the government of thought is not less apparent. The secret of good or bad temper is our habitual tendency to dwell upon or to fly from the irritating and the inevitable. Content or discontent, amiability or the reverse, depend mainly upon the disposition of our minds to turn specially to the good or to the evil sides of our own lot, to the merits or to the defects of those ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... sufficiently irritating to see Ben go through an exhaustive exhibition of his accomplishments under the admiring glances of Mittie, but when he condescended to ask her to skate, and even offered to teach her some new figures, Joe's irritation rose to ire. In vain he tried ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... a phrase which, if it pleases him, he will repeat two or three, or half a dozen times. Then, after a pause, other notes and phrases, and so on, pretty well all day long. This manner of singing is irritating, like the staccato song of our throstle, to a listener who wants a continuous stream of song; but it becomes exceedingly interesting when one discovers that the bird is thinking very much about his own ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... The terrible conviction of the supernatural origin of the dream, from which he had tried to escape, had possessed itself of him again. All his interest in the argument was at an end; all his sensitiveness to its irritating influences was gone. In the case of any other man, Mr. Hawbury would have been mollified by such a concession as his adversary had now made to him; but he disliked Midwinter too cordially to leave him in the peaceable enjoyment of an ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... undisguised authority. To nobles like Egmont and Orange, who looked down upon the son of Nicolas Perrenot and Nicola Bonvalot as a person immeasurably beneath themselves in the social hierarchy, this conduct was sufficiently irritating. The Cardinal, placed as far above Philip, and even Margaret, in mental power as he was beneath them in worldly station, found it comparatively easy to deal with them amicably. With such a man as Egmont, it was impossible ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... color and fine in effect, but the northerner is painfully imprest by the black and white horizontal stripes which, running from vaulting to pavement, seem to blur and confuse the vision, and the closely set bars of the piers are positively irritating. In the hexagonal lantern, however, they are less offensive than elsewhere, because the fan-like radiation of the bars above the great gilded statues breaks up the horizontal effect. The decoration of the stone-work is not happy; the use of cold ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... drying room at the time, and Hanks was up after a roll of cloth. He had just brought down two, and was struggling to get an exceedingly large roll upon his shoulder. This he succeeded in doing after one or two failures, that caused the hands standing near to laugh at him, and make irritating remarks, as is ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... that the shaving-and-corsets familiarity of married life was not dreary vulgarity but a wholesome frankness; that artificial reticences might merely be irritating. She was not much disturbed when for hours he sat about the living-room in his honest socks. But she would not listen to his theory that "all this romance stuff is simply moonshine—elegant when ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the inconvenience with philosophical good-humour. While the panelling and electric-light fittings were being ripped out, they sat among the debris and played cards. There was heaps of time for their appointment—it was only with wounds and Death. To me, as a civilian, their coolness was almost irritating and totally incomprehensible. I found a new explanation by saying that, after all, war was their professional chance—in fact, exactly what a shortage in the flour-market was to a man who had quantities of wheat ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... half a dozen irritating encounters. Evelyn returning home on a wet day, bedraggled, not at her best, toiling along the wet lane, and being splashed with mud by the wheels of a giant car, from the cushioned seat of which the Squire and his wife regarded her with lofty ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... make-believe came. These feelings were fought against for association's sake, and because of gratitude for bygone pleasures—but the former beauty and nobility were not there, and in their place stood irritating intervals of descending fourths and fifths. Those once transcendent progressions, luxuriant suggestions of Debussy chords of the 9th, 11th, etc., were becoming slimy. An unearned exultation—a sentimentality deadening something within hides around ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... we feel that God will not come, habits that we have dropped into which we feel to be a film between us and Him, the sooner we get rid of them the better. But into all our daily duties, dear friends, however absorbing, however secular, however small, however irritating they may be, however monotonous, into all our daily duties it is possible ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Sheldon was not sentimental, and any exhibition of feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear—what was it that showed in the expression of his face at these moments? Whatever that strange look was, it departed ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... word, it was the season of setting fire to the prairies. As he advanced he began to perceive great clouds of smoke at a distance, rising by degrees, and spreading over the whole face of the country. The atmosphere became dry and surcharged with murky vapor, parching to the skin, and irritating to the eyes. When travelling among the hills, they could scarcely discern objects at the distance of a few paces; indeed, the least exertion of the vision was painful. There was evidently some vast conflagration in the direction toward which they were proceeding; it was as yet at ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... germs in the wound itself, if the skin was broken, with germs on the hands and instruments of the operator, and with germs on the dust in the air. He must find some defensive power which was able to kill the germs, at least in the first two instances, without exercising an irritating effect on the tissues and weakening their vitality. The relative importance of these various factors in the problem only time and experience could tell him. Carbolic acid had been discovered in 1834 and ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... irritating a painful wound, some one had been tickling him in the most delightful manner, Chicot, during the operation, copied the letter from the Duc de Guise to his sister, and made his ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... I had been successfully engaged in the pursuit of trouble, and had conjured up so irritating a picture, that actually a small tear had left its source, and was running over the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... judicious advisers among his theological, as he had among his legal, friends; and had he allowed them equal influence with him; he would not, I suspect, have written this irritating and too egometical paragraph. But Baxter would have disbelieved a prophet who had foretold that almost the whole orthodoxy of the Non-conformists would he retained and preserved by the Independent congregations in England, after the Presbyterian had almost without exception become, first, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the two nations, having finally fought their differences to a finish, should not share the high seas in peaceful rivalry; but the irritating problems of protection and reciprocity survived to plague and hamper commerce. It was difficult for England to overcome the habit of guarding her trade against foreign invasion. Agreeing with the United States to waive all discriminating duties between the ports of the two ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... calculated to irritate the susceptibilities of the Scotch peers, there were attendant circumstances still more irritating. The three Scotch judges were summoned from Scotland to answer certain legal questions connected with the debate. On their arrival a fresh debate sprang up on the question whether they should be {67} examined at the Bar of the House of Lords or upon the wool-sacks. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... distributed through the post-offices as an item of party service; and matter of a political character, passing through the mails in the usual course and addressed to patrons belonging to the opposite party, was withheld; disgusting and irritating placards were prominently displayed in many post-offices, and the attention of Democratic inquirers for mail matter was tauntingly directed to them by the postmaster; and in various other ways postmasters and similar officials annoyed and vexed those holding opposite political ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... BRETT YOUNG'S manner of presenting The Tragic Bride (SECKER) is not free from affectation, and this is the more irritating because his literary style is in itself admirably unpretentious. But having recorded this complaint I gladly go on to declare that his tale of Gabrielle Hewish has both charm and distinction. I protest my belief in Gabrielle both in her Irish and English homes, but my protest would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... think," but that, too, was no use. What made his depression so vexatious and irritating was that it had a kind of casual, external character—he felt that. Some person or thing seemed to be standing out somewhere, just as something will sometimes obtrude itself upon the eye, and though one may be so busy with work or conversation ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... witchcraft he had used', from his unlooked- for and romantic success, the fond satisfaction with which he dotes on his own happiness, the unreserved tenderness of Desdemona and her innocent importunities in favour of Cassio, irritating the suspicions instilled into her husband's mind by the perfidy of lago, and rankling there to poison, till he loses all command of himself, and his rage can only be appeased by blood. She is introduced, just ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... and found I had forgotten them. That's just like Harris. He couldn't have said a word until I'd got the bag shut and strapped, of course. And George laughed—one of those irritating, senseless, chuckle-headed, crack-jawed laughs of his. They ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Jesus Christ defeat themselves, and always will. They are on a level with jokes about death or one's mother; they recoil and smite the smiter on the nose. I confess that I find the joke about Charles Lamb irritating. Butler said that he could not read Lamb because Canon Ainger went to tea with his (Butler's) sisters. His gibes at Dante are as bad—in fact they are worse, aggravated by the fact that, having never read (he assures us) a word of him, he puts him down ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... next the shirt, which should be open in the front, and the pinning blanket. Lay all of these just as they should be, as regards the back, and turn him, being careful to hold all the clothes in place. If he is liable to chafe, or the movements of the bowels are in any way irritating, use vaseline about the buttocks. Now put the arms in the shirt sleeves and tie or button it up, and then pin the petticoat or pinning blanket. Lay an extra diaper folded many times under him, and fold ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... their host had mentioned in Henshaw's attitude was strikingly apparent. His dogmatic self-assertiveness which had before been found so irritating was laid aside; his manner was subdued, his tone was sympathetic as he apologized for all the annoyance to which his host and hostess were being put. Gifford, watching him alertly, wondered at the change, and more particularly at its cause, ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... consequence, of the adoption of this principle, the fatalist, if he had a sensible soul, would commisserate the prejudices of his fellow-man— would lament over his wanderings—would seek to undeceive him—would try by gentleness to lead him into the right path, without ever irritating himself against his weakness, without ever insulting his misery. Indeed, what right have we to hate or despise man for his opinions? His ignorance, his prejudices, his imbecility, his vices, his passions, his ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... as the colonel; but owing to the accident to the top of his nose, which being still bandaged, or rather court-plastered up, and not tending to add to his beauty, he was not able to turn it up and sniff in his former irritating way that ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... dull figure-head. D'Eon possessed letters of de Broglie and de Praslin, in which de Guerchy was spoken of with pitying contempt; in short, his despatch-boxes were magazines of dangerous diplomatic combustibles. He also succeeded in irritating de Praslin, the French minister, before returning to his new post in London, for d'Eon was a partisan of the two de Broglies, now in the disgrace of Madame de Pompadour and of Louis XV.; though the Comte de Broglie, 'disgraced' ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... accumulates that the heat and opposition of the "Nor'-West" partners—Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Inglis and Ellice—shown at the general meeting of the Company, were to break out in numberless hidden and irritating efforts to stop and perhaps render impossible the whole ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... Baxter. I'll tell you what my motive is. There is an official in England who has gone out of his way to throw obstacles in mine. This is needless and irritating, for generally I manage to get the news I am in quest of; but in several instances, owing to his opposition, I have not only not got the news, but other papers have. Now, since the general raking we have had over this Austrian business, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... revenge for this irritating incapacity by saying that neither can women create ideal men at all resembling reality. But halte la! Was it not said at first that Rochester must be a man's man? Is not the little Professor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... all, he liked to hear his voice reading the paper out loud to her in the evening. She dreaded that most of all. It had lately seemed to jar on her nerves till she felt she must scream aloud. His voice going on and on, raucous and sing-song, became unspeakably irritating. His "Mary!" summoning her from her household work to wherever he happened to be, his "Get my slippers," or "Bring me my pipe," exasperated her almost to the point of rebellion. "Get your own slippers" had trembled on her ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Fawn a long time to write his letter, but at last he wrote it. The delay must not be taken as throwing any slur on his character as a correspondent or a man of business, for many irritating causes sprang up sufficient to justify him in pleading that it arose from circumstances beyond his own control. It is, moreover, felt by us all that the time which may fairly be taken in the performance of any task depends, not on the amount ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Terry, with a brutal bluntness unworthy of a Celt. He can be very irritating sometimes; but at this moment he was looking so extremely handsome and devil-may-care, that my desire to punch his head dissolved as I glared at him. Could any woman in her senses throw over even a titleless ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... either at home or in society by any lady, however kind-hearted. Her own position must be maintained, and that may demand a certain loyalty to her own set. She must be careful how she lets loose on society an undesirable or aggressive man, for instance, or a great bore, or a vulgar, irritating woman. These will all be social obstacles to the young ladies of her family, whom she must first consider. She must not add to the embarrassments of a lady who has already too large a visiting list. Unsolicited introductions are bad for both parties. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... property that her husband had left her,—a diminution which made her income barely enough to support herself, much less Alice—the latter could hardly understand how anything which did not touch health or life could cause such grief; and she received the intelligence with irritating composure. But when, that afternoon, the little sick child was brought in, and the grandmother—who after all loved it well—began a fresh moan over her losses to its unconscious ears—saying how she had planned to consult this or that doctor, and to give it this or that comfort or luxury ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... order. It is difficult to see how heating the fat before adding the flour can be unwholesome, unless the cook is unskillful enough to heat the fat so high that it begins to scorch. Overheated fat, as has already been pointed out, contains an acrid, irritating substance called 'Acrolein,' which may readily be considered to be unwholesome. It is without doubt the production of this body by overheating which has given fried food its bad name. There are several ways of varying the flavor of gravies and sauces. One should be especially ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... thing in life,' he said, turning to Lady Charlotte, a slight irritating smile playing round his strong mouth, 'is—not to be duped. Put too much faith in these fine things the altruists talk of, and you arrive one day at the condition of Louis XIV. after the battle of Ramillies: "Dieu a donc oublie tout ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He wished to be thought a benevolent despot, and with Morocco, accordingly, Congress succeeded in making a treaty. But nothing could be done with the other pirate states without paying blackmail. Few scenes in our history are more amusing, or more irritating, than the interview of John Adams with an envoy from Tripoli in London. The oily-tongued barbarian, with his soft voice and his bland smile, asseverating that his only interest in life was to do good and make other people happy, stands out in ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Mrs. Marshall slipped quietly away about this time, and then, with their guests showing an irritating and undue interest in all that they did, the boys began the preparation of the supper. As the work progressed, wigs were pushed out of place and finally discarded; hooks and eyes, too fragile for such muscular young ladies, loosed their hold, and skirts were trampled under foot and ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... house you might be the most angelic temper in the world, but if you wore creaky boots, had a habit of slamming doors, little tricks of giggling or fidgeting with your hands or feet, you would be an unpleasant companion, for you would be constantly irritating one in small matters. Of course, it is just the same thing with your opinion of me. You have an idea that I am a good enough sort of fellow, because I have done my best to enable you to carry out your plans and wishes, but that has nothing to do at all ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... to find her manner irritating, but could not wholly dispel the impression that Miss ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... preservation of public peace; whilst a couple of puppies, touched off in the extreme of the then prevailing fashion at Caneville, turned up their noses and their tails in a way which seemed to render it perfectly marvellous how they kept upon their legs. All this was sufficiently irritating, even to the most good-natured of beings, and Bruin found it especially hard to bear; he was assisted, however, in his prudential resolution to abstain from any outward exhibition of wrath by a sound which was as new to his ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... solicitude could be shown even by a dying animal, whose breasts he had cut off, and whose spinal cord he had severed? Is it Magendie, operating for cataract and plunging the needle to the bottom of the patient's eye, that by experiment upon a human being he might see the effect of irritating the retina? ... Surely, in these names, and such as these, there can be no uplift or inspiration to young men toward that unselfish service and earnest work which alone shall help toward the amelioration ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... of the work of that Administration. It had been incessant work, and its great successes of later years had been checkered by some disappointments, which, although not deep-reaching, were irritating and disturbing. Some of his most capable colleagues had broken away from him, and he probably began to feel that the reformers all over the country expected more of him than he saw his way to accomplish. In 1834 he asked to be relieved from the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Helen said with her quiet acquiescence, "but I must go now and see about your lunch. Would you mind writing the labels? Uncle Alfred will want one for his bag. Oh, I know I'm irritating," she added on a wave of feeling which had to break, "but I can't help it. I—I'm like that." She reflected with humiliation that it was absurd to obtrude herself thus on a scene shadowed by tragedy, yet when she saw a glint of ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young |
