"Puling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cannot court thy sprightly eyes, With the base-viol plac'd between my thighs; I cannot lisp, nor to some fiddle sing, Nor run upon a high-stretch'd minikin; I cannot whine in puling elegies, Entombing Cupid with sad obsequies; I am not fashion'd for these amorous times, To court thy beauty with lascivious rhymes; I cannot dally, caper, dance, and sing, Oiling my saint with supple sonneting; I cannot cross my arms, or sigh "Ay me, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... me—which was little, for his time seemed to be much occupied, and his weakness for tobacco nearly cured—he once or twice attempted some drivel about disinterested friendship and undying gratitude; but I stopped that. If there be one thing for which I profess no sympathy, it is puling sentiment. He apparently did not care to discuss the progress of his affair, which was a relief; it is a dreadful nuisance to have to listen to lovers' talk, and I had enough of that at Wayback, when I could not help myself. At our time of life a man ought to be occupied ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... His tone was not particularly pleasant. "Peel her off! Yah! You puling infants! You cheap, trading-stamp crooks!" He raked off the money. "Be tran-tranquil! You doddering idiots, I'd shoot your heads off for two bits I Try to rob a countryman, will you? Why, gentle shepherds all, I've been on to such curves as yours ever since Hec was a pup! You and ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... for happiness, bent on self-protection by ignoring, keep working in its favor, but higher inner ideals have weighty words to say. The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a way out of the difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation. At all costs, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... old Liz suddenly ceased her gesticulations, lifted her black brows in unutterable surprise, opened her mouth, and became a listening statue? Did she too recognise tones which recalled other days—and the puling cries of infancy? It might have been so. Certain it is that when the shout was repeated she broke down in an effort to reply, and burst into mingled laughter and tears, at the same time waving her free arm more violently ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... Vanna. It differs from that of Measure for Measure in the fact that there can be no doubt as to the moral aspect of the case. It is quite clear that Giovanna ought to sacrifice herself to save, not one puling Claudio, but a whole city full of men, women, and children. What she does is absolutely right; but the conjuncture is none the less a grotesque and detestable one, which ought to be talked about and thought about as little ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... sacrament involved the shade of lingering disgust that had possessed him when he had taken the child to church disappeared and a feeling of natural affection took its place. However much the daughter had sinned, the infant was not to blame. It was a helpless, puling, tender thing, demanding his sympathy and his love. Gerhardt felt his heart go out to the little child, and yet he could not yield his ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... prince or not, he married in his youth a woman of the half-blood, and begot of her a troop of devils. Five sons he had, all great men, knowing not God and fearing none of God's works. And after them came a daughter, a puling slip of a thing, never meant to live, whom they did to death among them with their drinking and ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the Old Man declared. "Bless me, if you're not a Native Son! Nobody but a Native Son would be that fresh. I suppose this is your second voyage, you puling baby?" ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... be forgotten? Yes, a schism Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, Made great Apollo blush for this his land. Men were thought wise who could not understand His glories: with a puling infant's force They sway'd about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal soul'd! The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll'd Its gathering waves—ye felt it not. The blue Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew Of summer nights collected ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... to a great deal of puling over the circumstances in which we are placed. The great refinement of many poetical gentlemen has rendered them practically unfit for the jostling and ugliness of life, and they record their unfitness at considerable length. The bold ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him. Time and again, as I drearily waited, I was on the verge of giving him to the driver. Once, when two little girls—evidently the wharfinger's daughters—went by, my hand reached out to the door to open it so that I might call to them and present them with the puling little wretch. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... dim white wall, a thin curtain swaying before it. At first he took it for the white-washed wall of his attic at home, the lace-curtains at the head of the bed blowing in the wind. Then a slow-winged shadow, passing between him and the ceiling with puling cry, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Is this my reward for the august fortune my brain has wrought for thee? By the bones of my father, this puling sentiment of thine but ill accords ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that's said about it the better. I obsairve that the main part of it's devoted to the exaggerated satire of your neighbours. That's a spirit I'm sorry to notice in ye, and I regret to see that ye're already looking sulky at rebuke. The vairse,' pursued Armstrong, 'is mainly sickly, whining, puling stuff, as far away from Nature and experience as it's easily possible to be. Now, I ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... pampering and petting than Jackanapes, and that, consequently, Jackanapes was to blame for leading Tony into scrapes which resulted in his being chilled, frightened, or (most frequently) sick. But when Miss Jessamine said that Tony Johnson was delicate, she meant that he was more puling, less manly, and less healthily brought up than Jackanapes, who, when they got into mischief together, was certainly not to blame because his friend could not get wet, sit a kicking donkey, ride in the giddy-go-round, bear the noise of a cracker, or smoke brown ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... Douglas, coldly, indicating with his finger the trampled cloth, "is not the banner of Scotland, but only that of the Seneschal Stewarts. The King of Scots is but a puling brat, and they who usurp his name are murderous hounds whose necks I shall presently stretch ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... disappointment was admitted. He who affected by searching to find out and to equal God could not explain the power by which a tree pumps its sap from roots to leaves, or why a baby rabbit rejects the grasses that would harm it, or why a puling infant divines its mother among the motley and multitudinous mass of sibilant saints at a sewing society which is discussing the last wedding and the next divorce. He "who admits only what he understands" would have to look on himself as a conundrum and then give the conundrum up. He would have ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... like him first to be a manly boy, and then a boyish man. The Yordases always have been manly boys; instead of puling, and puking, and picking this, that, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... cause is black, In puling prose and rhyme, Talk hatefully of love, and tack Hypocrisy to crime; Who smile and smite, engross the gorge Or impotently frown; And call us "rebels" with King George, As ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... one other left of whom I must say something here, and more immediately. The poor, puling little babe, born in misery and disaster, Mary Hawker's ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... vestments, lifting the monstrance in the vaulted choir censed by the beating wings of half-seen Cherubim. And she would tremble awestruck as if she were the mother of a god, this poor sick work-woman whose puling child lay beside her drooping in the poisoned ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... his Lordship may not condescend to visit his puling babe before his guests depart. In such case, thou wilt have time to cool thy haste. I will go now. Do not eat too much, Lambkin." Janet looked back admiringly as she left the room; her eyes upon her mistress' daintily ruddy ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Anne?" she said. "Till late I did not know it beat, myself. My lord says 'tis a great one and noble, but I know 'tis his own that is so. Have I done honestly by him, Anne, as I told you I would? Have I been fair in my bargain—as fair as an honest man, and not a puling, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... study the Koran, or some less ascetic tome. Don't be gulled by a plausible slave, who wants nothing more than to multiply professors of his theory. Why don't you read the Bible, you miserable, puling poltroon, before you hug it as a treasure? Why don't you read it, and learn out of the mouth of the founder of Christianity, that there is one sin for which there is no forgiveness—blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, hey?—and that sin I myself have heard you commit ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... ladder, stands not with the most noble on the highest step, is not bestowed, like the rewards in a child's school, to the most deserving. I love you, Hugo Gottfried, it is true. But I wish a thousand times that I did not. Nevertheless—I do! Therefore make your reckoning with that, and put aside puling shams and whimpering subterfuges." ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... son of a brave father, who gave him to my care to train in knightly ways. But 'tis a puling fool, more fitting for the bowers ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... perhaps Almost invariably, quite justified. To be the wife of an ordinary man, indeed, is an experience that must be very hard to bear. The hollowness and vanity of the fellow, his petty meanness and stupidity, his puling sentimentality and credulity, his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill, his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit, above all, his loathsome clumsiness in amour—all these things must revolt any woman above the lowest. To be ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... can. Watch me," he cried arrogantly. "Henry, I want the advantage of my strength in this world and I'm not going to go puling around, golden-ruling and bending my back to give the weak and worthless a ride. Let 'em walk. Let 'em fall. Let 'em rot for all I care. I'm not afraid of their God. There is no God. There is nature. Up to the place where man puts on trousers it's a battle of thews and teeth. And nature never ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... before they will acknowledge any originality in them, have been misled into discovering in Whitman "the poet of democracy." Others maintain that he is the greatest of American poets, or, indeed, of all modern poets; that he is "cosmic," or universal, and that he has put an end forever to puling rhymes and lines chopped up into metrical feet. Whether Whitman's poetry is formally poetry at all or merely the raw material of poetry, the chaotic and amorphous impression which it makes on readers of conservative tastes results from his effort to take up into his verse elements ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... rounds of the tents outside, and he was marvelling. There were men who had fought bravely, who had stood wounds and the surgeon's knife without a murmur; who, weakened and demoralized by fever now, were weak and puling of spirit, and sly and thievish; who would steal the food of the very comrades for whom a little while before they had risked their lives—men who in a fortnight had fallen from a high plane of life to the pitiful level of brutes. Only here ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... him hereafter; that's how it looks to me; so I don't trouble my head much about the ins and the outs of getting saved or damned. I've never puled in this world, thank God, and let come what will, I ain't going to begin puling in the next. But to go back to whar I started from, it all makes in the end for that pretty little chap over yonder in the dining-room. Rather puny for his years now, but as sound as a nut, and he'll grow, he'll grow. When his mother—poor, worthless ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... against her side was enough. She didn't look into the future, nor did she think of what fate the years held in store for her daughter, but content, lost in emotive contemplation, she watched the blind movements of hands and the vague staring of blue eyes. This puling pulp that was more intimately and intensely herself than herself developed strange yearnings in her, and she often trembled with pride in being the instrument through which so much mystery was worked; to talk to herself of the dark dawn of creation, and of ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... his own instincts in Africa, develops the Southern sociology to a degree which casts entirely into pitiable pettiness the puling despotism of the calaboose and slave market. Witness Dahomey, where all lives, all fortunes, all persons, are cooerdinated in one perfect 'system' of subjugation to one sable Jefferson Davis Gezo, who is de jure divino husband by a ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... mother," said D'Aulney, resuming his walk; "but, there are few husbands who choose to be neglected for a puling infant." ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... guard the writhing face and instantly Victor began to rain blow after blow upon eyes and nose and mouth until a few minutes later "The Grizzly of the Athabasca" collapsed entirely, and whimpering and puling, he retracted his words, and then amid the frenzied jeers of the rivermen, he made up his pack and slunk away into the bush—and the fame of Victor Bossuet travelled the length of the three rivers. Thus it was that Victor became known as the ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... longer counts. Czardom with all it meant has gone for ever. The man, whose word a few weeks ago meant glory or shame, life or death, is to-day an exile, a prisoner. His word no more than the cry of a puling child! And to-morrow? God may speak again, and then Kaiserism will fall with ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... Fenwick, and Lancaster, WERE HANGED FOR BEING EGYPTIANS.' They were, in fact, gypsies, or had been consorting with gypsies, and they suffered under 5 Eliz. c. 20. In 1783 this statute was abolished, and was even considered "a law of excessive severity." For even a hundred years ago "the puling cant of sickly humanitarianism" was making itself heard to the injury of our sturdy old English legislation. To be killed by a poet is now an unusual fate, but the St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, register (1598) mentions how "Gabriel Spencer, being slayne, was buried." Gabriel was ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... interest in things earthly, it will be no small addition to his present state of bliss to discover almost the realization of suggestions made sixty years ago, before the Browns of this period were conceived, and while the Rolphs were puling infants. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... place. The night was cloudy and very mild. A soft, sobbing, westerly wind, with the smell of coming rain in it, saluted her as she opened the casement. The last of the frost must be gone, by now, even in the hollows—the snow wholly departed also. The spring, though young and feeble yet, puling like some ailing baby-child in the voice of that softly-complaining, westerly wind, was here, very really present at last. Honoria leaned her elbows on the stone window-ledge. Her heart went out in strong emotion ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Quarles was a poet that needed not "apt alliteration's artful aid" to add to the vigour of his verse, or lend liquidity to his lines. Quarles is often queer, quaint, and querulous, but never prolix, prosey, or puling. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... the shop, scarcely heeding the voice of Mr. Mossrose, who said, "I'll take forty per shent" (and went back to his duty cursing himself for a soft-hearted fool for giving up so much of his rights to a puling woman). Morgiana, I say, tottered out of the shop, and went up Conduit Street, weeping, weeping with all her eyes. She was quite faint, for she had taken nothing that morning but the glass of water which the pastry-cook in the Strand had given her, and was forced to take ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... must care for me, or she would not have braved so much to save me from danger. I had difficulty in keeping from shouting aloud, so great was my joy. I felt that my strength had come back to me, and I cared no more for the threats of Cap'n Jack than for the anger of a puling child. I knew that Israel Barnicoat was somewhere lying in wait to do me harm, but I was not afraid. I saw this, too: Richard Tresidder would desire to have as little as possible said about my visit to Pennington, especially as he hoped that ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... is successfully encountered, of nobility,—the practice, namely, of self- revelation and self-delineation. To talk much about oneself with detail, composure, and ease, with no shadow of hypocrisy and no whiff or taint of indecent familiarity, no puling and no posing,—the shores of the sea of literature are strewn with the wrecks and forlorn properties of those who have adventured on this dangerous attempt. But a criticism of Stevenson is happy in this, that from the writer ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... of the lights and shadows and the sun wheeling his wide circuit through the naked heavens. Here shall you see no enemies but winter and rough weather. And if a pang comes to you at all, it will be a pang of healthful hunger. All the puling sorrows, all the carking repentance, all this talk of duty that is no duty, in the great peace, in the pure daylight of these woods, fall away from you like a garment. And if perchance you come forth upon an eminence, where the wind blows upon you large and fresh, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very skillful. The very ardor in her face was in her favor. Behind her hot eyes lurked cold calculation. She would put the thing through, and show those puling nurses, with their pious eyes and evening prayers, ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... continued Wacousta, chafing with the recollection, "wherefore do I, like a vain and puling schoolboy, enter into this abasing contrast of personal advantages? The proud eagle soars not more above the craven kite, than did my soul, in all that was manly and generous, above that of yon false governor; and who should have prized those qualities, if it were not the woman who, bred in solitude, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... forgotten? Yes, a schism Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, Made great Apollo blush for this, his land. Men were thought wise who could not understand His glories: with a puling infant's force, They swayed about upon a rocking horse And thought it Pegasus. Ah, dismal-souled! The winds of heaven blew, the ocean rolled Its gathering waves—ye felt it not. The blue Bowed its eternal bosom, and the dew Of summer night collected still, to make The morning precious. Beauty was ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... way to Strides Cottage again! Nearer and nearer now, that moment that must come, and put an end to all this puling hesitation. She could not help the thought that rose in her mind:—"This that I do—this reuniting of two souls long parted by a living death—may it not be what Death does every day for many a world-worn survivor of a half-forgotten parting in a remote past?" For, indeed, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... may devour my limbs; That I may die, like the late puling Francis[5], Under the barber's hands, imposthumes choak me,— If while alive, I cease to chew their ruin; Alphonso Corso, Grillon, priest, together: To hang them in effigy,—nay, to tread, Drag, stamp, and grind them, after they ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... his thoughts in sudden action, shaking this folly off with fierce impatience, heaping abusive epithets upon his own head, arraigning himself as a drivelling sentimentalist; and what shame could equal that of a puling sentimentality? ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... shamefully when I go to school in Albany," burst out Sammy; "and I thrashed that puling young patroon, too, for he saw me and refused my salute. But I think he will render me ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... observe that you are willing to let us have a little of your culture at your own price, but we shall not want it; we shall have our own culture, and it will be a much bigger and finer thing than the puling reveries of hedonists; it will be like the sea, not like the scattered ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... observing, that the vigorous and laborious class of life has lately got, from the bon ton of the humanity of this day, the name of the "labouring poor." We have heard many plans for the relief of the "labouring poor." This puling jargon is not as innocent as it is foolish. In meddling with great affairs, weakness is never innoxious. Hitherto the name of poor (in the sense in which it is used to excite compassion) has not been used for those ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... attached to a tent peg, roll head over heels, and walk in a contrary direction, when a similar somersault would be performed; and he whined and wailed just like a child; one might have mistaken it for the puling of some villager's brat. Milford was going to give it pure cows' milk when Fordham advised him not to do so, but to mix it with one half the quantity of water. 'The great mistake people make,' he said, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Italian, and wrote two Sonnets.... I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise—and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions."—Diary, December 18, 1813; Letters, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... poetry are resolvable into three ingredients: the rant of unregulated passion, the whining of exaggerated feeling, and the cant of factitious sentiment; and can, therefore, serve only to ripen a splendid lunatic like Alexander, a puling driveller like Werter, or a morbid dreamer like Wordsworth." In another part of this essay he says: "While the historian and the philosopher are advancing in and accelerating the progress of knowledge, the poet is wallowing in the rubbish of departed ignorance, and raking up the ashes ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... bequest, and go. You are too young—to be fettered—I should have thought of it! Do not communicate with me for at least a year: it is imperative. Do not tell me your plans. If we part, we do part. I have vowed a vow not to further obstruct the course you had decided on before you knew me and my puling ways; and by Heaven's help I'll keep that vow. . . . Now go. These are the parting words ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Memoires d'Outre-Tombe, expressed a warm wish that he had never written it, and hearty disgust at its puling admirers and imitators. This has been set down to hypocritical insincerity or the sourness of age: I see neither in it. It ought perhaps to be said that he "cut" a good deal of the original version. The confession of Amelie was at first less abrupt and so less effective, but the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... know the fine pompous joyous chorus of 'These pleasures, Mirth, if thou canst give, etc.'? Handel certainly does in music what old Bacon desires in his Essay on Masques, 'Let the songs be loud and cheerful, not puling, etc.' One might think the Water music ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... men on earth whom money causes to weep and pluck their beards in pretended sorrow when in the throes of their commercial emotion. If paid enough money they do not hesitate to use the onion freely to produce the real thing in tears. Next followed a dozen of mere puling mutes, of no caste or distinction whatever but that lent by a big brass badge on the breast of each. Then came four rickety carriages of the Columbus era; they hadn't a soul in them, but their cloth upholstered seats had been whitewashed with white lead and showed ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... is a tall, good-looking fellow; but I should not have thought him the stuff to make a dragoon. He has always been puling and delicate, unfit ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... G. decided her. She opened the iron gate and walked to the door. Directly she knocked, she heard two or three windows thrown up in neighbouring houses, from which the bodies of unkempt women projected, to cast interested glances in Mavis's direction. As she waited, she could hear the faint puling of a baby within the house. Next, she was conscious that a lath of a Venetian blind was pulled aside and that someone was spying upon her from the aperture. She waited further, the while two of the curious women who leaned from the windows were loudly deciding the date on which ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Germania's Austrian bridegroom, and everywhere illuminate the heavens with the torches of our triumphs. If the torches now and then come too near some piece of humanity and set it on fire, what is that to us? Germany is our enemy, and if we have a puling compassion on our enemy, we become traitors to our own cause. That's all. But what is the use of this strife and these recriminations?" asked he, suddenly breaking into a smile. "I have only come to ask your excellency when you intend to light ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... groaning, and the ship rolling and pitching and tumbling about in a way which made it seem wonderful that wood and iron could hold together. It wasn't exactly under such circumstances that the wife even of a boatswain's mate would have chosen to bring a puling infant into the world. The doctor thought that mother would have died, and, as there was no cow on board, that I should have shared her fate, but she got through it and nursed me, and I throve amazingly, so that in six ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... flew like a hunted buck along the corridor. He whipped his arms around the lady and kissed her passionately, and then flung on his knees and held out his arms. She put the something in white into them and there was a little puling cry. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... the composition of his incomparable letters, and of the Castle of Otranto[1765], he is the "Ultimus Romanorum," the author of the Mysterious Mother[1768], a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love-play. He is the father of the first romance and of the last tragedy in our language, and surely worthy of a higher place than any living writer, be he ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... not evade me. Do you think you can put me off with defences and puling arguments of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of property? No. You and I are here looking at naked truth. I will go down into your very soul and have it out by the roots, the naked truth. But I will have my answer. Are ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... hour out of it, and now his Body had unexpectedly risen and claimed yet another hour. And, beyond even this ... some devilish whim had betrayed him to-night into offering his time for the service and uses of the landlady's daughter in the puling ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... malecontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young 20 wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch, like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after 25 dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money: and now you are metamorphosed ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Who, in your lofty paradise, See aldermanic banquets rise— And though the duns around you troop, Still float in seas of turtle soup. I here forsake the tuneful trade, Where none but lordlings now are paid, Or where some northern rogue sits puling, (The curse of universal schooling)— A ploughman to his country lost, An author to his printer's cost— A slave to every man who'll buy him, A knave to every man who'll try him— Yet let him take the pen, at once The laurel gathers round ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... forward) You thought no doubt to spite me! That to this Royal Christening you did not invite me! BUT—(Mrs. Kean: "You must plaster that 'but' on the white wall at the back of the gallery.")— But on this puling brat revenged I'll be! My fiery dragon there shall ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... fox-hunter of the neighborhood, for whose opinion my father had vast deference. Indeed, I believe he would have pardoned anything in me more readily than poetry; which he called a cursed, sneaking, puling, housekeeping employment, the bane of all true manhood. He swore it was unworthy of a youngster of my expectations, who was one day to have so great an estate, and would he able to keep horses and hounds and hire poets to write songs for him ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... with her arms stretched out and, as she did so, his heart was strangely stirred within him by a little puling cry. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... think it is probable she cried for a plaything, and they have given her a husband. Well, well, well, the puling chit shall not be deprived of her plaything: 'tis only exchanging London dolls for American babies.—Apropos, of babies, have you heard what Mrs. Affable's high-flying notions of delicacy have ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... have laid at your feet my hand, my heart and my flourishing business, and thus—thus I am supplanted by that puling saint, George Jeffreys. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... "Some puling theoretician!" he muttered to himself, as he walked to the works one winter morning. "Some dandy who can draw cubes and triangles and cannot do anything else except come here—late probably—in an overcoat and comforter. One of those sickly office-desk beggars who are ill half ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... for the fault of a woman, I might have been wearing it now? You start with incredulity. I say, why not? Had there been a gallant chief to lead my countrymen, instead or puling knaves who bent the knee to King Richard II., they might have been freemen; had there been a resolute leader to meet the murderous ruffian Oliver Cromwell, we should have shaken off the English for ever. But there was no Barry in the field ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on the bank of the brook. Sam, for his part, turned upon Dick with a ferocious oath, and a fresh demand for the money. Of the whining, puling, weeping Raven they took no notice whatever. No notice! Ah, ha, Messrs. Long Legs and Fiery Nose, you are making ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... stay. If only Elinor would play the game, instead of puling and mouthing! In the room across the hall where his desk stood he paced the floor, first angrily, then thoughtfully, his head bent. He saw, and not far away now, himself seated in the city hall, holding the city in the hollow of his hand. From that his dreams ranged far. He saw himself ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... harvests spring; the unfailing sun Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak Peace, harmony and love.... Is Mother Earth A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, that ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... broke in the British Legation things had seemed more impossible than ever. Orders and counter-orders came from every side; the place was choked with women, missionaries, puling children, and whole hosts of lamb-faced converts, whose presence in such close proximity was intolerable. Heaven only knew how the matter would end. The night before people had been only too glad to rush frantically to a place of safety; with daylight they remembered that they were terribly uncomfortable—that ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... it, a vile hysterical laughter, to think of it. You've got this almost intolerable burden to bear; it's come like a thief in the night; but bear it you must, and ALONE! They say death's a going to bed; I doubt it; but anyhow life's a long undressing. We came in puling and naked, and every stitch must come off before we get out again. We must stand on our feet in all our Rabelaisian nakedness, and watch the world fade. Well then, and not another word of sense shall you worm out of my worn-out old brains after ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... laughing whispers upon every discard, upon every bet. Now and then, in their whisperings, Cooley's hair touched hers; sometimes she laid her hand on his the more conveniently to look at his cards. Mellin began to be enraged. Did she think that puling milksop had as much as a shadow of the daring, the devilry, the carelessness of consequences which lay within Robert Russ Mellin? "Consequences?" What were they? There were no such things! She would not look at him—well, he would ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... don't take their theatre seriously, i. e., neither as a fencing ground for propagandists nor for puling poets, this new Sudermann piece will please. It has triumphed in Berlin and Munich. Its people are portraits taken from fashionable West End Berlin, while the dialogue, witty, incisive, and also characteristic, is one ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... bizarre contrasts. Its history, population, climate, location, architecture, soil, water, customs, costumes, horses, cattle, all attract the stranger's attention, either by force of intrinsic singularity or of odd juxtapositions. It was a puling infant for a century and a quarter, yet has grown to a pretty vigorous youth in a quarter of a century; its inhabitants are so varied that the 'go slow' directions over its bridges are printed in three languages, and the religious ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... his mother for institutions and things traditional held to him. But as he gazed on the squawking Penton, lying stretched out on a board while the village dentist-doctor dragged at a tooth, he had a sudden conception of man's equality and his likeness to the beast. Even bank-managers were poor, puling cowards in the face of pain, or under the influence of a ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... meanwhile, live in Gray's Inn Lane aforesaid, with a maid-servant and a nurse, whose hands are very full, and in a most provoking and unnatural state of happiness. They have never once thought of crying about their dinner, like the wretchedly puling and Snobbish womankind of my favourite Snob Aubrey, of 'Ten Thousand a Year;' but, on the contrary, accept such humble victuals as fate awards them with a most perfect and thankful good grace—nay, actually have a portion for a hungry friend at times—as the present ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is no rational guidance of the universe. It has arisen self-evolved, by chance; and if a god created it, he laid down eternal laws and has left them to govern its course without mercy or grace, and without troubling himself about the puling of men who creep about on the face of the earth like the ants on that of a pumpkin. And well for us that it should be so! Better a thousand times is it to be the servant of an iron law, than the slave of a capricious master who takes a malignant and envious ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lamp, pulls the chain. Puling, the gasjet lights up a crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney's broken. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... old Ike had been setting ferst in one chair and then in another chair and puling his wiskers and when father sed this he gave a grone and sed aint there no pertection under the law? and father sed the matter is being vestigated and persecution will folow enny falce step that the villins make. the trubble is they are verry ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... individuality and superiority which is both bracing and uplifting—there is not any particular harm in this: progress can be, and is, accelerated by the hypocrisies and snobbishness, all the minor, unpleasant adjuncts of mediocrity. Snobbishness is a puling infant, but it may grow to a deeply whiskered ambition, and most virtues are, on examination, the amalgam of many vices. But while intellectual poverty may be forgiven and loved, social inequality can only be utilized. Our ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... Persian; and the Persian, which was merged in the Grecian Empire. The Roman Empire came last. [How Law can be considered to be the characteristic of all or any part of this period, I am at a loss to discover. Neither do I see any indication of puling Infancy here.] These four great Empires of the world had run their course when our SAVIOUR CHRIST was born. GOD sent His own Eternal SON into the world; and lo, a change passed over the whole fabric of the world's polity. The old forms of social life became, as it were, dissolved; or rather, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... though I never raised my hand against him. He fell at my feet and blubbered; he has kissed these very boots, literally, beseeching me 'not to frighten him.' Do you hear? 'Not to frighten him.' What a thing to say! Why, I offered him money. He's a puling chicken—sickly, epileptic, weak-minded—a child of eight could thrash him. He has no character worth talking about. It's not Smerdyakov, gentlemen. He doesn't care for money; he wouldn't take my presents. Besides, what motive had he for murdering the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that her cousin was so near, he would not for worlds she should cross the threshold of that terrible house. But one day, Cathy and Ellen Dean met Heathcliff on the moors, and he half persuaded, half forced them to come home and see his son, grown a most despicable, puling, ailing creature, half-violent, half-terrified. Cathy's kind little heart did not see the faults, she only saw that her cousin was ill, unhappy, in need of her; she was easily entrapped, one winter, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... shot out a clawing, ravenous hand. "I want that money—want it quick!" he spat, taking a step forward. "You want hatred, eh? Well, hatred you'll have, boy. Hatred that I've always given you, you miserable, puling, lily-livered spawn ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... know I can never be anything to you but a sort of puling weakling, who must be nursed, and petted, and cared for. I know," he went on, his words coming with a rush in the height of his protesting passion, "if your thoughts, your secret thoughts and feelings, were put into ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... to produce such sublime and agreeable impressions on his fellows. To step from the busy pave of New Bond-street and its busy whirl of fashion to this placid meer of reflection is a contrast almost too severe for some of the puling votaries of London gaiety: yet the scene teems with deep-souled poetry. Some such feelings as those so touchingly expressed in Lord Byron's Ode to Napoleon, on his first ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... multitude darkens the light of day as flights of arrows do in children's story-books, forming a vaulted army. They are a fleet which can disembark a million men and their supplies anywhere at any moment. It is only a few years since we heard the puling cry of the first aeroplanes, and now their voice drowns all others. Their development has only normally proceeded, yet they alone suffice to make the territorial safeguards demanded by the deranged ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... The reason for all this is your fear of being pitchforked into a big bonfire by a pantomime demon with horns and a long tail." He laughed bitterly. "To think that you, my adored Essie, should really have the soul of a Sunday school teacher. You, a Bacchante of passion, to be puling about your sins. You! You! Girl, you're mad! I tell you there is no such thing as damnation. It's a bogey invented by priests to enchain mankind. But if there is and if that muddle-headed old gentleman you call God really exists and if he's a just God, why then let ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... "paralytic puling" may have been suggested by the "placid purring" of previous satirists. In March, 1814, his sister Augusta was trying hard to persuade Byron, as he ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... reason of it all? That's the puzzle. She has her meals, her liberty, a good house to live in, and good clothes to wear, as usual. A while since that sufficed to keep her handsome and cheery, and there she sits now a poor, little, pale, puling chit enough. Provoking! Then comes the question, What is to be done? I suppose I must send for advice. Will ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... ben Haidah looked with great scorn upon these Bedouins, and their contempt was reciprocated. In the eyes of the Berbers these men were outcasts and "eaters of sand," and in the eyes of the Bedouins the muleteers were puling, town-bred slaves, who dared not say their ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... iron lamp in which a sacred spirit burned unceasingly, purifying with its glowing flame the human tabernacle. Then Messer Simone gave a short laugh, and said, mockingly, that such stay-at-home tactics were well enough for puling fellows that liked to lie snug behind city walls and write puling sonnets, and would rather be busy with such petty business than risk their fine skins ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... exclaimed Catiline, "this puling love-sick girl, this timorous, repentant—I had nearly called thee—maiden! Why, thou fool, what would'st thou with the man farther? Dost ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... oath to a mere pretender? Besides, consider your fortune. Rocker to a puling babe—even if he was what they say he is. And don't build on the Queen's favour—even if she remains what she is now, she is too much beset with Papists and foreigners to do anything ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge |
