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More "Petulant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and ignorant, thus mean and faithless, thus petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having Pope for his enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation, from this undertaking. So willingly does the world support those who solicite favour, against those who command reverence; and so easily is ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... darkness and corruption of the tenth century suspended the intercourse, without reconciling the minds, of the two nations. But when the Norman sword restored the churches of Apulia to the jurisdiction of Rome, the departing flock was warned, by a petulant epistle of the Greek patriarch, to avoid and abhor the errors of the Latins. The rising majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... fond of his children also. The two are like God and Mammon. Lord Macaulay has a passage in which he contrasts the pleasures which a man may derive from books with the inconveniences to which he may be put by his acquaintances. "Plato," he says, "is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long. No difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet." I dare say I might differ from Lord Macaulay in my estimate of some of the writers he has named, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... pattered over the ice-bound pavement, attempting to make up by the number of his short steps for the long strides of his father. The little fellow jerked at the bony hand which held his, and prattled and questioned, begged and grew petulant, in a vain effort to make his father talk to him. But the latter was probably unconscious of the other's existence, and stalked on, absorbed in his own reflections. He wore on such occasions an old gray shawl, rolled into a coil ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... generally happens that a Representative only becomes somebody from his position in the Assembly. He is therefore perpetually haunted by a craving to acquire importance there, and he feels a petulant desire to be constantly obtruding his opinions upon the House. His own vanity is not the only stimulant which urges him on in this course, but that of his constituents, and the continual necessity of propitiating them. Amongst aristocratic nations a member of the legislature is ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... was a savage license, practised in many schools to the end of the last century, by which the boys, when the periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at the approach of liberty, some days before the time of regular recess, took possession of the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade their master defiance from the windows. It is not easy to suppose that on such occasions the master would do more than laugh; yet, if tradition ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... spirit, it will be done with a degree of reluctance, and under an overwhelming sense of necessity. Let the spirit of meekness be prevalent. Nothing in the manner, in which unwelcome opposition is maintained, must indicate a proud resistance, or an air of triumph. It must not be litigious, petulant, unconciliating; but the importance of those principles which occasion the difference, must be apparent in the temper of mind they produce. Thus, it will be possible to maintain the rights of conscience, and not ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... miser's care she husbanded her strength, ate the most nourishing food they could afford, and rested every moment her duties permitted. The economy they were now compelled to practice amounted almost to daily privation. Belle and the children were often a little petulant over this change, Mrs. Jocelyn apathetic, but Mildred was inflexible. "We must not run in debt one penny," she would often ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... and very pale, and yet not fragile-looking; on the contrary, she had a clear look of health, but there was a petulant curve about the mouth that spoke of quick temper, and the whole face seemed capable of great mobility, quick changes of feeling ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... no want of trying to remedy the defect, expert at bridge, razor-edged of tongue, but still youthful enough to allow the lid of Pandora's casket to lift on occasions, also to be described by those who feared the razor-edge as petulant instead of peevish, and cendree instead of sandy, passed the tedious moments of waiting in a running commentary upon the idiosyncrasies and oddities of the people and refreshments of the past hours, with a verve which she fondly believed to be a combination ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... he said. He made a petulant gesture as he went on: "I don't see why Judge Lawlor bothered me about the matter. He is the one to impose sentence, not I. I am hours behind ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... Solomons and stripped off a stick from the handful of pressed sticks. The old man was transfigured as he reached avidly for the stick and received it. He uttered little crooning noises, alternating with sharp cries akin to pain, half-ecstatic, half-petulant, as he drew a black clay pipe from a hole in his ear-lobe, and into the bowl of it, with trembling fingers, untwisted and crumbled the cheap leaf of spoiled ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... another example: the great features of the character of Hotspur are obvious to the most superficial reader. We at once perceive that his courage is splendid, his thirst of glory intense, his animal spirits high, his temper careless, arbitrary, and petulant; that he indulges his own humour without caring whose feelings he may wound, or whose enmity he may provoke, by his levity. Thus far criticism will go. But something is still wanting. A man might have all those qualities, and every other quality which the most minute ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... out with a book of flies in his hand, and he said in rather a petulant way, "And it iss no wonder Miss Sheila will be out. And it wass Miss Sheila herself will tell me to see if you will go to ta White Water and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... me very low-spirited last night by your manner of talking. You are my only friend, the only person I am intimate with. I never had a father or a brother; you have been both to me ever since I knew you, yet I have sometimes been very petulant. I have been thinking of those instances of ill-humor and quickness, and ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... yourself how vain it was to argue with my father. The despair that seized upon me after such an interview was, besides, embittered by remorse; for I was at times petulant, but he invariably gentle; and I was fighting, after all, for my own liberty and pleasure, he singly for what he thought to be my good. And all the time he never despaired. "There is good stuff in you, Loudon," he would say; "there is the right stuff in you. Blood ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Dare's petulant childish accent to perfection. At another time the three young men would have shouted over it. Now they looked at one ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Why name your loss? All that Minna could lose is not Minna. You are still the sweetest, dearest, loveliest, best creature under the sun; all goodness and generosity, innocence and bliss! Now and then a little petulant; at times somewhat wilful—so much the better! So much the better! Minna would otherwise be an angel, whom I should honour with trepidation, but not dare to love. (Takes her hand ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... from this illness, if it could be called a recovery, to a state of only tolerable physical health, and a condition of pitiable mental apathy and languor. She turned with a half-weary, half-petulant distaste from her former pursuits and pleasures, and abandoned her profession with a sort of terror,—feeling that its mockery of sorrows, such as had fallen so crushingly on her unchastened heart, would madden her utterly. But neither could she endure again ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... inner, hollowed, semicircular end of a gaff or boom, which presses against the mast; the points of the jaw are called horns. Also, coarse and often petulant loquacity.—Long-jawed applies to a rope or cable, when by great strain it untwists, and exhibits one revolution where four were before; similar to long and short threads of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of the hotel (a good enough resting-place facing the broad Volga) had urged upon M. le Prince the advisability of waiting, as is the way of landlords all the world over. But Etta had shown a strange restlessness, a petulant desire to hurry forward at all risks. She hated Tver; the hotel was uncomfortable, there was an unhealthy smell ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... with diamonds sparkling in her gray hair, came rustling down the steps, bringing with her faint odours of patchouly and violet-powder. She was followed by a girl of doll-like prettiness, with a snub nose and petulant little mouth, who held up her satin-and-lace skirts with a sort of fastidious disdain, as though she scorned to set foot on earth that was not carpeted with the best velvet pile. As they approached their ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... The preacher taught me Latin, Greek, and history: two persons, however, occupied themselves with my religious education—the preacher and my old Rosalie. She is a good soul. How often have I teased her, been petulant, and almost angry with her! She thought so much of me, she was both mother and sister to me, and instructed me in religion as well as the preacher, although she is a Catholic. Since my father's childhood she has ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... answered nought and continued gazing, while only the little smile, tilting the corners of her lips, betrayed that she had heard the petulant speech. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... and her face was a study in mixed expressions. Her forehead was a little knitted, her eyes almost strained in their desire to read him; her lips were petulant. ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mind is purified, what internal combats and dangers must we incur in spite of all our efforts! How many bitter anxieties, how many terrors, follow upon unregulated passion! What destruction befalls us from pride, lust, petulant anger! What evils arise from luxury ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... withdrew the hand, dashing the pen she had been holding with a petulant little gesture on to the desk where she had ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... days of grand reviews and grand diplomatic audiences. I never saw him more condescending, more agreeable, or, at least, less offensive, than on the day of his last levee, before he set out to be inaugurated a King of Italy; nor worse tempered, more petulant, agitated, abrupt, and rude than at his first grand audience after his arrival from Milan, when this ceremony had been performed. I am not the only one who has made this remark; he did not disguise either his good or ill-humour; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... were very busy in one of these affairs, I remember, Jim was blue-eared, ragged-nerved and petulant to such a degree that I began to think of shipping him back to the old farm, where pork gravy and fried cakes would certainly restore his nervous system; otherwise I felt he would land in a padded cell. Nothing he ate agreed with him and I felt sure it must be a bad ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... taking advantage of our position and controlling us through our own strength. Words cannot tell how beneficial this is to man, what a charm it gives to the society of men and women, how it checks the petulant child and restrains the brutal husband; without it the home would be a scene of strife; with it, it is the abode of happiness. I know that this power is abused by the sly and the spiteful; but what is there that is not liable to abuse? Do not destroy the means of happiness ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... seemed that her companion would take her at her word, so puzzled and troubled was his countenance, and he moved slightly, as about to obey the petulant ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... regulates the lives of us poor men no less than the motions of the stars, and binds the whole universe, high and low, into one system: and we may have arrived at the blessed wish to conform with this law rather than to strive and kick against the pricks and waste our short time in petulant rebellion. So far, so good: but how are we to know the law? How, with the best will in the world, are we to distinguish order from disorder? What assurance have we, after striving to bring ourselves into obedience, that we have succeeded? We may agree, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Men felt in England, to use the figure by which Erasmus paints the time, "as if a scorpion lay sleeping under every stone." The confessional had no secrets for Cromwell. Men's talk with their closest friends found its way to his ear. "Words idly spoken," the murmurs of a petulant abbot, the ravings of a moon-struck nun, were, as the nobles cried passionately at his fall, "tortured into treason." The only chance of safety lay ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... men had lost some of their original endurance, and their natural pity had already undergone a certain deterioration, this period of the development of the human faculties, occupying a just medium between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our modern self-love, must have been at once the happiest and the most durable epoch. The more we reflect, the more evident we find it that this state was the least subject to revolutions and the best for man. "So long as men were content with their rustic hovels, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... unworthily affected by party bias in his historical judgment. But neither was tempted to turn history into a covert attack on the condition of things amid which they lived. Hence a calmness and dignity of tone and language, very different from the petulant brilliancy of Voltaire, who is never so happy as when he can make the past look mean and ridiculous, merely because it was the parent of the odious present. But, excellent as were the Scotch historians—Hume, in style nearly perfect; Robertson, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... trust. Dr. Newman has pointed out how even the Pope has recognised in the sedate and ominous rise of our modern earth-born positivism some phenomenon vaster and of a different nature from the outburst of a petulant heresy; he seems to recognise it as a belligerent rather than a rebel.[30] 'One thing,' says Dr. Newman, 'except by an almost miraculous interposition, cannot be; and that is a return to the universal religious sentiment, the public opinion, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... this juncture Ferdinand opportunely died (1516), and the Algerine Moors seized their chance. They stopped the tribute, and called in the aid of Salim, the neighbouring Arab sheykh, whose clansmen would make the city safe on the land side. "But what are they to do with the two hundred petulant and vexatious Spaniards in the fort, who incessantly pepper the town with their cannon, and make the houses too hot to hold them; especially when they are hungry? Little would the gallant Arab cavalry, with their fine Libyan mares and horses, rich coats-of-mail, tough targets, well-tempered ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... Italian garden, with its statues glittering in the early sun—and the long marble front of the house, with its rococo ornament, and its fine pillared loggia. "What the deuce are we going to do with these places!" he asked himself in petulant despair. "And to think that Arthur won't be allowed to sell it, or turn it to ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the box opposite, "not a Frenchwoman. Her youth is too girlish, and she has too petulant ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... no reply to the petulant words and action. An expression of tender pity crossed her face, as she stooped and lifted the torn barb, and examined the rent, with as much apparent calmness as if it had been damaged in the washing. There was evidently more in her than ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Pegana's glades may come on one of our lost prayers, that flutters like a butterfly tossed in storm when all its wings are broken; then if the gods be merciful they may ease our fears in Sidith, or else they may crush us, being petulant gods, and so we shall see trouble in Sidith no longer, with its pestilence and dearth ...
— The Gods of Pegana • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... virtue. When did she sadden her parents even by a look?... There was nothing forward in her looks, bold in her words or unbecoming in her actions. Her carriage was not abrupt, her gait not indolent, her voice not petulant, so that her very appearance was the picture of her mind ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... a vote of censure on the Government at all? Is it not really a vote of censure on the general election? Is it not a cry of petulant vexation at the natural, ordinary, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... neck, in a rather absurd and artificial fashion. But the effect of her grave little face and severe expression, with this opulent gold, and her red lips and round blue eyes, was very piquant. Even powder, earrings, and "clubbing" her hair did not rob Julia of the appearance of a sweet, wilful, and petulant child. Besides the powder and earrings, she indulged in cologne, in open-work silk stockings and high heels, in chains and rings and bracelets; she wore little corsets, at fourteen, and laced ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Arenta's voice, petulant and not pleasant, broke the charm. With a sigh they rose, dropped each other's hand, and went out of their heaven on earth ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... was the loveliest creature he had ever seen. Yes; she was the golden girl of his dreams. Within his grasp, so to speak, and yet he could not hope to seize her, after all. Was she meant for that popinjay youth with the petulant eye and the sullen jaw? Was he to be the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... preserve to the most extreme and feeble old Age a certain Daring in their Aspect: In like manner, they who have pass'd their Time in Gallantry and Adventure, keep up, as well as they can, the Appearance of it, and carry a petulant Inclination to their last Moments. Let this serve for a Preface to a Relation I am going to give you of an old Beau in Town, that has not only been amorous, and a Follower of Women in general, but also, in Spite of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... must tell you, Tudor,' said Sir Gregory, speaking more in sorrow than in anger, 'that you will not have my countenance. I cannot but think also that you are behaving with ingratitude.' Alaric prepared to make some petulant answer, but Sir Gregory, in ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... tormenting, touchy, arrogant, austere, awkward, boorish, brawling, brutal, bullying, churlish, clamorous, crabbed, cross, currish, dismal, dull, dry, drowsy, grumbling, horrid, huffish, insolent, intractable, irascible, ireful, morose, murmuring, opinionated, oppressive, outrageous, overbearing, petulant, plaguy, rough, rude, rugged, spiteful, splenetic, stern, stubborn, stupid, sulky, sullen, surly, suspicious, treacherous, troublesome, turbulent, tyrannical, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... conflicting, could be accepted as decisive. To me, the evidence,—weighed as we weigh other evidence, with a just appreciation of the source of the charges, the powerful testimony of the man's public life viewed as a whole, and the lofty position maintained in the face of all odds among a petulant people whom he would not flatter, but openly reproved for their vices,—the evidence, I say, read in this light justifies the conclusion that the orator was a man of high moral character, and that in the Harpalus affair he was the victim of the Macedonian faction ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... gave Mrs. Dodd a soft pinch, to which Mrs. Dodd replied by a smile. And so they settled who this petulant ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... will be understood that Colonel Desmit passed a most uneasy night after Nimbus had left his house. He had been summoned before the Bureau! He had expected it. Hardly had he given way to his petulant anger when he recognized the folly of his course. The demeanor of the colored man had been so "sassy" and aggravating, however, that no one could have resisted his wrath, he was sure. Indeed, now that he came to look back at it, he wondered that he had ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... room, and Penny sighed, as much as to say: "What a pity little boys are so petulant and quarrelsome." But the victory was his, as it always was, and he could think of other things. There was a clock on the wall behind him, but, too comfortable to turn his head, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... but too taken up with each other to see me. She was walking slowly, with the little petulant cock of her dainty head which I knew so well, casting her eyes away from him, and shooting out a word from time to time. He paced along beside her, looking down at her and bending his head in the eagerness of his talk. Then as he said something, ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... laconic answer sent the blood of healthy anger into her face, made her eyes shine. And it brought from Ina Vandeman a petulant, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... refuse to understand me," replied Harry, flattered but still petulant. "You are like an iceberg, when ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to others, for, by heaven, I will not give a finger's length of accounting concerning my doings or omissions to others, not even to the Emperor himself. I have cares and anxieties of my own and have no use for petulant letters." ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... him hard; but he was only gazing down, rather cross-eyed, on his grizzled mustache, with an obvious petulant interest in the increase of white hairs in it. Evidently his had been but a chance shot. 'Niram stepped up on the grass at the edge of the porch. He was so tall that he overtopped the railing easily, and, reaching a long arm over to where I sat, he handed me a small ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. It became obvious to him that he had behaved like a madman or a petulant child—he preferred to think it was like a madman. If he and Susy were to separate there was no reason why it should not be done decently and quietly, as such transactions were habitually managed among people of their kind. It seemed grotesque ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... a sudden petulant lift of his head. And, after all, it was not quite her fault. Life, for her, had been so hard and so busy that he ought not to grudge her the consolation she had been able to dig up out of the accumulated debris of the ancestral trick of sermonizing. In a more gracious, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... at the top of a house, which he called his own, and which he kept beautifully neat, full of books and other possessions. Hanging over his mantelpiece was a photograph of Alison. It did not do her justice, failing to reproduce her expression, giving no color to the charming, petulant face, and merely reproducing the fairly good features without putting any life into them. When Hardy got home and turned on the gas in his little attic, he took the photograph down from its place ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... from the West to his clustering sheep. Then pray for the moods that old mariners woo, For the thoughts of young mothers who watch their babes sleep. Pray for the heart of an innocent child, For the tolerant scorn of a weary old man, For the petulant grief of a prophet reviled, For the wisdom you lost when ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... chose his own. I approved mildly of St. Claire; Michigan awed me from a little boy's summer; Huron was familiar from another summer, but Erie heretofore had meant only something to be crossed—something shallow and petulant. Here she lay in the sunlight, with bars of orange light darkening to ocean blue, and one far sparkling line in the West. Then I knew that I had wronged her. She seemed not to mind, but leisurely to wait. We faced the ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... them, had been obliged to go to Delaware, whence they procured Caesar A. Rodney, one of the House managers against Chase. The two impeachments were thus closely connected and their results were similar. In the first place, it was determined that impeachment was likely to be, in the petulant language of Jefferson, "a farce" not soon to be used again for partisan purposes. In the second place, it was probable that henceforth, in the Commonwealths as well as in the National Government, political power would ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... memory was this: refusing a small favor asked of me,—nothing more than telling what had happened at school one morning. No matter who asked it; but there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no heart to speak;—I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away, and the first battle of life was lost. What remorse followed I need not tell. Then and there, to the best of my knowledge, I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned my back on Duty. Time has led me to look upon my offence ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... round her neck, and in her ears Pearls of enormous size,—these justify Her faults, and make all lawful in her eye. More shame to Rome! in every street are found The essenced Lypanti, with roses crowned; The gay Miletan and the Tarentine, Lewd, petulant, and reeling ripe ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... abundant accountant arrogant assailant assistant attendant clairvoyant combatant recreant consonant conversant defendant descendent discordant elegant exorbitant important incessant irrelevant luxuriant malignant petulant pleasant poignant reluctant stagnant triumphant vagrant warrant ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... things very pretty indeed," said Matty, in rather a petulant tone; for she could not bear that any fault should be found with her beautiful cottage. "I'm sure that the porcelain jars on the mantelpiece are fit for the palace of a princess; and just look at my gilded French mirror, and ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... where were gathered together all the population of the city and its environs; this agitation, like to that of the blood which in the paroxysms of a violent passion rushes to the heart; this feverish expectation, this frantic excitement,—kept, however, within the limits of order; these exclamations, petulant without insolence; this deep anxiety which gives a quivering to pleasure: all this together formed a species of moral magnetism; one must succumb to its force or ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... The petulant voice of a hardware salesman, who was secretly known to represent American moneyed interests in Mongolia, drifted through the haze of tobacco smoke at the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... thinker. What is this flame of her, blazing through all her contradictions and ignobilities?—this ruthless passion for life, always for life, more life on the planet? At times it seems to me brazen, and awful, and soulless. At times I am made petulant by it. And at other times I am swayed by the sublimity of it. No; there is no escape from woman. Always, as a savage returns to a dark glen where goblins are and gods may be, so do I return to the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... opens the door of an inner chamber, and crosses the stage with a quick petulant step, to ring a bell in the saloon: no answer is immediately given, and he repeats the ring with ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... with an air of half-tolerant impatience. "To have a beautiful woman alone with you in your rooms, at this hour o' night ... Don't you find it romantic, dear boy? Or aren't you in a romantic mood tonight? Or perhaps I'm not sufficiently beautiful ...?" She ended with a charming little petulant moue. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... recover his reason except at long intervals, when the words he uttered showed that he was fully aware of his own condition. His thoughts were evidently of a gloomy character, as he was constantly uttering expressions of self-reproach. No longer petulant or impatient, he appeared sunk ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... be President Folsom XXV as soon as the Electoral College got around to it, had his father's face—the petulant lip, the soft jowl—on a hard young body. He also had an auto-rifle ready to fire from the hip. Most of the Cabinet was present. When the Secretary of Defense arrived, he turned on him. "Steiner," he said nastily, "can you ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... not forget to give you a word of thanks for An English Village. It reminds me strongly of Keats, which is enough to say; and I was particularly pleased with the petulant sincerity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a cassock, with woolly hair and a petulant expression on his face, had already raised his hand. He said, with a stutter, that his name was Ducretot, priest and agriculturist, and that he was the author of a work entitled "Manures." He was told to send it to ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... une esquisse du caractere que je manifestais dans les premieres annees de ma raison naissante. Taciturne et tranquille pour l'ordinaire, mais quelquefois extremement petulant et babillard, presque toujours dans les extremes, obstine et rebelle a la force, fort soumis aux avis qu'on me donnait avec amitie, contenu plutot par la crainte d'etre gronde que par toute autre chose, d'une timidite excessive, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... in no fair forms of humanity nor beneficent institutions, but in the foremost sugar-plantation of the world, whose cane-rows were planted and nourished by the first of crimes, whose juice was expressed by over-hasty avarice and petulant ambition that could not be satisfied unless the crime preserved features as colossal as the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... with the curse of dumbness, was laughing wild, and when she came near, it put out its arms and gave the cry of the young of birds. She lifted the "leanav" in her arms and stared into its eyes, but there was no longer the weary blankness, and the little one yearned with the petulant laughing and idle whimpering of the children of other mothers. And that mother there gave a cry of joy, and with ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... farms were heirs and assigns of the people Specified hereinabove and proved by the records of probate— Still on these farms shall you hear (and still on the turnpikes adjacent) That pitiful, petulant call, that pleading, expostulant wailing, That hopeless, monotonous moan, that crooning and droning for Peter. Some say the witch in her wrath transmogrified all those good people; That, wakened from slumber that day by the calling and bawling for Peter, She out ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... or two miserable cottages appeared, darkened by heath, and stuck in a sand-pit; from whence issued a half-starved generation, that pursued us a long while with their piteous wailings. The heavy roads and ugly prospects, together with the petulant clamours of my petitioners, made me quite uncharitable. I was in a dark, remorseless mood, which lasted me till we reached Bree, a shabby decayed town, encompassed by walls and ruined turrets. Having nothing ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... her with the oddest of commentaries on his father's mien and mind. He would never, the family sighingly recognized, be nearly as handsome as Mr. Leath; but his rather charmingly unbalanced face, with its brooding forehead and petulant boyish smile, suggested to Anna what his father's countenance might have been could one have pictured its neat features disordered by a rattling breeze. She even pushed the analogy farther, and descried in her step-son's mind a quaintly-twisted ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... his method and manner were harsh, and he could have won the affections of his troops only by leading them to victory. He furnished a striking illustration of the necessity of a healthy body for a sound intellect. Many years of dyspepsia had made his temper sour and petulant; and he was intolerant to a degree of neglect of duty, or what he esteemed to be such, by his officers. A striking instance of this occurred during my visit. At dinner, surrounded by his numerous staff, I inquired for one of his division commanders, ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... kicked out 't all, Peg," she said, with a petulant, youthful smile. "I just won't do it! Lafe can't, and if ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... management of affairs, and even the government, too, upon condition that he would not prefer Dion's friendship before his. This extravagant affection was a great trouble to Plato, for it was accompanied with petulant and jealous humors, like the fond passions of those that are desperately in love; frequently he was angry and fell out with him, and presently begged and entreated to be friends again. He was beyond measure desirous to be Plato's scholar, and to proceed in the study of philosophy, and yet he was ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... intelligence had reached his wife, and while the old wound burnt afresh, the shyness of his still but sensitive nature, the pride of the grave strong man, were offended and injured. But with regard to his wife he was only conscious of the petulant, unreasonable, unkind surface; he did not sound her deep resentment and jealousy; he did not dream of the anguish of the secret cry whose outward expression struck upon his vexed ears; he did not hear her inner protest: "I will ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... traces their invisible hand in many of the misfortunes and in some of the blessings which befall him; for it is a common feature of the faith in ghosts, at least among savages, that they are usually spiteful and mischievous, or at least testy and petulant, more apt to injure than to benefit the survivors. In that they resemble the personified spirits of nature, which in the opinion of most savages appear to be generally tricky and malignant beings, whose anger is dangerous and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... only smile an answer, unable to speak, not now from pity, but from shame of my own petulant ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... informed there was a statutory provision applicable to the point, and begged permission to read it; and commenced turning over the pages of the act in search of it, when Judge Turner, addressing me and apparently irritated, said in a petulant manner;—"The court knows the law—the mind of the court is made up—take your seat, sir." I was amazed at hearing such language; but in a respectful and quiet manner stated that I excepted to the decision, and appealed, or would appeal from the order. The Judge instantly replied, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... leaked through the roof of the palace and began to drop in a pail or pan set there to catch it. And at one side of him all day long the water went drop! drop! drop! while on the other side a female companion quarrelling about this, and quarrelling about that, the acrimonious and petulant words falling on his ear in ceaseless pelting—drop! drop! drop! and he seized his pen and wrote: "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike." If Solomon had been as prayerful at the beginning of his life as he was at the close, how ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... profession than in others. To be humane, generous, and candid is a very high degree of merit in any case, but those qualities deserve still greater praise when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Mantegna's portrait of Gonzaga, though made later, shows a rather different type, less displeasing than the bronze. In the bust we have what is probably the portrait of a coarse and clumsy person; he is petulant in the mouth, weak in the chin, gross in the thick and heavy jaw. The bronze is extremely rough, and shows no signs of the nervous and individual touches which we find in Donatello's terra-cotta. Both the busts are unfinished; in the absence of chasing and hammering they are covered with bubbles ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... timid and one asks him the cause, he is liable to hear in reply: "Me fright along you too much." Or the native may be fright along storm, or wild bush, or haunted places. CROSS covers every form of anger. A man may be cross at one when he is feeling only petulant; or he may be cross when he is seeking to chop off your head and make a stew out of you. A recruit, after having toiled three years on a plantation, was returned to his own village on Malaita. He was clad in all kinds of gay ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... more complete contrast than that between these two young women at this moment. Clemence, lying upon her bed motionless and white as the sheet which covered her, resembled Juliet sleeping in her tomb; Aline, rosy, vivacious, and more petulant than usual, looked very much the madcap Mademoiselle de Corandeuil had reproached her with being. Her face was full of that still childish grace, more lovely than calm, more pleasing than impressive, which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... called "Brummagem," stood at hand: the brass had started in several places, and occasionally made great havoc in the children's fingers and in Mrs. Leslie's gown; in fact it was the liveliest piece of furniture in the house, thanks to the petulant brasswork, and could not have been more mischievous if it had been a monkey. Upon the work-table lay a housewife and thimble, and scissors, and skeins of worsted and thread, and little scraps of linen and cloth for patches. But Mrs. Leslie was not actually ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was with his fear and jealousy. Childish. She thought of his petulant refusal to let John come in with them. As if he could really keep him out. When it came to action they were one corps; they couldn't very well be divided, since McClane had more men than stretchers and John had more ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... all that happened ill with regard to his book was somehow Mrs. Burgoyne's fault? Claim all her time and strength—overstrain and overwork her—and then make her tacitly responsible if anything went amiss! It was like the petulant selfishness of his character. Miss Manisty ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Antoinette!' said the invalid, raising a petulant hand, and letting it fall again, inert. 'All the silly memorials of her they sell here!—and the sentimental talk about her! Arthur, of course, now—with his picture—thinks of ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... impressive; sensational. spirited, lively, glowing, sparkling, racy, bold, slashing; pungent, piquant, full of point, pointed, pithy, antithetical; sententious. lofty, elevated, sublime; eloquent; vehement, petulant, impassioned; poetic. Adv. in glowing terms, in good set terms, in no measured terms. Phr. "thoughts that breath and words ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... learn none there. Their tender vows are addressed to their Irish laundress, unless by chance some itinerant Englishwoman, eloped from her husband, or her creditors, defrauds her of them. Thus they return home, more petulant, but not more informed, than when they left it; and show, as they think, their improvement by affectedly both speaking ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... historical figure who is more wholly transfused and penetrated by the aroma of charm. Everything that he did and said had some distinction and unusualness: perceptive observation, ripe wisdom, and, with it all, the petulant attractiveness of the spoiled and engaging child. And yet even so, one is baffled, because it is not the profundity or the gravity of what he said that impresses; it is rather the delicate and fantastic turn he gave to a thought or a phrase that makes his simplest deductions from ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... strive not to exceed our income, and we deliberate long before investing our savings. We demand good recommendations from our cook, and take letters of introduction with us when we go abroad. We overlook the petulant manner of our friend who rowed in the losing barges at the race, and we forgive on the moment the sharp answer of the man who has sat three nights by a sick-bed. And we do all this because our acts have a ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... water. And that boy, too, would be a soldier; the lithe body would be thrown into a mould to be made the same as other bodies, the quick movements would be standardized into the manual at arms, the inquisitive, petulant mind would be battered into servility. The stockade was built; not one of the sheep would escape. And those that were not sheep? They were deserters; every rifle muzzle held death for them; they would not live long. And yet ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... glided in and tossed aside the blanket of his Indian disguise with a gesture of irritability. With a petulant kick his beaded moccasins struck the ceiling of the cave, and, sighing, he sank his feet into the more familiar high-heeled ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... great stone chimney, and a floor of hewn logs. Grandmother said it was the happiest day of her life when she found herself the mistress of this little house in the woods. Great-grandmother Avery lived with them later. She had a petulant disposition. One day when reproved for something, she went off and hid herself in the bushes and sulked—a family trait; I'm a little ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... are not in general so good as his Epistles. His enmity is effeminate and petulant from a sense of weakness, as his friendship was tender from a sense of gratitude. I do not like, for instance, his character of Chartres, or his characters of women. His delicacy often borders upon sickliness; his fastidiousness makes others ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... gentleman; the end to be answered >>> by his being an impostor, so much more than neces- sary if Lovelace has villany in his head; and as >>> you are in such a house—your wretch's behaviour to him was so petulant and lordly; and Tomlin- son's answer so full of spirit and circumstance; >>> and then what he communicated to you of Mr. Hickman's application to your uncle, and of Mrs. Norton's to your mother, [some of which particu- >>> lars, I am satisfied, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... see the least necessity for it, Norman," she resumed in a slightly agitated, not to say petulant tone. "It's simply ridiculous for a young man of your position to be working at common labor with such terribly common people. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... once would return, like the demon in fair disguise tempting some hermit of the desert, the thought, "What is Aurora doing? If Aurora knew I was ill, she would come." And the imagination of her coming would shed a feverish gladness all along those petulant, ill-treated, starved nerves. "What have I to do with Aurora, or Aurora with me?" he would ask, furiously, the incongruity of what had happened to him calling forth sometimes a desperate laugh. But Nature laughs at man's ideas of congruity; remembering that, he could only ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... enveloped in a further reflected glory, due also to Jowett's kindness—a kindness which survived many outbursts of what I thought somewhat petulant disapproval. I received from him one day a curt invitation to dinner, and presented myself, wondering mildly to what this mark of favor could be due. But wonder turned to alarm when, on entering the Master's drawing-room, I discovered in the dim twilight no other figure ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... Innocent Hester! she could not understand how the very qualities she so admired in Sylvia were just what were so foreign to her nature that the husband, who had known her from a child, felt what an unnatural restraint she was putting upon herself, and would have hailed petulant words or wilful actions with ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... household on the Knap became again serene under the composing influences of daily routine. A desultory, very desultory correspondence, dragged on between Sally Hall and Darton, who, not quite knowing how to take her petulant words on the night of her brother's death, had continued passive thus long. Helena and her children remained at the dairy-house, almost of necessity, and Darton therefore deemed it ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... not find in her eyes any of that acclaimed glad love-light which eager lovers seek. On the contrary, Miss Kilgour made just a bit of a face at him and was distinctly petulant. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... fiery tan, as well as her muzzle, the nose of which was inconceivably pug; her large eyes were full of intelligence; and her curly ears so long that they trailed upon the ground. Georgette seemed to be as brisk and petulant as Frisky, and shared her sportiveness,—now scampering after the happy little spaniel, and now retreating, in order to be pursued upon the greensward in her turn. All at once, at the sight of a second person, who advanced with ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... his office told the boys in our office that the old man was cross and petulant that year, and there is no doubt that Isabel Markley was beginning to find her mess of pottage bitter. The women around town, who have a wireless system of collecting news, said that the Markleys quarrelled, and that she was cruel to him. Certain ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... with attentive glance all the details of her extravagant array, she thought that I was admiring her, and threw her head back with a petulant expression. ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... rewarded and vice punished, it is at last found that the captain takes his page's place, and lies with his faithless mistress, cuckolds his treacherous friend, thrusts his sword through his body, recovers his casket, and marries his page. You will observe that this play is also larded with a petulant, litigious old woman (a relation of the captain), who is the most comical character that was ever ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... of joys. The alluring sea, This morning clear and placid, may, ere night, Toss like a petulant child, and when the light Of a new morning dawns sweep grand and free A mighty power. If fierce, or mild, or bright, With every tide flows in ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... seem the merest nothing to the strong man of the world, to the gay woman who glides, superficially through existence. But many a young bride will understand how it might be more sorrowful than the loss of houses and lands. It was the husband's first frown, his first petulant word; it was the key that opened Elma's understanding to the true estate of the past. She could no longer blind her eyes, as she had done, to a certain worldliness in her husband, and which had also reached her through him. This morning, that revealed so much, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... short and knuckle down to the practice of law immediately. A spirit of antagonism was developing between brother and sister that greatly distressed Jeff. He had no doubt that he was somewhat to blame, but at the same time Mildred was spoiled and petulant and overbearing. He doubted her kindness of heart, too, since he had witnessed her cruelty in regard to Cousin Ann Peyton and Judith Buck. He also decided to try a hazard of new fortunes in Louisville rather than Ryeville as ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... Huntley gave a petulant stamp. "I have told you I will not speak out of my turn. Yes, I will speak, though, as we want the affair set at rest," he resumed, changing his mind abruptly. "If Channing signs it, I will. There! Channing, will you ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the dutiful wife preceded him down a few stairs to a little basement front room, half kitchen, half parlour, where a girl of about nineteen, with an exceedingly pretty figure and face, but with an impatient and petulant expression both in her face and in her shoulders (which in her sex and at her age are very expressive of discontent), sat playing draughts with a younger girl, who was the youngest of the House of Wilfer. Not to encumber this page by telling off the Wilfers in detail and casting them up in the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... care, for it was her task to look after and amuse the other three, viz., her two brothers Harry and Arthur, aged ten and eight respectively, and little Beatrice, aged five. The children seemed altogether out of sorts, they were cross, petulant, teasing, and would settle to nothing. At last Milly thought of the toys indoors, and said, "Now we will go and have a good game ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... continued Rand in a petulant non sequitur, "is that YOU, my own twin-brother, never lets on about her comin' yer, permiskus like, when I ain't yer, and you and her gallivantin' and promanadin', and swoppin' ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his constant devotion to high ideals? What truth is illustrated by Gareth's overcoming the petulant opposition of Lynette? ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... had a hard time of it. Her mistress was petulant; there was no sunshine in the bright August day as it appeared to her. Toward dawn, after she had counted many millions of black sheep jumping backward over a fence, she had fallen asleep. Aunt ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... with his fear and jealousy. Childish. She thought of his petulant refusal to let John come in with them. As if he could really keep him out. When it came to action they were one corps; they couldn't very well be divided, since McClane had more men than stretchers and John had more stretchers than men. They would all be infinitely happier, working together ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... true. Yes: there is no use your tossing your head in that petulant manner. It is quite true. In the best days of art there were no art-critics. The sculptor hewed from the marble block the great white-limbed Hermes that slept within it. The waxers and gilders of images gave tone and texture to the statue, and the world, when it saw it, worshipped ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... a-day alone in his library. 'T was therefore in vain for him to sit at breakfast with eye aslant and thought-laden brow, as if meditating a long day's seclusion; somehow or another, he never got above an hour to himself. He was often momentarily petulant on these occasions, and soon saw through the designs of his enemies; but he so heartily and tenderly loved them—so thoroughly appreciated the affection which dictated their little manoeuvres—that he soon ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... earnest eyes to his face. "Not only by forgiving my dear petulant Godfrey, but by continuing his friend. I know that I have spoilt him—that he has many faults, but I think his heart is sound. As he grows older, he will know better how to value your character. Promise me, Anthony, that, when I am dust, your love for me ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... illness, if it could be called a recovery, to a state of only tolerable physical health, and a condition of pitiable mental apathy and languor. She turned with a half-weary, half-petulant distaste from her former pursuits and pleasures, and abandoned her profession with a sort of terror,—feeling that its mockery of sorrows, such as had fallen so crushingly on her unchastened heart, would madden her utterly. But neither could she endure again the constraint and conventionalities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... pajamas the boy looked a child, no older than a schoolboy who was mine and who still liked to be tucked up in bed by his mother. With his tousled hair and his petulant grimace, this lieutenant might have been Peter Pan, from Kensington. The night nurse pretended to chide him. It was a very gentle chiding, but as abruptly as he had thrown off his clothes he snuggled under them ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... for she had merely glanced up at him: and he thought of the illumined-blue that mingles in the rainbow, and he mused that he had never seen a head so fine, so gracefully poised. And then he speculated upon the petulant waste of her life. Almost divine could have been her mission; what a balm in a house of sickness and distress. He thought of the pale man whom he had seen lying near the window; he fancied himself ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... she hastily withdrew the hand, dashing the pen she had been holding with a petulant little gesture on to the desk where she ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... suffered much in this her first real trouble, and a little thing was enough to overset her. She had not readily recovered from the petulant tone of anger with which Janet told her not to ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and feverish. He at once remembered what had passed. Bull's words haunted him; he could not forget them; they burnt within him like the flame of a moral fever. He was moody and petulant, and for a time could hardly conceal his aversion to Bull. Ah Eric! moodiness and petulance cannot save you, but prayerfulness would; one word, Eric, at the throne of grace—one prayer before you go down among the boys, that God in ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... up the letter and held it in her hand, and went into her father's room. There was a certain petulant and irritated look ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... lightening, and a few gleams of watery sunshine brought out every now and then that sparkle on the trees, that iridescent beauty of distance and atmosphere which goes so far to make a sensitive spectator forget the petulant abundance of mountain rain. Elsmere passed Burwood with a thrill. Should he or should he not present himself? Let him push on a bit and think. So on he swung, measuring his tall frame against the gusts, spirits and masculine energy ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... book of satires, one is strongly tempted to ask, What made the boy write them? He neither knew nor cared to know anything of the world, and, we fear, cannot he credited with a philanthropic desire to reform it. The answer is given partly by himself, that he was full of petulant spleen, [10]—an honest confession,—partly is to be found in the custom then becoming general for those who wished to live well to write essays on serious subjects for private circulation among their friends, pointing out the dangers that lay around, and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... change place with Sophy ——, who was threatened with a sore throat, and might be injured by sitting near the door. I had scarcely swallowed a spoonful of soup when this occurred, and was so overset by the coarseness of the proposal, that I burst into tears, said something petulant—that perhaps ere long, the lady might be at the head of Mr. T.'s table, without displacing the mistress of the house, &c., and so left the apartment. I retired to the drawing-room, and for an hour ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... obliged to go to Delaware, whence they procured Caesar A. Rodney, one of the House managers against Chase. The two impeachments were thus closely connected and their results were similar. In the first place, it was determined that impeachment was likely to be, in the petulant language of Jefferson, "a farce" not soon to be used again for partisan purposes. In the second place, it was probable that henceforth, in the Commonwealths as well as in the National Government, political power would be exercised subject to constitutional restraints applied judicially. In ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... the general spirit and temper of the religious press with reference to science and scientific men, there is much to criticize and condemn. It is often snappish, petulant, ill-humored, unfair, and sometimes malicious in the extreme. Such opprobrious terms as infidelity, irreligion, rationalizing tendencies, naturalism, contempt for the Scriptures, etc., are freely used. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... impress me favorably then. He seemed restless, nervous, and petulant. I now think I somewhat misjudged him. He was thirty-three years of age,( 1) in full vigor of manly strength. He had, both in infantry and cavalry commands, won renown as a soldier, though his highest fame ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... had sat in the silence of despair, and the Colonel had been silent also—for what could he say?—but suddenly all four started in their saddles, and Sadie gave a sharp cry of dismay. In the hush of the night there had come from behind them the petulant crack of a rifle, then another, then several together, with a brisk rat-tat-tat, and then, after an ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... these prosperous farms were heirs and assigns of the people Specified hereinabove and proved by the records of probate— Still on these farms shall you hear (and still on the turnpikes adjacent) That pitiful, petulant call, that pleading, expostulant wailing, That hopeless, monotonous moan, that crooning and droning for Peter. Some say the witch in her wrath transmogrified all those good people; That, wakened from slumber ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... been, mother," answered Mabel, her tone still very petulant. "But I hadn't Kate's luck. I was introduced to no one, although lots of people stared at me, and whispered about me as ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... of public opinion could not be stayed, and the girls would learn the waltz and the prim minuet. Times had indeed changed since the day when Cotton Mather so sternly spoke his opinion on such an ungodly performance: "Who were the Inventors of Petulant Dancings? Learned men have well observed that the Devil was the First Inventor of the impleaded Dances, and the Gentiles who worshipped him the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... father's attention from Jesus, reminding him of the numerous matters that would have to be settled up between them, especially Dan's responsibility in the new adventure, the transport of grain from Moab to Jerusalem. Dan's curiosity was not to be diverted, and seeing him give way to his rage like a petulant child, Joseph decided that he must tell him, and he began with a disparagement of his story, the truth of which he did not vouch for. At Capernaum they were all telling how some two or three weeks ago Jesus heard God ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... husband's sake, had been ever patient and reticent. Nothing is, indeed, more remarkable than the patience of wives under this particular trial. They may be restive under many far less wrongs, but they bear the mother-in-law grievance with a dignity which shames the grim joking and the petulant abuse of men towards the same relationship. And for many years the young wife had borne nobly a domestic tyranny which pressed her on every hand. If then, she was glad to be set free from it, the feeling was too natural to be severely blamed; for she never said so,—no, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... in numbers pert And petulant, presum'st to flirt With Memory's Nine Daughters: Whose verse the next trade-winds that blow Down narrow Paternoster-row Shall 'whelm ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... low and the sky was dull; there was just enough water to lap against the sides of the boat, and make it rock up and down. The boat fretted like a petulant child, and pulled at the rope as a dog pulls against its chain, but it could not get away, for ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... turned upon the gossip of the preceding days. Miss Verne had not sufficiently recruited from the dissipation attendant upon a large assemblage, given by a lady friend in honor of some relative who had arrived from Ottawa. She was inclined to be resentful and petulant, and found fault with everything, from the delicious hot coffee and tempting rolls to the generous sunbeam that danced in at the opposite window, and it increased her anger so that she could scarcely restrain herself in ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... watch, and glanced around for another retreat. Hard by was a little wood, delightfully grassy and cool, fenced about with railings she could easily have climbed; but a notice-board, severely admonishing trespassers, forbade the attempt. With a petulant remark to herself on the selfishness of "those people," ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... was petulant; there were tears in it. It was not a decision of strength. Here the press-gang was at work driving the unwilling conscript. She was going; there was no doubt about her going; but it was a hard struggle to ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... tremendous, but as the history of half a century has shown, it was adequate and sufficient, and Lord Derby at once resigned. He did not take his defeat well. 'Strange to say,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to his wife, 'Lord Derby has been making a most petulant and intemperate speech in the House of Lords on his resignation; such that Newcastle was obliged to rise after him and contradict the charge of combination; while nothing could be better in temper, feeling, and judgment than Disraeli's farewell.' Derby angrily divided the combination ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... still displayed its placards advertising Dubonnet and other aperitifs, peppered by shrapnel bullets, but otherwise intact. Here and there whole streets stood spared, without a trace of conflict, and in a street away the cottages had fallen down like card-houses toppled over by the hand of a petulant child. In other villages it was difficult to believe that war had passed that way. It was rather as though a plague had driven their inhabitants to flight. The houses were still shuttered as when the bourgeoisie and peasant had fled at the first news of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... was always brute strength. There was no moral strength whatever in the restless fidgeting—the savage winding and unwinding of his left foot around the saber scabbard, or the attitude, leaning forward over the table, of petulant pugnacity. And the cruel voice was as weak as the hand was strong with which he rapped ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... stone chimney, and a floor of hewn logs. Grandmother said it was the happiest day of her life when she found herself the mistress of this little house in the woods. Great-grandmother Avery lived with them later. She had a petulant disposition. One day when reproved for something, she went off and hid herself in the bushes and sulked—a family trait; I'm a little ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... social disapproval or other coercive means to crush a man's opinion, is as one who should fire a blunderbuss to put out a star. The acquiescence in current notions which is secured by law or by petulant social disapproval, is as worthless and as essentially hypocritical, as the conversion of an Irish pauper to protestantism by means of soup-tickets, or that of a savage to Christianity by the gift of a string of beads. Here is the radical fallacy ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Ferdinand opportunely died (1516), and the Algerine Moors seized their chance. They stopped the tribute, and called in the aid of Salim, the neighbouring Arab sheykh, whose clansmen would make the city safe on the land side. "But what are they to do with the two hundred petulant and vexatious Spaniards in the fort, who incessantly pepper the town with their cannon, and make the houses too hot to hold them; especially when they are hungry? Little would the gallant Arab cavalry, with their fine Libyan mares and horses, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... unjust. Oddly enough, that instinctive aversion was shared by her closest friend and neighbor, Mrs. Blake; but, as yet, the extent of their condemnation had found vent only in the half whimsical, half petulant expression on part of the younger lady—Blake's beautiful wife, "I wish her name weren't—so near like mine," for "Nan" had been her pet name almost from babyhood. Vaguely conscious were they both, these lords of creation, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... portions of the earth. These sacred anticipations may not be disappointed without a fearful accountability somewhere. And, sir, suffer me to say that this whole people have a strong regard for each other, notwithstanding the petulant differences which have arisen between us. Kindred blood flows in our veins, and that of our fathers mingles on the same field; and even now, in the day of our country's peril, our affections meet at the hallowed grounds of Mt. Vernon, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... fretful, never petulant, and very rarely angry; but when she was, it was a genuine case of unrestrained rage, and woe to the individual who fell a victim to her blazing eyes and sarcastic tongue. To-night Dr. Van Anden was that victim. ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... canvas, a good, rattling, saucy shower? There is room in it for a rare handling of the brush:—the vague, indistinguishable line of hills, (as I see them to-day,)—the wild scud of gray, with fine gray lines, slanted by the wind, and trending eagerly downward,—the swift, petulant dash into the little pools of the highway, making fairy bubbles that break as soon as they form,—the land smoking with excess of moisture,—and the pelted leaves all wincing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... art. Mr. Shaw is a mind without a body, a whimsical intelligence without a soul. He is one of those tragic buffoons who play with eternal things, not only for the amusement of the crowd, but because an uneasy devil capers in their own brains. He is a merry preacher, a petulant critic, a great talker. It is partly because he is an Irishman that he has transplanted the art of talking to the soil of the stage: Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, our only modern comedians, all Irishmen, all talkers. It is by his astonishing skill of saying everything that comes into his head, with ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... garret. From nausea and racking pains I had come to the stage of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill, fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen. I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a Turkish cursing—the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants the same pangs in duplicate upon ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... There is a world of difference between the 'golden mean' of Horace, and the worship of virtue that redeems the obscurities of Persius. There is a still greater gulf between the high scorn manifested by Persius for all that is base and ignoble, and the fierce, almost petulant, indignation of Juvenal, that often seems to rend for the mere delight of rending, and is at times disfigured by such grossness of language that many an unsympathetic reader has wondered whether the indignation was genuine. Neither Horace nor Juvenal ever rose to the moral heights of the conclusion ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... of the court demanded that the monarch should be roused. Beneath him, from under the costly green coverlet of Oriental silk, half buried in the fluffy Valenciennes lace which edged the pillow, there protruded a round black bristle of close-cropped hair, with the profile of a curving nose and petulant lip outlined against the white background. The valet snapped his watch, and bent over ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... petulant exclamation which was rising to her lips. She was conscious of a curious desire to win her queer young ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... gentle argument that he could not go to Peekskill with her met with a petulant response. She made it plain to him that she realised his preference for the children and that she was no longer of any use to him as a companion or helpmate. For her own part, she'd like to see them all in Jericho—meaning the children, of course. All of which shocked ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... was a problem in ciphers, a weary and profitless sum. Slipshod and stupid I worked it, dazed by negation and doubt. Ciphers the total confronts me. Oh, Death, with thy moistened thumb, Stoop like a petulant schoolboy, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... I interrupted, for this petulant ill-humor, that saw naught but evil in everything, was becoming too frequent and always ended in the same way—a night of semi-delirium, "by the bye, did you see those fellows turning up soil for corn with a buffalo shoulder-blade as ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the tragedy, for her eyes were full of tears, and her olive-tinted face was pale. She was about thirty years of age; tall, slim, and graceful. Her beauty was of the Spanish type: straight-browed, lustrous-eyed, and vivid; a clear olive skin, and full, petulant, crimson lips. She was fashionably dressed in black, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... It seemed tired out. It was a dirty red in color, and it swirled and flowed along lingeringly. At times the current was almost imperceptible; and then again it moved at varying speed. It seemed a petulant, waiting, yet inevitable stream, with some remorseless end before it. It had a thousand voices, but not the one Bostil ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... doing. In the summer of 1258, while the great change was going on, a thunderstorm drove the king as he passed along the river to the house of the Bishop of Durham where the Earl was then sojourning. Simon bade Henry take shelter with him and have no fear of the storm. The king refused with petulant wit. "If I fear the thunder, I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world." But Simon had probably small faith in the cumbrous system of government which the Barons devised, and it was with reluctance that he was brought to swear to the ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... said the young lady, with again a lift of her eyes which expressed a little disdain and a little impatience. But she saw Pitt's face with a thoughtful earnestness upon it; he was not watching her eyes, as he ought to have been. Her somewhat petulant words he answered simply. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... deformed that his life was "one long disease;" he was remarkably precocious, and had a most intelligent face, with great, flaming, tender eyes. In disposition Pope was the reverse of admirable. He was extremely sensitive, petulant, and supercilious; fierce and even coarse in his attacks on opponents; boastful of his self-acquired wealth and of his intimacy with the nobility. The great redeeming feature of his character was his tender devotion to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... me out, I hold, after all, the main redoubt,— Not by force of arms nor the force of will, But the power of love, which is mightier still. And very deep in their hearts, I know, Under the saucy and petulant "Oh," The doubtful "Yes," or the naughty "No," They ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... afternoon, when the young painter regained his own studio, he threw himself upon his battered sofa with a sigh of relief that was half-petulant. He had had an afternoon doubly successful; for he had taken a long-contemplated plunge. In his pocket was another whole year of frugality; or a month, one little month, of extravagance. His question now was, which should it be? ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... interest in certain authors of a later generation, of whom the general public has never suspected him to have been aware. Something almost like friendship sprang up as lately as 1867 between him and a man whom nobody would suppose him to admire, Matthew Arnold. It sometimes happens that a sensitive and petulant artist finds it more easy to acknowledge the merits of his successors than to endure those of his immediate contemporaries. The Essays in Criticism and The Study of Celtic Literature called forth from the author of My Novel and The Caxtons such ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... may be," retorted a sharper, petulant voice, the sound of which was oddly familiar, "but I tell you this, Senor, 'tis on this very shore French gallants come hunting from New Orleans. There is dry land in plenty ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... 'neath her frown the errant earth in winter seems Prostrate to lie, and petulant of mood; Restrained in icy fetters all the babbling streams, Like naughty babes who're learning ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... and simple rites were expressive of an early state of society before the invention of arts and agriculture. The rustic deities who presided over the toils and pleasures of the pastoral life, Pan, Faunus, and their train of satyrs, were such as the fancy of shepherds might create, sportive, petulant, and lascivious; whose power was limited, and whose malice was inoffensive. A goat was the offering the best adapted to their character and attributes; the flesh of the victim was roasted on willow spits; and the riotous youths, who crowded ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... loveliest creature he had ever seen. Yes; she was the golden girl of his dreams. Within his grasp, so to speak, and yet he could not hope to seize her, after all. Was she meant for that popinjay youth with the petulant eye and the sullen jaw? Was he to be the lucky man, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... behave as though all that happened ill with regard to his book was somehow Mrs. Burgoyne's fault? Claim all her time and strength—overstrain and overwork her—and then make her tacitly responsible if anything went amiss! It was like the petulant selfishness of his character. Miss ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... so intent upon living that they have little time to think. Lady Bolsover was of these. The hour that did not hold some excitement in it wearied her and made her petulant. Her husband, dead these ten years, had been amongst the enthusiastic welcomers of Charles at his Restoration, and his wife had from first to last been a well-known figure in the Court of the Merry Monarch. That she was ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... to a lifer, and, the mask of John Ward being torn from him, he was sent to Sheffield to stand his trial as Charles Peace. The leap from the train is already recorded; and at his last appearance in the dock he rolled upon the floor, a petulant and broken man. When once the last doom was pronounced, he forgot both fiddle and crowbar; he surrendered himself to those exercises of piety from which he had never wavered. The foolish have denounced him for a hypocrite, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... face; she did her lessons well, but as she chose to do them. She was as indomitable, fierce, unappeasable, as Charlotte was ready and submissive. And yet it was Emily who had the larger share of Monsieur Heger's admiration. Egotistic and exacting he thought her, who never yielded to his petulant, harmless egoism, who never gave way to his benevolent tyranny; but he gave her credit for logical powers, for a capacity for argument unusual in a man, and rare, indeed, in a woman. She, not Charlotte, was the genius in his eyes, although he complained that her stubborn ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... was affected; his brain was in a whirl. He was the prey of the most childish alarms; gusts of petulant emotion swept through him if Martha were late when he called; he was mad with jealousy if she ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... few minutes he replaced it with a petulant gesture of the hand, saying sullenly: "Vanished! She dared not grant me a greeting, because she caught sight ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to hear any sermons, thank you," from a petulant, tired Franky. In the stress of their work the poor child's hour ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... who live there. What could he do against them? What under the sun could one tired-out old man accomplish in a situation that every American knows to be simply impossible?" She looked hard at her husband's thoughtful face and threw herself against him with a petulant gesture. "Now, Neale, don't go and justify him! Don't ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... looked up to her with something akin to worship; all the elders spoke of Mrs. Stannard as the perfection of an army wife; even her closest friends and acquaintances could find no one trait to speak of openly as a fault. The nearest approach to such a thing was Mrs. Turner's exasperated and petulant outbreak when her patient lord had ventured, in presence of several of her coterie, to speak once too often of that lovely smile. "Merciful powers! Captain Turner. Any woman with Mrs. Stannard's teeth could afford to smile from morning ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... and hurried in speech, forcing smiles, and averting her eyes from her friends; neglecting every one, including Johnson and excepting only Miss Burney herself, to whom the secret was confided, and the situation therefore explained. Gradually, according to Miss Burney, she became more petulant to Johnson than she was herself aware, gave palpable hints of being worried by his company, and finally excited his resentment and suspicion. In one or two utterances, though he doubtless felt the expedience of reserve, he intrusted his forebodings to Miss Burney, and declared that Streatham ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... a sad task to have to recount the disputes between a father and a son. We shrink from it and turn away. Suffice it to say that one day Miles and his father had a Vesuvian meeting on the subject of the army. The son became petulant and unreasonable; the father fierce and tyrannical. The end was that they parted ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... resulting from my own bad habits of life. I bequeath to my son John, the effects of my habits of dissipation in my youth, with a like love for alcoholic liquors and tobacco. I bequeath to my son Harry my petulant, irritable disposition, and the rheumatic gout which I have brought upon myself by disobedience to physical law; and to my daughter Elizabeth, my trembling nerves and weak moral nature." But this is, in truth, what many parents do, and the children find it a ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... the holiday of both governess and pupil. They loved one another so well that the prospect of six weeks' close companionship was irksome to neither; but Emilie had not a holiday of it altogether. Miss Edith was exacting and petulant at times, even with those she loved, and she loved none better than Emilie. Fred, the tormenting brother of whom Edith had spoken in her list of troubles in our first chapter, was undeniably troublesome; and the three maid-servants set themselves from ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... with distrust. Much as I respected the authority of my master, I could not remain silent on a subject that so nearly concerned me. One day, when I insisted on knowing whether he would permit me to purchase myself, and what price I must pay for myself, he turned to me in a petulant manner, thrust his hand into his pocket, drew forth a bright silver quarter of a dollar, and proffering it to ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... to his ready speech and earnest tone with growing wonder both at him and at herself. Her own words had been little more than a petulant outburst. Of actually finding a way to elude her uncle's wishes she had no thought—unless it lay in carrying out that threat of hers to take the veil. Now, however, that Gonzaga spoke so bravely of doing what man could do to help her to evade that marriage, the thought of active resistance ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... is purified, what internal combats and dangers must we incur in spite of all our efforts! How many bitter anxieties, how many terrors, follow upon unregulated passion! What destruction befalls us from pride, lust, petulant anger! What evils arise from luxury ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... to the window. I knew, now, that I was old, and the knowledge seemed to confirm my trembling walk. For a little space, I stared moodily out into the blurred vista of changeful landscape. Even in that short time, a year passed, and, with a petulant gesture, I left the window. As I did so, I noticed that my hand shook with the palsy of old age; and a short sob choked its way ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... reader that, as works of young men, they contained, and even nailed to the Academy gates, a kind of Lutheran challenge to the then accepted teachers in all European schools of Art: perhaps a little too shrill and petulant in the tone of it, but yet curiously resolute and steady in its triple Fraternity, as of William of Burglen with his Melchthal and Stauffacher, in the Grutli meadow, not wholly to be scorned by even the knightliest ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... at him and her face was a study in mixed expressions. Her forehead was a little knitted, her eyes almost strained in their desire to read him; her lips were petulant. ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Proverb of a poor man, He is not worth a Lowse. The Lice that trouble men are either tame or wilde ones, those the English call Lice, and these Crab-lice; the North English call them Pert-lice, that is, apetulant Lowse comprehending both kindes; it is a certain sign of misery, and is sometimes the inevitable scourgeof God." Rowland's Mouffet's Theater of Insects, p. 1090, ed. 1658 (published in Latin, 1634). By this date we had improved. Mouffet says, "These filthy creatures ... are hated more than Dogs ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... seat half petulant, half sorrowful; she was not really child enough to think that Mary could have spoken of heaven as a place actually within view; still it was not wonderful that the thought had for a moment flashed across her brain. Heaven itself could not have ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the round white lamp of earth rose higher, And still he tarried, Radha, petulant, Sang ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... yield too much respect to such a baffler, and too much weight to his fancies; to raise the man too high in his courage and conceit; to make his pretences seem worthy the considering and canvassing. Briefly, perverse obstinacy is more easily quelled, petulant impudence is sooner dashed, sophistical captiousness is more safely eluded, sceptical wantonness is more surely confounded in this than in ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... to handle the musket if Blackbeard sneaks back to bang at us with his pistols," was the evasive reply. The mention of the corpse had given old Trimble a distaste for the task. To his petulant question, Bill Saxby protested that he couldn't swim a blessed stroke and ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... his room to prepare for dinner, and when he glanced from his window he observed for the first time that the weather was about to exhibit itself in a petulant, ill-humored mood. Black storm-clouds were rolling up, a chill, gusty wind was rattling the windows and a heavy spat of rain dashed against the glass as he turned away. It would be ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the surviving memory, signalling out of the dark backward and abysm of time the images of perished things. But it was a part that scarce became him; he somehow lacked the means: for all his silver hair and worn face, he was not truly old; and he had too much of the unrest and petulant fire of youth, and too much invincible innocence of mind, to play the veteran well. The time to measure him best, to taste (in the old phrase) his gracious nature, was when he received his class at home. What a pretty simplicity would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Blue Bloods. The many moves and changes during the last month or two considerably interrupted our communications and mail facilities, and Jones had not received the expected letters. He became restless, petulant, and cross, and to use the homely phrase, "he was all torn up." Instead of the "human sympathy" and the "one touch of nature," making the whole world akin, that philosophers and sentimentalists talk about, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... my cousin in a petulant spirit, and sought Eudora. She saw I was troubled, and asked me the cause. I told her. A shadow, a dark, portentous shadow, suddenly clouded her face;—as suddenly it passed away, giving place to a look of sharp, painful agony, which was succeeded by a return of something like her natural ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... of human faculties, holding a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our self-love, must be the happiest and most durable epoch. The more we reflect on it, the more we find that this state was the least exposed to revolutions and the best for man; and that ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... girl. Either because his formulated thought was now completely knocked out of his mind by his own emphasis in defending it, or because he detected something of portent in her expression, his manner suddenly changed, and with a petulant glance at his writing he laid down his pen and sank back in his chair to listen. " Well, what is it, ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... feel that it was necessary for the purposes of her life that the girl whom she loved so thoroughly, should be a creature in her hands, to be dealt with as she pleased. She would have had her daughter accede to the proposed marriage even before she had seen Lord Lovel, and was petulant when her daughter would not be as clay in the sculptor's hand. But still the girl's refusal had been but as the refusal of a girl. She should not have been as are other girls. She should have known better. She should ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... accordingly appointed to the command, and promoted to the rank of lieutenant in the navy, by a commission bearing date 25th of May, 1768. Mr Dalrymple, it may be remarked, took his disappointment very badly. He published a petulant letter to Dr Hawkesworth, complaining, among other things, of the ill treatment he had received. Dr H. replied in the second edition of this work, but the controversy betwixt these two gentlemen is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... which Bates was to go home. He had had a week's petulant struggle with his malady since he last passed through the door of Trenholme's house, but now he had conquered it for the hour, and even his host perceived that it was necessary for him to make his journey before ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... had really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too, there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever disappointment he felt, and, indeed, I think, honestly trying ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... sudden petulant lift of his head. And, after all, it was not quite her fault. Life, for her, had been so hard and so busy that he ought not to grudge her the consolation she had been able to dig up out of the accumulated debris of the ancestral trick of sermonizing. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... while the sole object of his reveries; and Perdita became aware that his thoughts and time were bestowed on a subject unparticipated by her. My sister was by nature destitute of the common feelings of anxious, petulant jealousy. The treasure which she possessed in the affections of Raymond, was more necessary to her being, than the life-blood that animated her veins—more truly than Othello ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... itself under the protection of the citizens of Berlin. King Frederick William had withdrawn to Potsdam, where the leaders of reaction gathered round him. He detested his Constitutional Ministers, who, between a petulant king and a suspicious Parliament, were unable to effect any useful work and soon found themselves compelled to relinquish their office. In Berlin the violence of the working classes, the interruption of business, the example of civil war in Paris, inclined men of quiet disposition ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... first, petulant outbreak, had also ceased to press Madeleine on the subject of her possible marriage, and with meek demureness reconciled herself to the uncertainty of the future, and the certainty of tormenting her lover ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... 3 months training for war. To a great extent the training was on ordinary lines. A routine was followed, and all routines become dull and wearisome. We had been asked to go abroad, we had expressed our willingness to go. This willingness grew into a desire, which at intervals expressed itself in petulant words of longing—"Are we ever going to France?" The answer was always the same: "You will go soon enough, and you will stay long enough." This increased our irritation. Suddenly, on one still and dark November day, parade was sharply cancelled, we clad ourselves in full marching ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... would often have been easy hours for him. But it was the time when he tried most doggedly, with a gentleness she could not ruffle, to teach her the alphabet of who she was. She coaxed him to let her off those mental struggles; she turned petulant and sulky; she was willing to be good and sweet if he would permit her to sew or to sing to herself instead, or to sit staring at the fire: but he would not yield; he promised those things as the reward, and in the end she stood before him like ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... you it must be found," fumed a petulant voice overhead. "I brought it over from the St. Regis myself in a taxi. I saw it standing on the pier with the officers' luggage,—a black cabin trunk with V.M. lettered on ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... hard; but he was only gazing down, rather cross-eyed, on his grizzled mustache, with an obvious petulant interest in the increase of white hairs in it. Evidently his had been but a chance shot. 'Niram stepped up on the grass at the edge of the porch. He was so tall that he overtopped the railing easily, and, reaching a long arm over to where I sat, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... hand, Iseult of Ireland! And she too, that princess fair, 115 If her bloom be now less rare, Let her have her youth again— Let her be as she was then! Let her have her proud dark eyes, And her petulant quick replies— 120 Let her sweep her dazzling hand With its gesture of command, And shake back her raven hair With the old imperious air! As of old, so let her be, 125 That first Iseult, princess bright, Chatting with her youthful knight As he steers her o'er ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... conducted on far other principles, and with far other motives; till in the place of arbitrary dictation and petulant sneers, the reviewers support their decisions by reference to fixed canons of criticism, previously established and deduced from the nature of man; reflecting minds will pronounce it arrogance in them thus to announce themselves to ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his shoulder, and was as much bewildered as he by what I saw. Cloudy as was the night, glimpses of something white appeared everywhere, going and coming, or flopping fitfully about. There were odd sounds, too, as of soft footfalls, and now and then low, petulant cries. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... and one asks him the cause, he is liable to hear in reply: "Me fright along you too much." Or the native may be fright along storm, or wild bush, or haunted places. CROSS covers every form of anger. A man may be cross at one when he is feeling only petulant; or he may be cross when he is seeking to chop off your head and make a stew out of you. A recruit, after having toiled three years on a plantation, was returned to his own village on Malaita. He was clad in all kinds of gay and sportive garments. On his head was a top- hat. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... and diverging from the point of direction of his own party with every step. Time and again had Devers, still fuming with nervous tension and mingled wrath and pain,—hungry and savage, too, it must be borne in mind,—given vent to some petulant expression because of the non-arrival of the young officer whom he saw fit to hold responsible for the loss of his men; and when at last Mr. Davies neared them, riding diagonally towards the troop from the low divide to the east, Devers did ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Westminster and the Parliament Houses, is Millbank, where is Church Street, running from the river to St. John's Church, Westminster, that atrociously ill-mannered church of Queen Anne's day, built it is said on the lines of a footstool overturned in one of that lady's fits of petulant wrath. Down Church Street ran Martha, followed by Copperfield and Peggotty, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... of Lee's plan of campaign and should have led to the annihilation of the Southern army. A copy of the order directing the movement of the Confederates from Frederick, Maryland, was thrown to the ground by a petulant officer to whom it was directed. It fell into the hands of a Federal soldier who hurried to McClellan's headquarters with ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... the least necessity for it, Norman," she resumed in a slightly agitated, not to say petulant tone. "It's simply ridiculous for a young man of your position to be working at common labor with such ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... some idea that her part in the play was not an easy one, and was minded to spare her for that night. But she had promised to try, and she must be reminded of her promise. Hitherto she certainly had not tried. Hitherto she had been ill-tempered, petulant, and almost rude. He would not see her himself this evening, but he would send a message to her by his wife. 'Tell her from me that I shall expect to see smiles on her face to-morrow,' said Michel Voss. And as he spoke there ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... an autobiographical satire in The Curate. He failed to create an important satire for a number of reasons, one of which was that he tried to present himself as a high ideal, a belief that he apparently held so weakly that the satire became merely petulant. Lloyd corrected this error in The Methodist and now seems, however briefly, to have opened the way to a truly prophetic style ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... candidate is apt to find out a man's weaker places. Burke stood the test. He showed none of the petulant rage of those clamorous politicians whose flight, as he said, is winged in a lower region of the air. As the traveller stands on the noble bridge that now spans the valley of the Avon, he may recall Burke's local comparison of these busy, angry familiars of an election, to ...
— Burke • John Morley
... longer blackened with the smoke of the battle, it is unworthy of two mighty empires to carry on an ignoble war of words. If peace is their wish, let them manifest the great and enlightened sentiment in all its purity, and disdain to irritate each other by acts of petulant and ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... uncle's knowledge to the poet's house at an early hour, and after much difficulty was admitted to his room. He was still in bed. Every body has heard of Byron's peevishness, when disturbed or intruded on. He demanded my business in a petulant and offensive tone. I replied, respectfully, that on the preceding day I loaned him a silver pencil,—strongly emphasizing and repeating the word silver,—which, I was grieved to say, he forgot to return. Byron reflected a ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... constitutions that feed upon it? Most cruel people, and upon frivolous occasions, apt to cry. No beast in the world so much to be feared by man as man Our extremest pleasure has some sort of groaning Our fancy does what it will, both with itself and us Owe ourselves chiefly and mostly to ourselves Petulant madness contends with itself Rage it puts them to oppose silence and coldness to their fury Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom Revenge, which afterwards produces a series of new cruelties See how flexible our reason is Seeming anger, for the better governing of my house Shake ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... though she had been thrust there. What was this? Why was she rejected? Had she ceased to please? She stood here offering her wares, and he would none of them! And yet they were all his! His to take and keep, not his to refuse though! In her quick petulant nature, a moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted love and wounded vanity wrought. The schoolmaster that there is in all men, to the despair of all girls and most women, was now completely in possession of Archie. He had passed a night ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... remembered. She bowed and smiled, looking at him with interest and surprise. He was correctly dressed, and the white shirt set off the comeliness of his black face in compelling contrast. He carried himself like a man, and bowed with gravity and dignity. She passed on and heard her husband's petulant voice in her ear. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... hard to bear. Yet even that she bore. And schooled herself into a fretful, petulant manner of indifference. Her odd, whimsical petulance hid a will which he, and he alone, knew to be stronger than steel, strong as a diabolical, cold, grey snake that presses and presses and cannot-relax: nay, cannot relax. She ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... was often the case) I would mention some of our schoolmates, with a view to inviting them to accompany us on some excursion of pleasure, a cloud would instantly come over Charley's countenance, and he would say in a petulant tone: "What do you want with them, we can surely enjoy ourselves without their company," and this reply would at once remind me of his exclusive and peculiar temperament, (which for the moment I had forgotten) ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... think what makes the silly goats guffaw at such a rate when I recite my 'Ode to a Dying Sparrow'," he said in a petulant tone to Nealie, one day when his audience had been more than usually convulsed. "It must be shocking bad form to double up in public as they did; a photograph of them would have served as an up-to-date advertisement of the latest thing in gramaphones, and when I came to that touching line, ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... moral character of all intelligent creatures, and their physical constitution—between their habits and the structure of their bodies." Thus we see that a lean, spare, diminutive body is generally accompanied by a petulant, restless, meddling mind; either the mind wears down the body, by its continual motion; or else the body, not affording the mind sufficient house-room, keeps it continually in a state of fretfulness, tossing and worrying about from the uneasiness of its situation. Whereas your round, sleek, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and saw a mother—extraordinarily shielding and maternal and benignant things; and looked again and saw a boy—astonishingly reckless and impetuous and rather boyish, hard and mutinous things. Or glanced and saw a boy, perhaps laughing and eager, perhaps obstinate and petulant; and looked again and ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... answer, except perhaps a contemptuous look such as is so often the essence of eloquence. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, as a petulant child locked in a room for disobedience might treat a pillow, he seized me by an arm and jerked me from the bed. It was fortunate that the bones of my ankles and feet, not yet thoroughly knitted, were not again ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... criticism of the Confederate leader. "While I never have regarded Davis as a great man, or statesman on a large scale, or a man of any marked genius, yet I have regarded him as a man of good intentions; weak and vacillating, timid, petulant, ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... oftenest saw there was the look of dogged resolution. She began to be conscious, too, of some sort of struggle going on within him. She could see it in these unaccustomed expressions of his countenance, hear it in the petulant voice in which he sometimes addressed her, so different from his usual suave tones, and feel it in the nervous strain under which he was ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... humanity nor beneficent institutions, but in the foremost sugar-plantation of the world, whose cane-rows were planted and nourished by the first of crimes, whose juice was expressed by over-hasty avarice and petulant ambition that could not be satisfied unless the crime preserved features as colossal as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... his Ku-Klux masquerade, parleyed with his underlings and consulted a heavy nickel-cased watch. His gesture showed a petulant impatience. The men in the silent circle stirred uneasily and from time to time low growls broke from their muffled lips. Obviously they were awaiting some development which though overdue ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... her work in the morning when she sat patiently answering questions, working out problems, and making papers. She showed him the letters of her pupils, exacting, excusing, petulant—sometimes dissatisfied and even ill-tempered, he watched her in the afternoon while she sewed or read. In the evening he sat with her while the two old men played their game of chess. Regularly every ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... mitigated by the mode in which Miss Jennings conveyed her declinature. However, her scorn, if not an excellent oil, was a very good eyesalve. It disenchanted her admirer, and made him wonder how a reverend divine could ever fancy a spoiled child, who had scarcely matured into a petulant girl. And as the mirage melted, and Clarinda again resolved into Kitty, other realities began to show themselves in a sedater and truer light to the awakened dreamer. As an excuse for an attachment at which Doddridge himself soon learned ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Soon after my return from America in 1851 I dined with my neighbour at Albury, Henry Drummond, the humoursome M.P., always not a little good-naturedly mischievous. He knew that I had not approved of Lord Elgin's petulant removal of his viceroyal establishment from Montreal to Toronto, and cunningly resolved to draw me out before witnesses on the matter. Now I had taken in to dinner an elderly Scotch lady unknown to me, and sat next to her of course. Soon my lively host somewhat ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... than to Alfonso, or Giovanni Tornabuoni. Mantegna's portrait of Gonzaga, though made later, shows a rather different type, less displeasing than the bronze. In the bust we have what is probably the portrait of a coarse and clumsy person; he is petulant in the mouth, weak in the chin, gross in the thick and heavy jaw. The bronze is extremely rough, and shows no signs of the nervous and individual touches which we find in Donatello's terra-cotta. Both the busts are unfinished; in the absence of chasing and hammering they are covered with bubbles ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... hated you," she was even petulant and plaintively resentful, "I thought I could let it go on. I watched, and watched, and bore it. But the strain was too great. I broke down. I think I broke down one night, when something began to beat like ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wants to bring him along," remarked his sister Grace, in a petulant tone. "He knows we don't ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... shout, 'The Lord, He is the God!' if they could leave Jezebel the power to carry out her threat? Solitude and the awful desert increased his gloom. The strong man had become weak, and it was ebb-tide with him. His prayer was petulant, impatient, presumptuous. What right had he to settle what was 'enough'? If he really wished to die, he could have found death at Jezreel, and had no need to travel a hundred miles to seek a grave. He was weary of his work, and profoundly disappointed by what he hastily concluded ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... T. Your loss! Why name your loss? All that Minna could lose is not Minna. You are still the sweetest, dearest, loveliest, best creature under the sun; all goodness and generosity, innocence and bliss! Now and then a little petulant; at times somewhat wilful—so much the better! So much the better! Minna would otherwise be an angel, whom I should honour with trepidation, but not dare to love. (Takes ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... those diffusions of the mind that arise from the body, and the pleasing condition of the body, if they be but moderate, appear to have nothing in them that is either great or considerable; but if they be excessive, besides their being vain and uncertain, they are also importune and petulant; nor should a man term them either mental satisfactions or gayeties, but rather corporeal gratifications, they being at best but the simperings and effeminacies of the mind. But now such as justly deserve the names of complacencies and joys are wholly ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... down the room with short pompous steps, a cigar between his lips, and his arms behind him. He cocked his sparrow-like head, scanned the offending apartment, and terminated his survey by resting his eyes on Mrs. Westmore's charming petulant face. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... infancy she had been betrothed to Kauhi, a young chief whom every one supposed to be worthy of her, because his parentage was high, and he could name more grandfathers than he had toes and fingers. He did not deserve this esteem, for he was not only cruel and jealous, but spoiled, petulant, and thick-headed. His qualities were exhibited on his very first meeting with his promised bride, for neither had seen the other until reaching marriageable age. Two braggarts, who were so ill formed and ugly that their boasts of winning ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... decisive. To me, the evidence,—weighed as we weigh other evidence, with a just appreciation of the source of the charges, the powerful testimony of the man's public life viewed as a whole, and the lofty position maintained in the face of all odds among a petulant people whom he would not flatter, but openly reproved for their vices,—the evidence, I say, read in this light justifies the conclusion that the orator was a man of high moral character, and that in the Harpalus affair he was the victim of the Macedonian faction and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... in his profession than in others. To be humane, generous, and candid is a very high degree of merit in any case, but those qualities deserve still greater praise when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... orders his Tomb" This half-delirious pleading of the dying prelate for a tomb which shall gratify his luxurious artistic tastes and personal rivalries, presents dramatically not merely the special scene of the worldly old bishop's petulant struggle against his failing power, and his collapse, finally, beneath the will of his so-called nephews, it also illustrates a characteristic gross form of the Renaissance spirit encumbered with Pagan survivals, fleshly appetites, and selfish monopolizings which hampered its development.— "It is ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... leave the room. Slowly he fumbled among his belongings as he gathered them into his arms and, half-way up the aisle, stood aside to let his divinity pass. Longingly his glance took in every detail of the silken curls, the curving lashes which half hid the brown eyes the rosy, petulant lips, and the unmistakably snub hose. Then he walked uncertainly to the seat which she had ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... sure," she said, thoughtfully. "He has no authority over you. 'Tis different with us. Oh, Phil, if you could only take me with you!" There was wistful longing and petulant complaint in the speech. And then, as Phil answered, an idea seemed to come to her all at once; and she to rise to it by its possibility, rather than to ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... is so full of joys. The alluring sea, This morning clear and placid, may, ere night, Toss like a petulant child, and when the light Of a new morning dawns sweep grand and free A mighty power. If fierce, or mild, or bright, With every tide ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... more! If I try to sleep on this river's brink for the night, the frost and dew and wind will kill me; and if I climb this hill to yonder thicket, I fear a savage beast will eat me while I slumber." It is well to be careful, O Ulysses, in these wild solitudes; now let the petulant outburst just given, be preparatory to an act of will which will settle the problem. "He rose and went to the wood near by; he crept under two bushes that grew from the same place, one the wild and the other the tame olive." There in a heap of leaves—man's first bed—he slept under the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... of mind towards fancied blessings, how does God deal with it? For a long time He may in compassion withhold the fatal gift. He may in pity disregard our petulant clamour. And He may in many ways bring home to our minds that the thing we crave is in several respects unsuitable. We may become conscious under His discipline that without it we are less entangled with the world and ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
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