"Irritating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Joan. The child was irritating to her as she had always been. She had never, in any case, cared for her own sex, and now, as so frequently with women who are about to plunge into some passionate situation, she regarded every one she ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... matter 'tis to hold, Against its owner's will, the fleece Who troubled by the itching smart Of Cupid's irritating dart, Eager awaits some Jason bold To grant release. E'en dragon huge, or flaming steer, When Jason's ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... Hannah woke with a start to the consciousness that something unpleasant had happened. Almost immediately that vagueness gave way to irritating clearness. She got up and peeped into Catherine's room. She was sleeping, but the swollen cheek left no room for hope that the whole episode was a nightmare. Hannah dressed quietly, frowning the while at her unconsidered ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... To judge by the happy and contented expression of the widow's face, it must have been couched in glowing terms. Trumeau guessed at once from whom the missive came, but the sight of it, instead of irritating him, called ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 'steal it,' Miss Baxter. I'll tell you what my motive is. There is an official in England who has gone out of his way to throw obstacles in mine. This is needless and irritating, for generally I manage to get the news I am in quest of; but in several instances, owing to his opposition, I have not only not got the news, but other papers have. Now, since the general raking we have had over this Austrian ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... an end. All we had to do now was await the arrival of relief. And a very pleasant sensation, indeed, that is to weary soldiers! The sensation of "relief" is the happiest of all the various sensations one had "out there." There were just a few hours of irritating expectancy to live through—followed sometimes, as at Givenchy in 1918, by some boring experience such as a "stand to" in some particular, and generally uninviting, positions—and then one would be free, safe and in a ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... to dwell on the subject, for fear of irritating the chief; but I recalled to my memory the handful of Spaniards who conquered the well-trained armies of the Inca Atahualpa, and had little hope for the success of his descendant, Tupac Amaru, with his host of undisciplined levies; though doubtlessly their opponents had greatly ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... splendid physique, but his features, which would otherwise have been considered handsome, were marred by a ferocious expression, due to his chronic condition of ill- humour. He was constantly "hazing" his men, and was never at a loss for an excuse for irritating them in every possible way. In this pleasing occupation he was ably seconded by his first mate, an American, named Silas Hoover. Between the pair of them they had contrived, during the course of the several voyages which they ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... Elisabeth possessed her soul and grew into a true woman—a woman with no smallness or meanness in her nature, but with certain feminine weaknesses which made her all the more lovable to those people who understood her, and all the more incongruous and irritating to those who did not. Christopher, too, rested in an oasis of happiness just then. He was an adept in the study of Elisabeth, and he knew perfectly well what had passed between her and Alan, although she flattered herself that she had kept him completely in the dark on the subject. But ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... lies. Not that they are free always from exaggerations. Sometimes Thackeray became lost in his irrelevancy, sometimes he became almost unintelligible in his rambling style, now and then his use of ancient quotation became irritating. 'Above all things, Thackeray was receptive. The world imposed on Thackeray, and Dickens imposed on the world.' But it could not be put more truly than that Thackeray represents, in that gigantic parody called genius, the spirit of the Englishman in repose. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... the light clearly out. The others are an intermingling of light and light obscured, but with the obscurity overcoming the other. The net result is an irritating smokiness. And the movement unhindered would naturally be toward a steady increase of smoky irritation and obscurity until no light can get through. This is what He lets ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... and bit are hardly pretty in that connection, are they? If you would willingly give your identity the slip at times, dear cousin, I have considerably deeper cause to wish to part company with mine! You, in any case, are morally and materially free. A whole class of particularly irritating and base cares can never approach you. And it was in connection with just such cares that I spoke of the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... clean; and if well-aired, I should no more object to your putting on clean underwear than to your changing your dress. Most especially would I advise a frequent change of napkins, in order to remove those which are soiled from their irritating contact with the body. A full bath during menstruation would, for most people, be unadvisable, but the cleansing of the private parts is imperative. For this, tepid water, with good soap, may be used daily or oftener. Other parts of the body may be rubbed with a wet cloth, ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... little Hurry crying very softly and bitterly, and it would turn out to be Mrs. Fulton, locked in her bedroom. Pressure of business, success, kept Mr. Fulton going. Sometimes the two tried to talk things over. But it was an irritating, mosquitoey house. Always their voices ended by rising to the point where they could be heard all over the ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... conductor of the examination looked down that way Badger could not tell whether the professor's gaze was fixed on him or on Agnew. Professor Barton had fiercely penetrating eyes, anyway, and the peculiar manner in which he looked at students in the classroom had always been especially irritating to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... sober reflection, endorsed what had appeared at the time to be a whimsical, quixotic proceeding on her part. She brought herself completely to the point where she could view her action with complacency. At first, there was an irritating, nagging fear that Mr. Wrandall had been genuinely soul-sacrificing in his effort to defend her; that his decisive falsehood was a sincere declaration of loyalty to her and not the transparent outburst ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... cares of the day fret you, and begin to wear upon you, and you chafe under the friction,—be calm. Stop, rest for a moment, and let calmness and peace assert themselves. If you let these irritating outside influences get the better of you, you are confessing your inferiority to them, by permitting them to dominate you. Study the disturbing elements, each by itself, bring all the will power of your ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... demonstrations in favor of the sovereignty which he had done his best to crush were very irritating to the Emperor Napoleon; and although he endeavored to appear wholly absorbed by his life of Caesar, he could not avoid showing by his acts how profoundly he was disturbed by being thwarted. Everywhere throughout France the Catholics were ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... scarcely entered before the telephone renewed its irritating clamor, like a fretful child which yelled whenever it heard his footstep. He responded to its fretfulness in very much the same mood, seizing hold of the receiver as though he would ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... would have been absurd to think of himself as wretched now; yet compared with the wonderful happiness that had been his for more than half a year, what was this "house swept and garnished"? An empty thing. Words of Tims's which he had thought irritating and absurd at the time, haunted him now. "You don't mean to say you haven't seen the difference?" He might not have seen it, but he had felt it. He ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... for any occult meaning in the lines, nor did they convey anything special to her; but they remained with her for the rest of the day, haunting her, in among her other thoughts, and forcing themselves upon her attention with the irritating persistency of a ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... since the British Tories attempted to fix on the Colonies the Stamp Act, and although they had withdrawn that hateful law, the relations between the Mother Country and the Colonists had not improved. Far from it. The English issued a series of irritating provisions which convinced the Colonists that the Government had no real desire to be friendly, and that, on the contrary, it intended to make no distinction between them and the other conquered provinces of the Crown. Then and always, the English forgot that the Colonists ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... their eyes and went to sleep. Showers of rain they loved, because it washed and cooled them, and they felt the huge satisfaction of the earth beneath them as it drank: the sweet sensation of wet soil that sponged their roots, the pleasant gush that sluiced their bodies and carried off the irritating dust. They also felt the heavier tumbling of the swollen streams in all directions. The drops from overhanging trees came down and played with them, bringing another set of perfumes altogether. A summer shower was, of course, "a month" ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... end of an hour he figured that he had covered half the distance. He was plodding doggedly, every muscle aching from the unaccustomed strain. His feet, which burned and itched where the irritating soap rubbed into his skin, had swollen until the boots held them in a vise-like grip of torture. At each step he lifted pounds of glue-like mud which clung to the legs of his leather chaps in a thick grey smear. ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... world where so little is required. The consumers are not the Indians, who cannot afford it, but the better classes, who generally eat meat three times a day. This, with the quantities of chile and sweetmeats, in a climate which every one complains of as being irritating and inflammatory, probably produces those nervous complaints which are here so general, and for which constant hot baths are the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... connected with local conditions. The hygienic map of a State is quite as valuable as its geological map, and it is the business of every practising physician to know it thoroughly. They understand this in England, and send a patient with a dry irritating cough to Torquay or Penzance, while they send another with relaxed bronchial membranes to Clifton or Brighton. Here is another ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... there occurred one of those wet spells which are so irritating "growing weather" of course, but very tiresome to those who felt the joy of spring escaping them. Week after week it was too damp, or the winds were too sharp, or the roads too heavy for quick driving, and thus the month of all months went out of the calendar with few red letter days to brighten ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... distasteful to him. The methods, aims, standards of the fast incoming Americans were to him odious. Their boasted successes, the crowding of colonies, schemes of settlement and development,—all were disagreeable and irritating. The passion for money and reckless spending of it, the great fortunes made in one hour, thrown away in another, savored to Felipe's mind more of brigandage and gambling than of the occupations of gentlemen. He loathed ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Common Sense") was getting on, and then up again to do some more work. (For there was this about Charles, as even Henry had to admit—he worked hard. Ambition, the last infirmity of noble minds, offensive and irritating quality as it is, has at least this one good fruit.) Then Charles had been to a large dinner given by the Canadian delegation to members of the Secretariat, and had made a facetious speech; and now, at eleven-thirty, he was walking about the old city, followed at some distance ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... sentences he ends up with "What?" or even "What-what?" His way with women is slightly condescending, and takes their approval for granted. There's no youthful shyness about him, and what he wants he expects to get; but with me he puts on an irritating, though, I fear, conscientious air of deference that relegates me to the background of an older generation; sets me on a pedestal there, perhaps; but I have ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... passed regularly through the mails, was distributed through the post-offices as an item of party service; and matter of a political character, passing through the mails in the usual course and addressed to patrons belonging to the opposite party, was withheld; disgusting and irritating placards were prominently displayed in many post-offices, and the attention of Democratic inquirers for mail matter was tauntingly directed to them by the postmaster; and in various other ways postmasters and similar officials annoyed and vexed those holding ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... monument with an inscription at once recklessly untruthful, spiteful in spirit and particularly vexatious to one great medical school of London. They have provoked riots and placarded London with taunts and irritating misrepresentation of the spirit of medical research, and they have infected a whole fresh generation of London students with a bitter partizan contempt for the humanitarian effort that has so lamentably misconducted ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... son also with her. The fawning duplicity of this woman was unbearable to Julien; he had not the energy necessary either to subdue her, or to send her away, and she appeared every morning before him with a string of hypocritical grievances, and opposing his orders with steady, irritating inertia. It seemed as if she were endeavoring to render his life at Vivey hateful to him, so that he would be compelled finally to beat ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Aunt Mary sat by her own particular window and looked sternly and severely out across the garden and down the road. Lucinda sat by the other window sewing. Lucinda hadn't changed materially, but her general appearance struck her mistress as more irritating than ever. Everything and everybody seemed to have become more and more irritating ever since Jack had been disinherited. Of course, it was right that he should have been disinherited, but Aunt Mary hadn't thought much beforehand as to ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... went home, Bob Knight went with us. He was irritating, somehow,—said he heard Blair and I had ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... gland. But it might be asked, Why can we not enter the bladder by one side, avoiding altogether its neck and this prostate gland? For this, among other reasons, that the bladder normally contains, and so long as the patient lives must contain, a certain quantity of a very irritating fluid. It is surrounded by the loose areolar tissue of the pelvis, into which, if any of this fluid escapes, abcesses will form and death probably ensue; this result will almost certainly follow any opening made into the bladder except at one spot. This spot is the neck ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... irritating, not only to her but to a number of the girls as well, to have Polly, in the midst of the general disapproval, suddenly shrug her shoulders and give a characteristic laugh. "Oh, for goodness' sake, don't let us make a mountain out of a molehill!" ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... But it is irritating to think what diamonds, what dazzling silver of Shavian wit has been sunk in such an out-of-date warship. In The Philanderer there are five hundred excellent and about five magnificent things. The rattle of repartees between ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... himself at every thought, at every step—"What would Sara say to this?" It was a tyranny—if not a species of witchcraft. And so he had determined to see her no more. Following the usual, most correct method in such procedures, he went abroad. After a week of irritating meditations, furtive, all but unconquerable desires, after he had passed the day on which it had been his custom for months to call upon her, after he had learned how to discipline the hours he had used to spend riding with her in the Row, he felt as a convalescent after some ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... room, looking at one object after another with what seemed to be a vacant stare, and then invariably bursting into an equally vacant laugh, a highly irritating process for those who had to watch it. He laughed very much over the hat, still more uproariously over the broken glass, but the blood on the sword point sent him into mortal convulsions of amusement. Then he turned to ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... found Mademoiselle de Cressy in charge of the tea-table and the conversation. Like many Frenchwomen, she had a high-pitched voice; she also had definite opinions on matter-of-fact subjects. Now when you have come to talk gossamer with an attractive and sympathetic woman, it is irritating to have to discuss Tariff Reform and the position of the working classes in Germany with somebody else, especially when the attractive and pretty woman does not give you in any way to understand that she would prefer gossamer to such ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... everything in relation to yourself. If you were an egoist, and a conceited person, I would say that it was your normal condition; but with you who are so good and so generous, it is an anomaly, an evil that must be combated. Rest assured that life is badly arranged, painful, irritating for everyone, but do not neglect the immense compensations which it is ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... not impaired his esteem; you, in return, owe him the same affection and confidence; I desire it of you as a friend, and demand it of you as a parent and a sovereign. Make good use of the pity that pleads in my breast in your behalf—-and dread irritating me, lest I throw aside the father, and act wholly as a prince." This discourse, so far from softening the Princess, redoubled her distraction, and she discovered so much rage of temper to the Count, that he deferred, till a more favourable opportunity, the reclaiming ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... derision. But the greatest thought is robbed of an immense proportion of its value if expressed in a mean or obscure manner. Mr. Haseman has such excellent thought that it is a pity to make it a work of irritating labor to find out just what the thought is. Surely, if he will take as much pains with his writing as he has with the far more difficult business of exploring and collecting, he will become able to express ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... how her father became irritating to her occasionally—leading up to some phrase which he had in his collection of ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... did some people harm, by inflaming, confusing, and irritating their minds; but that the experience of mankind had declared in favour of moderate drinking. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I do not say it is wrong to produce self complacency by drinking; I only deny that it improves the mind. When I drank wine, I scorned to drink it when in company. I have drunk many a bottle ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... something intensely irritating to us (although we admire Mr. Lewis) in that "She belongs, she understands, she is definitely an artist." In the first place, that use of the word artist as referring to a writer always gives us qualms unless used with great care. Then again, She belongs ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... cleverness, even where most successful; clever attempted reproduction of what was conceived by another faculty, and foolishly let pass away. If I go on, even hurry the more to get on, with the printing,—it is to throw out and away from me the irritating obstruction once and forever. I have corrected it, cut it down, and it may stand and pledge me to doing better hereafter. I say, too, in excuse to myself, unlike the woman at her spinning-wheel, 'He ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... published 'in extenso,' about twenty-five years since, by the Marquis of Bute, while recently the gist of all the Latin collections has been edited with rare scholarship by Rev. Charles Plummer of Oxford. Incidentally may be noted the one defect in Mr. Plummer's great work—its author's almost irritating insistence on pagan origins, nature myths, and heathen survivals. Besides the Marquis of Bute and Plummer, Colgan and the Bollandists have published some Latin Lives, and a few isolated "Lives" have been published from time to time by other ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... This was irritating and all the more so as it was not possible absolutely to deny the truth of their assertions. Hence when the son of a cobbler once came to school with his back black and blue, and told us his father had caught him and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist of the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable withal, that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... have made up your mind to it beforehand is not an unmixed evil; but in Katherine's frame of mind it was about as irritating as anything could be. When it was over she called for her coffee in a big cup, and she drank it, black and bitter, with a relish. The frown which for the last hour had been contracting her level brows disappeared, for she had thought of something to do. As she rose from ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... wood came marching to Dunsinane. In an instant, as it seemed to Dick's exalted and painfully impressionable sense, every separate leaf, branch, brier, copse, and jungle, was endowed with a voice of its own—hateful, irritating, mocking. Swarms of peering eyes hovered in the air, glowering uncanny menace into the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... silly as to pretend in the beginning. Octavia thinks him delightful. He never appeared for two days—then he came up as if nothing had happened; only he looks at my hat or my chin or my feet now and never into my eyes as before, and he calls me Lady Valmond every other minute—and that is irritating. We shall get in to-morrow and this will be posted at Sandy Hook, so good-night, ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... water would show nearly 76F. My kinematograph was out of order, and desiring to use it on my journey higher up the river, I decided to go again to Tandjong Selor in an endeavour to have it repaired. The delay was somewhat irritating, but as the trip down-stream consumed only two days, I started off in a small, swift boat kindly loaned to me by the posthouder. Fortunately Mr. J.A. Uljee, a Dutch engineer who was in town, possessed ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... For a month we had been, I suppose, the thickest thieves in all London, and yet our intimacy was curiously incomplete. With all his charming frankness, there was in Raffles a vein of capricious reserve which was perceptible enough to be very irritating. He had the instinctive secretiveness of the inveterate criminal. He would make mysteries of matters of common concern; for example, I never knew how or where he disposed of the Bond Street jewels, on the proceeds of ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... be going up right into it now. That pottering about at home was most irritating. Just spit and polish, spit and polish all the ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... speech and observed the manners of Britons. It was an experience not to be forgotten. The Puritan recruit from Massachusetts might write home lamenting the scandalous irreligion that prevailed among the levies from other colonies; but the irritating condescension of British regulars made him aware that he had after all more in common with the most unregenerate American than with any Englishman. The provincial, subtly conscious of his limitations when brought into contact with more traveled and cosmopolitan men, endures ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... only means of preventing him from further uncovering of the body—on the other, urged by the summons of her, whom he knew, from her very manner, to be in possession of this fearful secret, his mind become a perfect chaos, and large drops of perspiration streamed from his brow. In this irritating dilemma, a sudden transport of rage took possession of his heart, and seizing Loup Garou with both his hands, he so compressed them around his throat, that the dog, already exhausted with his exertions, was half-strangled before being raised with ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... jarring to have to sit and hearken to the controversy. "Don't ever twit or try funny business with Armstrong," once said a regimental sage. "He has no sense of humor—of that kind." Those who best knew him knew that Armstrong never tolerated unjust accusations, great or small. In his desire to say an irritating thing to a man he both envied and respected, the staff officer had not confined himself to facts, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... if he had a sensible soul, would commisserate the prejudices of his fellow-man— would lament over his wanderings—would seek to undeceive him—would try by gentleness to lead him into the right path, without ever irritating himself against his weakness, without ever insulting his misery. Indeed, what right have we to hate or despise man for his opinions? His ignorance, his prejudices, his imbecility, his vices, his passions, his weakness, are they not the inevitable consequence ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... do like?" There is an appearance of irritating sagacity about Sally's friend. "What did Dr. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... throughout the contest, had not required this link for the completion of its chain,—the wishes of the people most directly involved would never have had the slightest attention from the Congress of the United States. Strong and equitable as was the case of West Virginia, irritating and undesirable as her relations to the older State might be, advantageous to the people as the new government might prove, these considerations would not of themselves have offered sufficient inducement to engage the attention of Congress for an hour at that critical ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... person by not a few Chiefs inclined Government to meet their wishes without probing them too closely, and in the first place to relax the control hitherto exercised by its political officers on the spot—often, it must be confessed, on rather petty and irritating lines. The leading Princes were encouraged to come to Delhi during the winter season, and those who favoured a policy of closer combination amongst themselves were those who responded most freely to these official promptings. Conversations soon assumed the shape of ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... seized with a strange emotion; passionately he now longed to mingle with this excited roaring of the labourers, which was as broad and as powerful as the river—to blend with this irritating, creaking, squeaking, clanging of iron and turbulent splashing of waves. Perspiration came out on his face from the intensity of his desire, and suddenly pale from agitation, he tore himself away from the mast, and rushed toward the windlasses ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... to be irritating when one expects a flight of arrows, or, it may be, a gunshot, out of the blackness ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... which would have overwhelmed almost any other man. Neither this nor succeeding Coalition Governments were popular with a great section of his Conservative followers, and to the task of taking decisions on the war was added the constant and irritating necessity of keeping his own supporters in line with the administration. In 1916 he had to take the vital decision which displaced Mr. Asquith in favour of Mr. Lloyd George, and during the latter's Premiership he had to suffer the strain of constantly ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... he remarked, patronisingly, and in his most irritating manner. "Besides, I don't know. If the 'Widder' knows, she won't tell, so it's fair to suppose she doesn't. Your relation does queer things in the attic, and every Spring, she has an annual weep. I suppose it's ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... judicious advisers among his theological, as he had among his legal, friends; and had he allowed them equal influence with him; he would not, I suspect, have written this irritating and too egometical paragraph. But Baxter would have disbelieved a prophet who had foretold that almost the whole orthodoxy of the Non-conformists would he retained and preserved by the Independent congregations ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... use soap—Castile soap being the best for the purpose—it being less irritating to the skin than the ordinary soap. Care should be taken that it does not get into the eyes, as it may produce either inflammation or smarting ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... instructed. The method was invented by a member of The Trade who was an ex-cabinet maker, and who perished disreputably. He killed a certain courier of a certain foreign government, thereby preventing a minor war and irritating two ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... sounds exaggerated; perhaps it is; I've never seen him since; but at that time he seemed to me a tremendous fellow—a kind of scientific Ajax. He was a capital travelling-companion, at any rate: good-tempered, cheerful, easily amused, with none of the been-there-before superiority so irritating to youngsters. He made us feel as though it were all as new to him as to us: he never chilled our enthusiasms or took the bloom off our surprises. There was nobody else whose good opinion I cared as much about: he was the biggest ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... were the other two. Rutter's in steel, you know; Staples in copper. Seasoned golfers, both of them. Especially Rutter. Claims to have turned in a card of 89 once at Short Hills. That was years ago, of course, but he has never forgotten it. Rather an irritating opponent, Rutter. Patronizing. Fond of telling you what you did when you've dubbed a shot. And if he happens to win—" Dowd shrugs ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... preface—what can possibly be more irritating to a dog than sheep? Master and dog were coming home together, and were persistently mobbed by a party of a dozen. Both agreed that if any real pluck lay at the back of the attentions so freely bestowed, the ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... brother James, I'm glad to say," she quickly replied. "It was about three hundred years before his time. And though he had some quite irritating tricks as a young man, murdering slaves wasn't one of them. To be sure, they tell strange tales of him here, as I make no doubt Nevill has already mentioned, because he's immoral enough to be proud of what he calls the romance. I mean the story of the beautiful ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... gestation and exercise on horseback, in arresting or mitigating the hectic paroxysm; and secondly, that in the florid consumption, as Dr. Beddoes terms it, an elevated and inland air is in certain circumstances peculiarly salutary; while an atmosphere loaded with the spray of the sea is irritating and noxious. The benefit derived in this case from exercise on horseback, may lead us to doubt whether Sydenham's praise of this remedy be as much exaggerated as it has of late been supposed. Since the publication of Dr. C. Smyth on the effects of swinging ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... imprisonment for playing off an innocent little joke on four German officers, and did his share of fighting with the French in the early part of the War, is the darling of the Boulevards. They adore his supreme skill in thrusting the irritating lancet of his humour into bulging excrescences on the flank of that monstrous pachyderm of Europe, the German. Professor Knatschke (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), aptly translated by Professor R.L. CREWE, is a joyous rag. It purports to be the correspondence of a Hun Professor, full of an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... Henry would think, and feel, and look, when he returned on the morrow to Northanger and heard of her being gone, was a question of force and interest to rise over every other, to be never ceasing, alternately irritating and soothing; it sometimes suggested the dread of his calm acquiescence, and at others was answered by the sweetest confidence in his regret and resentment. To the general, of course, he would not dare to speak; but to Eleanor—what ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... mio padre?" cried she, addressing herself to her father, as soon as Don Rafael had gone; "you have wounded his pride by your irritating words, at the very moment when, out of regard for us, he has renounced the vengeance which he had sworn on the grave of his father! It may be that the words of oblivion and reconciliation were upon his lips; and you have hindered him from speaking them now and for ever. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... saw most of his money—the Paris which, under his auspices, Doggie never knew. Plentiful claret set his tongue wagging in Rabelaisian reminiscence. After Paris came husks. Not bad husks if you knew how to cook them. Borrowed salt and pepper and a little stolen butter worked wonders. But they were irritating to the stomach. He lay on the floor, said he, and yelled for fatted calf; but there was no soft-headed parent to supply it. Phineas McPhail must be a slave again and work for his living. Then came private coaching, freelance journalism, hunting for secretaryships: the commonplace story humorously ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... times—agree with Kennicott that the shaving-and-corsets familiarity of married life was not dreary vulgarity but a wholesome frankness; that artificial reticences might merely be irritating. She was not much disturbed when for hours he sat about the living-room in his honest socks. But she would not listen to his theory that "all this romance stuff is simply moonshine—elegant when you're courting, but no use busting ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... clear: man cannot live in a universe of uninterpreted facts. The scientific approach to life is not enough. It does not cover all the ground. Men want to know what life spiritually means and they want to know that it "means intensely, and means good." Facts alone are like pieces of irritating grit that get into the oyster shell; the pearl of life is created by the ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... she said quietly. "Perhaps he is just as well without it. One gets a lot of amusement out of this playing for small stakes, but it is irritating to lose. Thank you so much for looking after me," she added, as they reached the hall of the hotel. "I am quite all right now and my woman will be ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with his father smiling—an irritating old man who would never die. Should he fall at her feet and whimper? He couldn't. Her face was his, her eyes his. It wasn't leaving Anna. Himself, though. Yes, he was confronting himself. Seven years of selves. All ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... does it—and says nothing about it." Scott agreed. And if you were "sledging with the Owner" you had to keep your eyes wide open for the little things which cropped up, and do them quickly, and say nothing about them. There is nothing so irritating as the man who is always coming in and informing all and sundry that he has repaired his sledge, or built a wall, or filled the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the Tlascalan territory Cortes recommended his men, and especially those of Narvaez, not to do anything which could vex the natives, the common safety depending upon not irritating the only allies which remained to them. Happily the fears which had arisen as to the fidelity of the Tlascalans proved groundless. They gave the Spaniards a most sympathizing welcome, and their thoughts seemed to be wholly bent upon avenging ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... CONJUGAL APPROACHES are usually painful to the new wife, and no enjoyment to her follows. Great caution and kindness should be exercised. A young couple rushing together in their animal passion soon produce a nervous and irritating condition which ere long brings apathy, indifference, if not dislike. True love and a high regard for each other will temper ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... conditions of attainment. The goal is seldom in sight. We are driven on from dream to dream, and to awake is to lose the charm of existence. No pearl grows in the shell without the pressure of some irritating substance; and no boy becomes a man until he has felt the sting of opposition, discouragement, defeat, and has pursued shadows with an ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... forgotten error. This is a fact in the mind's history of which few people seem to be aware, and only few may be capable of understanding. Its truth, however, may be easily proved by watching the effect of words in irritating one person against another, and increasing, by repeated insinuations, the apparent malignity of some really trifling action. No one, probably, has led so blessed a life as not to have been sometimes pained by observing one person trying to exasperate another, who is, perhaps, rather peacefully ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... hurt. What had I done that Providence should make things so unpleasant for me? It would be a little hard, as Ukridge would have said, if, after all my trouble, the professor had discovered some fresh grievance against me. Perhaps Ukridge had been irritating him again. I wished he would not identify me so completely with Ukridge. I could not be expected to control the man. Then I reflected that they could hardly have met in the few hours between my parting from the professor at ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... satire was, therefore, of itself a biting sarcasm. His claims to sonship were transferred from Jonson, then held the first of dramatic writers, to Flecknoe, the last and meanest; and to aggravate the insult, the "Mac" was inserted as an irritating allusion to the alleged Irish origin of both,—an allusion, however harmless and senseless now, vastly significant at that era of Irish degradation. Of the immediate effect of this scarification upon Shadwell we have no information; how it ultimately ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Souf snuff is extremely powerful; it is constantly imported here, and for the satisfaction of snuff-takers and snuff-taking tourists, I am bound to inform them that they will find snuff much cheaper in Ghadames than in Tripoli. People call snuff hot and cold, according to its stimulating, irritating, and tickling power. It is prohibited to drink wine and spirits amongst Moslemites, but, nevertheless, many of them do not fail to intoxicate themselves with everything besides which comes in their way: they snuff ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... knave,—but the resolve to use the words should have been made only at the moment, and they should come hot from the heart. There was much neatness and some acuteness in Mr. Daubeny's satire, but there was no heat, and it was prolix. It had, however, the effect of irritating Mr. Gresham,—as was evident from the manner in which he moved his hat and shuffled ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... had the King's daughter as a special advocate. On the other hand, had they waited a day longer, your betrothal would, doubtless, have received Frederick's approval, and have been formally proclaimed. How embarrassing, then, to the Princess; how intensely irritating to the King, and how particularly injurious to you in the eyes of the nation—the people would think you won her under false colors; and, though you proved your innocence a hundred times, the ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... interrupted Christian, speaking very quietly, but conscious of a wild desire to fly at Miss Gascoigne and shake her as she stood, putting forward, in her customary way, those mangled fragments of truth which are more irritating than absolute lies. "Indeed, it was only two minutes. I did not choose, even if I had no other reason, that a man of whom Dr. Grey did not approve should hold any ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... been more frequent to-day than usual, Helen thought. Perhaps the rain had made people cross. Whatever it was, the hurried woman had been more hurried, and the insolent woman more unbearable. There had been, too, an irritating repetition of the woman who was "just looking," and of her sister who "did n't know"; "was n't quite sure"; but "guessed that would n't do." Consequently Helen's list of sales had been short in spite of her incessant labor—and the list of sales ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... this generation and assemblage shall sink into the grave, and another race shall arise, with the same moral and intellectual development we have, whether, if that institution is standing in the same irritating position in which it now is, it will not continue an element of division? If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard to this question, the Union is a house divided against itself; and when the Judge reminds me that I have often ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... to be the first week in October without anything more irritating happening than that all our protests had been disregarded, and we picked our way through sloppy halls and dismissed our guests with forced jests about bathing suits being furnished by the agent for them to reach the street door in safety, ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... listen to the alien's voice—by now he had heard it often enough so that it was merely irritating in its thin dryness, like old parchments being rubbed together. He watched the stylus as it ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... that irritating reasonableness of manner which implies that the speaker is going to be reasonable for two, "I've been thinking over the situation. I know that you don't love me, but then I don't believe you will ever be deeply in love ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... the graveled walk, leaving the young man alone. Lawford's calmness was as irritating to him as sea water ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... example. The Collises had never been useful. Dodo Wardropp liked to gamble "on her own," and Mrs. Ernstein, though rich, was a coward when it came to risking her money at the tables. Others in the house made themselves as irritating to Lord Dauntrey in their selfish obstinacy as Dodo; and all his hopes centred upon Mary. She was a lamb whom his wife had cleverly caught in the bushes, a lamb with golden fleece. He would have liked above all things to help her win this first night; but curiously enough she lost monotonously, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... her brows contract with the effort of will to control the irritating tickle that might precipitate ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... la galere! The Scarlet Pimpernel is perhaps on our shores at this very moment! Our most stinging, most irritating foe is about to be delivered into ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a good deal of harm in this as well as in other questions. We are sure of the king and his government, if he could rely upon the opinion of his people. But as long as our press teems with writings drawn with a view of irritating persons here, we shall never be able to exercise the influence which we ought to have upon this question, and ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... the limits of the little gray town, goaded by the irritating pricks of resentment. He would bear it no longer, so he told himself. Mellony could take him or leave him. He would be a laughing-stock not another week, not another day. If Mellony would not assert ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... of electric fire, launched upon the storm-tost President from Berlin itself, and even from the King's House itself,—by whom, too clearly recognizable,—what an irritating thing! Unseemly, in fact, on Voltaire's part; but could not be helped by a Voltaire charged with electricity. Friedrich evidently in considerable indignation, finding that public measures would but worsen the uproar, took pen in hand; wrote rapidly the indignant LETTER FROM AN ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... get to Meran speedily, that she might see her friends, and have tidings of her lover and the city. Those baffled beacon-flames on the heights had become an irritating indicative vision: she thirsted for the history. Lorenzo offered to conduct her over the Tonale Pass into the Val di Sole, or up the Val Furva, by the pass of the Corno dei Tre Signori, into the Val del Monte to Pejo, thence by Cles, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "let me give you a little piece of wisdom from my own experience: The gnawings of ungratified curiosity are often very irritating, but we should remember that the gnawings of gratified curiosity ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... teaching and belief have their origin when, at the mother's breast, the child separates its mother from the rest of the things of the world. And not only in the relief of hunger is the mother active, but she gets to be associated with the relief from wet and irritating clothes, the pleasant bath, and the pleasure of the change of position that babies cry for. Her bosom and her arms become sources of pleasure, and the race has immortalized them as symbolic of motherhood, in song, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... strong to die of being made uncomfortable. As a matter of fact it would do him all the good in the world," pursued Yvonne calmly. "He cries out to be bullied. What's so irritating in the present situation is that though you let him rack you to pieces you never give him what he wants! You don't shine as a ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... be ashamed of it. Of course the Government never does this—never—but persons in unofficial life; and I have sometimes hit some hard blows under this condescending provocation. This is the one experience that I have found irritating. They commiserate me on having a Government that will not provide an Ambassador's residence—from the King to my servants. They talk about American lynchings. Even the Spectator, in an early editorial about you, said that we should now see what stuff there is in the new President by ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the cultivation of sugar. But the grand difficulty is the want of a ready capital, and the high price of labor. The present wages of labor are from sixty to seventy-five cents per day. The natives refuse to work among the canes, on account of the prickly nature of the leaves, and the irritating property of a gum that exudes from them. Yet it may be doubted whether the colony will ever make sugar to any important extent, unless some method be found to apply native labor to that purpose. Private enterprise is no more successful than the public efforts. A plantation has been commenced ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... in myself the duty I wish to urge and impress on others, if I allowed any such doubt of mine to interfere with my appreciation of the efforts of these teachers, or my true wish to promote them by any slight means in my power. Irritating topics, of all kinds, are equally far removed from my purpose and intention. But, I adjure those excellent persons who aid, munificently, in the building of New Churches, to think of these Ragged Schools; to reflect whether some portion ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... plenty of the fruits of the earth which was impressive. It was to an ardent fancy as if Flora and Pomona had been that way with their horns of plenty. The sordid question of market value, however, was distinctly irritating, and yet it was justly so. Why should not a man sell the fruits of the earth for dollars and cents with artistic and honorable dignity as anything else? All commodities for the needs of mankind are marketable, are the instruments of traffic, whether they be groceries or books, boots ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... go hand in hand with liberty; they are great enough to know that all legislation as to what we shall eat, as to what we shall drink, and as to wherewithal we shall be clothed, partakes of the nature of petty, irritating and annoying tyranny. They also know that the natural result is to fill a country with spies, hypocrites and pretenders, and that when a law is not in accordance with an enlightened public sentiment, it becomes either a dead letter, or, when a few fanatics endeavor to enforce it, a ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... "Certainly," said he, ever ready to oblige; "I will withdraw the words 'murderous ruffian,' and substitute the expression, excited politician." This accepted as perfectly satisfactory. Terms apparently synonymous; but the latter, on the whole, less irritating to susceptible nerves. Irish members round about fell on Colonel's neck; embraced him with tears; gently disengaging himself, he proceeded uninterrupted to the end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... said, "includes the whole gospel of R. L. S." These lines are certainly a concise statement of the spirit in which her son undertook to expound the benefits to be derived from "performing our petty round of irritating concerns and duties with laughter and kind faces." Before he could walk steadily, it had been discovered he was heavily handicapped by the burden of ill-health. Still the good fairy who came to his christening endowed him with "sweet content," a gift which ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... irritating the King—a more difficult thing now than in earlier times, but not so hard a matter at that. He listened quietly until she had finished, and then sent her away. When she had got part way to the door, however, he called her back. And since a king is a ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bad of me, Victor. But, you see, I've a little scrap-book of those triolets upstairs." Then she burst into a peal of irresistible laughter. "I'm not laughing because I am piqued," she said frankly. "Though any one will admit that it is rather irritating to have a man who left you in a blasted condition recover with such extraordinary promptness. As a philanthropist, one of course rejoices, but as a woman, Victor, it must be admitted that one has a right to feel annoyed. But, honestly, I am not ungenerous, ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... [9th July], announce, if they contain the whole of the American Government's intentions, dispositions which could only have added to those which the Directory has always entertained; and, notwithstanding the posterior acts of that Government, notwithstanding the irritating and almost hostile measures they have adopted, the Directory has manifested its perseverance in the sentiments which are deposited both in my correspondence with Mr. Gerry and in my letter to you of the 11th Fructidor, and which I have hereinbefore repeated in the most explicit manner. Carry, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... it was an accident that on this occasion his absence had been marked for her. Selina had had her reasons for wishing not to go up to town while her husband was still at Mellows, and she cherished the irritating belief that he stayed at home on purpose to watch her—to keep her from going away. It was her theory that she herself was perpetually at home—that few women were more domestic, more glued to the fireside and absorbed in the duties ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... straight from this irritating interview, during which Myner had never discontinued painting, to the studio of my old master. Only one card remained for me to play, and I was now resolved to play it: I must drop the gentleman and the frock-coat, and approach art in ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the ladies most closely associated with them. Halicarnassus—tantalizing and antagonistic, slow to work and ready to jeer, the plague and pest of the home hearth, but at the same time its pride and joy, true and helpful in all real emergencies, though full of irritating taunts and desperate indolence. Such books keep our spirits up in these days of national calamity and domestic losses. Their charm is indescribable. Their style is sharp and brusque, but telling of wide culture; keen, but tender; clear as mountain brook, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... "Plainly the irritating system was not to be perpetual, and it was plausibly urged that it could be modified at once with advantage. The case could scarcely be worse; and whether it could be made better, could only be determined ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Girl." Occasionally, it is true, driven nearly to desperation by the haunting vision in his mind's eye, he picked up a brush and attempted to make his left hand serve his will; but a bare half-dozen irritating, ineffectual strokes were usually enough to make him throw down his brush in disgust. He never could do anything with his left hand, he ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... an irritating thought came to Muldoon while he was waiting for an elevator to take him to the ground floor. He knew where he had seen the same kind of look as was in Robert Reeger's eyes when they had parted. In the eyes of ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer
... because these poor animals have a stain in their pedigree. In summer time, when flies are troublesome, we may often see a long-tailed brood mare at grass protecting both herself and her suckling foal from these irritating pests by the free use of her tail; but docked mares are deprived of this means of driving away insects, and have been known to unwittingly injure their young by kicking and plunging violently in their efforts ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... banks of the lake. He has missed, the last three days, his walk with Sophy—missed the pleasing excitement of talking at her, and of the family in whose obsolete glories he considers her very interest an obtrusive impertinence. He has missed, too, his more habitual and less irritating conversation with Darrell. In short, altogether he is put out, and he vents his spleen on the swans, who follow him along the wave as he walks along the margin, intimating either their affection for himself, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his chair and for several minutes more devoted himself to the art of smoking. There were times when this philanthropic dabbler in politics was irritating. ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... admit the necessity of a measure of accommodation in the very interests of truth itself. Fanatic is a name of such ill repute, exactly because one who deserves to be called by it injures good causes by refusing timely and harmless concession; by irritating prejudices that a wiser way of urging his own opinion might have turned aside; by making no allowances, respecting no motives, and recognising none of those qualifying principles, which are nothing less than necessary to make his own principle true and fitting in a ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... an extreme case, but a great many men do interfere in their wives' department to a most irritating extent. To my mind the perfect way is for the whole financial budget of the house to be left to the wife, just as the whole budget of the office or estate is left to the husband. I am now dealing of course with people of ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... be kept in view that the hanging about at this court and all the perplexing and irritating negotiations had always one end in view—that of reaching the Nile, where it pours out of the N'yanza as I was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... peasant subject. His philosophy, expressed in this medium, is sombre. In his novels you can trace a gradual realization of the defects of natural laws and the quandary men are put to by their operation. Chance, an irritating and trifling series of coincidences, plays the part of fate. Nature seems to enter with the hopelessness of man's mood. Finally the novelist turns against life itself. "Birth," he says, speaking of Tess, "seemed to her an ordeal of degrading personal compulsion whose gratuitousness ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... excite controversy and passion are habitually handled with coolness and good sense in the common interest of the trade. A number of the employers have not merely acquiesced in the system, but have become its convinced supporters, and this attitude would be more common if certain irritating causes of friction were removed. The employer who desires to treat his workers well and maintain good conditions is relieved from the competition of rivals who care little for these things, and what he is chiefly concerned about is simplicity of rules and rigid universality of enforcement. ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... the sacculi or pouches of the colon, and may give rise to the circumstances referred to, whilst a passage exists along the centre of the canal that shall permit a daily evacuation to occur. The dejections, even, may be loose in character, and still the same sequence of events ensue. From the irritating influence of preternaturally retained feces, colicky pains are, as a rule, induced, and the ultimate effects may be such as to lead to the ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... one could read what I have written, they would say that poor Augustus had a great deal to put up with in having a wife like me. Probably, from his point of view, I am thoroughly tiresome and irritating. I ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... "Variety is pleasing! Got away from mosquitoes to find sand-flies and harvest-bugs instead. However, they are quiet by day, and here there are no flies with irritating feet. There must be some wonderful mystery about this life. Why should these countries be so full of annoyances to man? Why should even the alighting of a fly, his footprints, cause such irritation to the skin. It must be for some good object eventually ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... pounds at the end of each two-day period. Examination of the animals themselves also showed that a rash had developed on their bodies which could be felt by the hand and which was apparently very irritating, since it was so rubbed by the animals as to cause the surface to bleed. The evident teaching of the experiment is that under conditions of poor ventilation, it was impossible for the lungs to remove waste ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... endeavours his obligations of love and guardianship to his young sister. The young sister, with her tender, quizzical understanding, regarded him as a mere child, with a deliciously humorous way of always taking himself very seriously; a brilliant brain, an irritating fund of superiority, and something altogether apart that made him dearer than heaven and earth and all things ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... wishing them all success? We do so for this reason ... Englishmen love liberty, and the Southerner is fighting, not only for his life, but for that which is dearer than life, for liberty; he is fighting against one of the most grinding, one of the most galling, one of the most irritating attempts to establish tyrannical government that ever disgraced the history of the World."—G. W. BENTINCK, quoted by CHAS. FRANCIS ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Minister, certainly does not lack men. We encountered them everywhere. Travelling first class gives one more or less privacy in Holland, so that it was decidedly irritating to have a listener make for our compartment, while adjoining first-class compartments were entirely empty. If the intrusion resulted in our going to another compartment, an ever-ready Kamerad would quickly ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... mad—a stork staring loon!" retorted Mr Macdougall, in the most irritating way; "ye'd better ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... grumbled the young cadet. Since the departure of Slugger Brown and Nappy Martell from the Hall, Codfish had kept a good deal to himself. But he was as much of a sneak as ever, and did many mean things which were exceedingly irritating to the ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... pillow. A slave, an animal, a thing even, provided it should be in continuous contact with her person—that was what he longed to be; not to find himself obliged, at nightfall, to leave her after a parting absurdly prolonged by childish pretexts, and return to his irritating, common, vulgar life at home, to the solitude of his room, where he imagined he could see a pair of green eyes staring at him from every dark corner, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... what appeared to be fertile soil, a sandy clay country, which improved to the west and south-west at every turn. It had an inviting look, and the "lie," as well, of a region foreordained for settlement. It was irritating not to be able to explore the inner land, but our urgency was too great for that. From what we saw, however, it was easy to predict that thither would flow, in time, the stream of pioneer life and the bustle ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... that he seemed to do nothing but lounge in a chair on the lawn, shabbily clad, with a pipe between his lips and a book, generally unopened, on his knee. His political views seemed to Owen to be as vague as were Toni's; and he had an irritating habit of setting aside any recognized standard of perfection as though the world's seal of approval meant less ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... will give to each an help meet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; as in the case of descent with modification, of which the essence is that every offspring resembles its parents, and yet, at the same time, that no offspring resembles its parents. But for the slightly irritating stimulant of this perpetual crossing, we should pass our lives unconsciously as though ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... this marriage were not the best thing for her! As if it were a hardship! To make sad eyes and draw a mouth because one is to be the wife of a rich general.... Irrational ... The little sweetmeat was irritating. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... A stolen will was of course inevitable, and so were prison dungeons; but the characters had an irritating trick of revealing at critical moments that they were long-lost relatives. It must have been a tedious age when poor relations were never safely buried. However, youth and beauty were at last triumphant and villainy ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Certainly it has been a bad attack, and I never suffered anything like it in Italy before. The illness at Genoa was the mere tail of what began in England, and was increased by the Alpine exposure. Our weather has been very severe—wind and frost together—something peculiarly irritating in the air. I am loth to blame my poor Florence, who never treated me so before (and how many winters we have spent here!)—and our friends write from Pisa that the weather was as trying there, while from Rome the account ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... sagging and sighing cypresses, with their roots in the air, that hung upon and clung upon the rugged edge of the remainder. He liked the shaky stairway that led to it (when it was not out of gear), and all that was irrelative and irrelevant; what might have been irritating to another was to him singularly appealing and engaging; for he was a poet and a romancer, and his name was Robert Louis Stevenson. He used to come to that eyrie on Rincon Hill to chat and to dream; he ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard |
