"Quarrelsome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on anywhere on the walls; you had to make your way through the furniture and bric-a-brac as through traffic. The food, save when there were guests, was wretched. The other servants—a cross cook and a sharp-tongued second-girl—were inefficient and lazy and quarrelsome. ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... usual," smirked Hippy. "Neither of us will ever outgrow it. You see we once lived in a town called Oakdale and associated daily with a number of very quarrelsome people. I wouldn't like to mention their names, but if some day you should happen to go to Oakdale just ask any one if David Nesbit and Reddy Brooks ever reformed. They'll ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... the French have little absolute drunkenness to excuse. They are emphatically a sober people (being a good deal like intoxicated Yankees or Dutchmen, anyway), and even in their cups neither rude nor quarrelsome. Of the few French people I ever saw drunk (except peasants), all were begging pardon of the owners of imaginary toes, and making various other polite concessions to the people whom they believed to be around them. And yet they drink prodigiously. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... been considering the Anglo-Saxon race, and in particular that portion of it which inhabited the Western Hemisphere. He perceived that they were a quarrelsome people, which possessed the lust for land and conquest like the rest of their blood. He saw with astonishment something that had happened, something that they had done. Unperceived by the world, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... few trumpery shells into a grotto, to be upset and destroyed presently. She came to the conclusion that for good, pleasant, prettily behaved children, she might have done so, but for shrieking, passionate, quarrelsome little things as they appeared to her then, she certainly should not. She felt humbled at the contrast between herself and Sarah; and when she arrived at home, for the first time, perhaps, in her life, she patiently bore her mamma's reproaches for being so late, and for the impropriety of walking ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... take them into the country—one may as well practise when one has the opportunity. Besides, sportsmen are often quarrelsome; and if it is known that one shoots well,—it keeps one ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... one can be of anything that comes from the streets. He is an excitable, bumptious, quarrelsome man; but he has a certain influence with those beneath him, although it seems hard to ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellowship. For, fashion is not good sense absolute, but relative; not good sense private, but good sense entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people; hates whatever can interfere with total blending of parties; whilst it values all peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing, which can consist with good fellowship. And besides the general ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... an absurd conviction that this inconclusiveness had been an achievement. Confronted by a dilemma, she had chosen neither horn and assumed an attitude of inoffensive defiance. Springs in England vary greatly in their character; some are easterly and quarrelsome, some are north-westerly and wetly disastrous, a bleak invasion from the ocean; some are but the broken beginnings of what are not so much years as stretches of meteorological indecision. This particular spring was essentially a south-westerly spring, good and friendly, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... in our purpose, having come upon him one certain morning on Cheapside, when there was a fight on among some apprentices, and the way so blocked that neither he nor any other could pass through the street, until the quarrelsome fellows were done playing upon each other's heads with sticks ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... whatever occasion brought together, was sure of returning without a wound. If they are now exposed to foreign hostilities, they may talk of the danger, but can seldom feel it. If they are no longer martial, they are no longer quarrelsome. Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestick animosities ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... it is not monarchy that has broken down, nor Republicanism, nor again religion; it is humanity that has broken down. The ills of Capitalism arise from the egoism of individual capitalists; Socialism has failed because, as Robert Owen discovered, the idle, the quarrelsome, the selfish have prevented its success. If men were perfect, Socialism might succeed, but so might any other system. A perfect capitalist would love his employee as himself, just as a perfect Socialist would be willing to work for the common good. It is the imperfections ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... place to place. The tribe with which we had fallen in had, however, left their canoes in some other stream, or we could not possibly have escaped them. They were also, it was evident, of a more warlike and quarrelsome disposition than most of their people, who are noted for their peaceable behaviour. They are, however, in other respects utterly savage in their habits and customs. So little do they care for clothing, that even the females wear ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... confidentially with regard to his captain, whom, however, he held in great awe. He told me that he was very brave, and had done all sorts of wonderful things; that he did not seem to set value on his own life or on that of anyone else; that he was very quarrelsome, and a dead shot; that he had killed three men in duels, and wounded half a dozen more; and that he never forgot or forgave what he considered an insult or an injury. My friend continued, "When we dine with him, he ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... quarrelsome, "Yes, they're always going to cure the child, so they say. Bad luck to them! ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... was blowzy and freckled, with a small pug nose and a quarrelsome mouth. The other (the face on what, with ordinary persons, was the back of the head) was dark and forbidding, its nose a large brick-colored pug, the mouth underneath shaped most extraordinarily—not ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Jason, "taught me long ago the story of Cadmus. Perhaps I can manage the quarrelsome sons of the dragon's teeth as ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... quite so ready to attack other dogs before they had given me any offence: also that it was unnecessary to suppose that every man who came to the house must have bad intentions, whether he gave me just cause for suspicion or not. In fact, she hinted that it was good to be brave, but bad to be quarrelsome. Then as to my personal appearance, she acknowledged that I was larger and handsomer than she, and that my rough, shaggy coat was far from unbecoming; but when I laughed at her finical cleanliness, and called her affected for not ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... wounded—and in the end his herd has to flee just the same. A very wise leader would have done that from the first; for he might find another feeding ground just as good somewhere near. And besides, the quarrelsome herd ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... but in its restricted sense it is specially given to the above tract. The Abors, together with the cognate tribes of Miris, Daphlas and Akas, are supposed to be descended from a Tibetan stock. They are a quarrelsome and sulky race, violently divided in their political relations. In former times they committed frequent raids upon the plains of Assam, and have been the object of more than one retaliatory expedition by the British government. In 1893-94 occurred ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that you should have acted in this manner," said Mr. Stone. "I did not think you quarrelsome or a bully." ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... spent at a place called Pena Blanca, which differed in no essential from Gatun. We slept there in small sheds, along with twenty or thirty of our ship's companions wedged tightly together. A dozen other similar sheds adjoined. We were all quarrelsome and disinclined to take much nonsense either from the natives or from each other. Also we needed and wanted food; and we had difficulty in getting it. A dozen incipient quarrels were extinguished because the majority of the crowd would not stand for being bothered by the row. Finally ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... state of this chilly, quarrelsome little planet has never grown so desperate that artists have lost faith. After all, why should they? Art is not less important because some men are bad and most are wretched; and it is no part of an artist's business to straighten out the ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the wall facing the barricaded door, a lad little over twenty, with a steel-grey quarrelsome eye, and there was more bravado than music in a pipe-tune he was humming in a low key to himself. A little beyond, at the door of the best room, half in and half out, stood the goodwife Brown and her daughter. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... (this being judged rather from the young people), very superstitious, brave, with much power of enduring pain, cruel, not more revengeful perhaps than is usual among uncivilised natives, friendly one with another, not quarrelsome, but untrustworthy and not over-faithful even in their dealings with one another, though honest as regards boundaries and property rights and in the sense of not stealing from one another within their own communities (this being regarded as a most shameful offence), and ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... individual of each body lie in the party itself, and in their obedience to its discipline. These are two of the parties. Then there is the great party of the outs, who have a marvelous unanimity, and never break up into quarrelsome bodies until there is a fair chance of their ousting the ins. I say these things not because they are not pretty obvious, but because, as a man of fashion and society, you have probably not attended to such matters. It's dirty work for a gentleman. But I suppose any of us would be willing ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... creation seem to feel it so as well as ourselves. The chattering parrots, the hopping, gibbering, quarrelsome apes, all the birds and beasts, scream and cry and flutter and spring about, as though seeking a refuge from some impending danger. Even our horses begin to tremble and groan—refuse to go on, start and snort. The whole animal world is in commotion, as if seized with an overwhelming ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... ship Mary Ann of Bristol, which in the year 1817 was wrecked off the coast of Peru and cast upon the rocks. Most of the crew were saved, including the captain, one Thomas Rogers, the first mate, "Bully" Evans, and the boatswain, Pablo Lobardi, a quarrelsome fellow with whom Quinn had had ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... life: He that is as he should be may be called Friendly, and his mean state Friendliness: he that exceeds, if it be without any interested motive, somewhat too Complaisant, if with such motive, a Flatterer: he that is deficient and in all instances unpleasant, Quarrelsome and Cross. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... H. The father stated that the patient was always "cranky," had outbursts of temper, even when a small child and was quarrelsome; also said that she was "seclusive," had few friends, was averse to meeting people, never had a beau. She was taken out of school at 14 because she was not promoted on two successive occasions from ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... three of the hounds for a day or two—Chorister, White Boy, and Bellman—and had separated them from the pack. That very evening he had done the same with Rifler, who was chewing at the straw in a queer fashion and seemed quarrelsome. He had said nothing to the Squire, whose temper had been ugly for a week past. He had hoped it was a false alarm—had thought it better ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Symptoms.—The face is flushed, the breath has the odor of liquor, the pulse is full and bounding with deep respiration. Reason, memory, judgment and will are first stimulated and then blunted. The drinker's peculiarities are exaggerated, the person becoming affectionate or quarrelsome. There is a loss of coordination as shown by the staggering, swinging, the relaxation of the muscles, and finally deep sleep, with snoring breathing. The person is unconscious, but can be partly aroused and will mutter ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... demand came. Within a month the mystery was cleared. The renter Munro delivered himself to the sheriff at Nemo, admitting that he had killed Shep Boone in self defence. The dead man had been drinking and was exceedingly quarrelsome. He had abused his tenant and at last drawn on him. Whereupon Munro had shot him down. At first afraid of what might happen to him, he had stood aside and let the blame be shouldered upon young Yarnell. But later his conscience ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... upper room, the floor of which was formed by ill-laid, gaping planks, which were the ceiling of that below. Here they began to play at dice; they soon grew even more intolerably uproarious, and in the coarse of their quarrelsome, boisterous tricks, overthrew a vessel of dirty water, which began to drip through the interstices of the planks on their brother and his friends below—an accident sure to be welcomed by a hoarse laugh by the rough boys, but appearing to ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... shall look again upon that bonny face of thine, yet I am well paid for my birth-pains, for few have borne such a man as thou. Think of me at times, for without me thou hadst never been. Be not led astray of women, nor lead them astray, or ill shall overtake thee. Be not quarrelsome because of thy great might, for there is a stronger than the strongest. Spare a fallen foe, and take not a poor man's goods or a brave man's sword; but, when thou smitest, smite home. So shalt thou win honour, and, at the last, peace, that ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... sir," replied Jack, "that I also shall not fail to mention to Captain Wilson that I consider you a very quarrelsome, impertinent fellow, and recommend him not to allow you to remain on board. It will be quite uncomfortable to be in the same ship with ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that John Lilburne was so quarrelsome, that if he were the only man in the world, John would quarrel with Lilburne, and Lilburne with John. Lilburne, it will be remembered, was a sad thorn in Cromwell's sore side, for which the protector ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... home on the night of the small tea-party, he was what the initiated term 'too far gone' to observe the numerous tokens of extreme vexation of spirit which were plainly visible in her countenance. Being, however, of a rather violent and quarrelsome mood in his cups, it is not impossible that he might have fallen out with her, either on this or some imaginary topic, if the young lady had not, with a foresight and prudence highly commendable, kept a boy up, on purpose, to bear the first brunt of the good ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... them with her wand) That will do, do you hear?... You are all very quarrelsome; It is the coming separation that sets your ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Madame Theodore had to hide herself in the kitchen. As he passed, she just caught sight of him, well dressed as usual in a tight-fitting frock-coat. Short and lean, with a thin face and long and carefully tended beard, he had the bearing of one who is both vain and quarrelsome. Fourteen years of office life had withered him, and now the long evening hours which he spent at a neighbouring ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... made Marcus uneasy, rousing in him at once a sense of wrong. He twisted to and fro in his chair, shrugging first one shoulder and then another. Quarrelsome at all times, the heat of the previous discussion had awakened within him all his natural combativeness. Besides this, he was drinking ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... his companions to walk forward to the ground upon which he was standing. Also, he seemed exceedingly anxious to take time over the transaction, as even after he had handed the scroll of writing to the Peruvian, and had received the gold in exchange, he engaged in quarrelsome conversation. Pretending that he doubted if De Gayangos had brought the exact sum, he opened the canvas bag and insisted on counting the money. Don Pedro naturally lost his temper at this insult, and swore in Spanish, upon which Hervey responded ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... entered the room, to find the secretary bending over a big volume in the Greek character; and, as he looked up smiling, the boy felt that his tutor was about the least quarrelsome-looking personage he had ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... and never again thought of disobeying his commands. They set to work in good earnest, and toiled so diligently, that, in a very short time, a city began to make its appearance. At first, to be sure, the workmen showed a quarrelsome disposition. Like savage beasts, they would doubtless have done one another a mischief, if Cadmus had not kept watch over them and quelled the fierce old serpent that lurked in their hearts, when he saw it gleaming out of their wild eyes. But, in course of ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... look at. They were begrimed from head to toe, and their eyes were bloodshot, and they were exhausted to the point where they did not even notice any longer that they were weary. And their mental processes were not at all normal, so that they were quarrelsome and arbitrary and arrogant to the men with the flat-bed trailer who came almost reverently to move their work. They went jealously with the thing they had rebuilt, and they were rude to engineers and construction workers and supervisors, and they shouted angrily at each other as it was hoisted ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... cabinets and got out the materials, and in a few minutes they were bending busily over the broken plaque, as interested and eager about it as if no subject of more vital importance had ever distracted them. They were like two children together, often as quarrelsome, always as inconsequent; happy hard at work, and equally happy idling; apt to torment each other at times about trifles, but always ready to forget and forgive, and with that habit in common of forgetting everything utterly but the occupation ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... enough without this exaggeration. Without positively losing my senses, I speedily lost all command of my temper, and my impetuous passions whirled me onward at their pleasure. I had sate down sulky and discontented, and disposed to be silent—the wine rendered me loquacious, disputatious, and quarrelsome. I contradicted whatever was asserted, and attacked, without any respect to my uncle's table, both his politics and his religion. The affected moderation of Rashleigh, which he well knew how to qualify with irritating ingredients, was even more provoking to ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... voices of the night: somewhere a child was crying fretfully, across the way the faint tinkle of a piano, the far-off rattle of the elevated, a muffled laugh from a window, above, the rat-tat of a cab-horse, the breeze in the ivy clinging to the walls of the church next door, the quarrelsome chirp of the sleepy sparrows; and then, recurrence. Only the poet or the man in pain opens his ears to ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... could imagine that he was from any other place. His native land had equipped him with its excellent qualities. He was quick at his work, nimble with his fingers, ready with his tongue, clear in his thoughts. And, moreover, full of fun, good-natured and brave, kind and quarrelsome, inquisitive and a chatterbox. A madcap, he never could show more respect to a burgomaster than to a beggar! But he had a heart; he fell in love every other day, and confided ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... there had been brawling the night before, yet was she far from surmising the motives that could have led to it. The conclusion she came to in the end was that the men had drunk deep, that in their cups they had waxed quarrelsome, and ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... productions. Yet in spite of all this he must be considered a really unfortunate man, since at the present time the greater part of his works have disappeared, having been destroyed in the siege of Florence, and also because his career was terminated in a very tragic manner; for being a quarrelsome man and liking turmoil belter than quiet, he happened one morning to say some very insulting words to an opponent at the tribunal of the Mercanzia, and that evening as he was returning home, he was dogged by this man and stabbed in the ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... advised Mother Wit. "Let us not be quarrelsome. We don't want Mrs. Morse to think we are female ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... become old. I cannot call him my friend, for I must venerate him to whom I give that title, and veneration, or even esteem, Pigtop was never born to inspire. My humble companion he is not, for no person in his deportment towards me can be less humble than he. He is as quarrelsome as a lady's lapdog, and seems never so happy as when he has effectually thwarted my intentions. Prince Hal said of the jolly wine-bibber, Jack, that "he could have better spared a better man!" Of Pigtop I am compelled to say more—"I could not spare him at all." He has become ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... performances Handel made no objection and gave up his seat to Mattheson when the moment came, but on December 5, for some reason or other, he refused, to the surprise and indignation of the composer. German musicians in those days were a quarrelsome crew; at the court of Stuttgart the musicians were so much given to knocking each other on the head with their instruments, even in the august presence of His Serene Highness, that there was hardly one left undamaged. It was only to be expected that the friends ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... will see fair play among his people themselves. They are, as slaves are likely to be, fallen and base; unjust and quarrelsome among themselves. ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... When he watched them moving about amid the din and flames and white-hot metal, he thought of Vulcan and Mount AEtna, and thus threw over them the enchantments of the old Roman age. But in their real life the men disappointed him. They were vulgar and quarrelsome; the poorest Highland gillie had a vein of poetry in his nature, but these iron-workers were painfully matter of fact; they could not even understand a courtesy unless it took the shape of a ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... me, with some few ministerial reservations. He always agrees with me, and why he is not tortured at the thought of my being the promised bride of another, but continues to squander his affections upon a quarrelsome and unappreciative girl is ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... energetically to Monsieur de Breuilly, reproaching him with his quarrelsome disposition, and affirming that there had been no trace of defiance either in the attitude or the features of Monsieur de Mauterne when he ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... Anjou. It is accepted, and rightly so, as an historical document, but that is no reason for thinking that the truth may not have been manipulated and adorned. The Counts of Anjou were not saints. They were proud, quarrelsome, violent, rapacious, and extravagant, as greedy as they were charitable to the Church, treacherous and cruel. Yet their anonymous panegyrist has made them patterns of all the virtues. In reality it is both a history and in some sort ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... distinct population from the lower town. They are all canal hands, and mostly a very bad lot. The men generally drink—not enough to be really intoxicated (one rarely sees that in France), but enough to make them quarrelsome; and the women almost all slatternly and idle. They were standing at their doors, babies in their arms, and troops of dirty, ragged, pretty little children playing on the road, and accompanying us to the green, begging ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... for old customs, had taken care not to drop this one. This feudal sign had probably acted upon the morals of the pack, for it was impossible to find, within twenty leagues, a collection of more snarly terriers, dissolute hounds, ugly bloodhounds, or more quarrelsome greyhounds. They were perfect hunters, but it seemed as if, on account of their being dogs of quality, all ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... frequenters of the turf are distrustful and inclined to be quarrelsome. No one is above their suspicions when they lose nor above their wrath when they are duped. And this Domingo affair united all the losers against Valorsay; they formed a little battalion of enemies who were no doubt powerless for the time being, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... 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
... to work at his trade. Full of these notions he went over one evening pretty late with his brother to Southwark, and meeting there with an acquaintance who would needs make him drink, they stayed pretty long at the house, insomuch that Luke got very drunk, and being always quarrelsome when he had liquor, insulted and abused everybody in the room. As he was quarrelling particularly with one James Young, William Bramston who stood by, came up and desired him to be quiet, advised him to go home ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... parties indicated, who were, however, not more quarrelsome than usual: Fanny was only struggling with Ralph for the string of the kite. The contention ended in mutual laughter; and as a horn at that moment sounded for the servants to stop work for dinner, the party determined to return to ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... to pass that the village bored the new-comer; bored her to death. She became restless and quarrelsome, had a coolness with the vicarage regarding a pew, with Mrs. Tremenheere at the Park about a housemaid, and actually cut Mrs. General Finch "dead" in the village post office, owing to a mislaid visiting-card. ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... very small. 'Do not be frightened, my dear,' I said soothingly, 'I will make Tinker behave himself.' And a well-aimed blow from my umbrella made him draw off growling. In another moment I had him by the collar, and by dint of threats and coaxing contrived to shut him up in the kitchen. He was not a quarrelsome dog generally, but, as I heard afterwards, Nap was an old antagonist; they had once fallen out about Peter, and had never ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... penurious nor too prodigal, also ingenious and an admirer of the fair sex. A weak and trembling voice shows the owner of it to be envious, suspicious, slow in business, feeble and fearful. A loud, shrill and unpleasant voice, signifies one bold and valiant, but quarrelsome and injurious and altogether wedded to his own humours, and governed by his own counsels. A rough and hoarse voice, whether in speaking or singing, declares one to be a dull and heavy person, of much guts and little brains. A full ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... say that while Pompeius only injured the Romans through inability to refuse the demands of friends, or through ignorance, Agesilaus ruined the Lacedaemonians by plunging them into war with Thebes, to gratify his own angry and quarrelsome temper. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... of England, and his love of peace, are said to be the only obstacles to, a violent rupture. But they are prepared for these obstacles at length giving way. "The Emperor," they are told, "is getting tired of his insolent, and hostile, and quarrelsome allies. He is getting tired of a peace which is more expensive than a war. Some day the cup will flow over. 'Il en finira avec eux,' will dictate a peace in London, will free the oppressed Irish ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the son of Eglaf spake, he that sat at the feet of the Lord of the Scyldings; he bound up[4] aquarrelsome speech: to him was the journey of Beowulf, the proud sea-farer, agreat disgust; because he granted not that any other man should ever have beneath the skies, more reputation with the world than he himself: 'Art thou the Beowulf that ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... most peaceable, inoffensive, and happy, of all the sons of the forest, they had become the most dissolute, quarrelsome, and drunken. They were constantly seen about the villages of the whites begging, bartering every thing they possessed, and performing every drudgery, however servile or degrading, for the strong waters of the pale-face. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... Devine, who was a drunken, good-for-nothing, quarrelsome young American, came ashore with Sralik, and next day he loaded the five muskets and, with Sralik, led the Pingelap people over to Tugulu. There was a great fight, and as fast as Sralik loaded a musket, Harry fired it and ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... not quarrelsome," said she, thoughtfully. "I am only weary of the life here. I should like to go away and be of some use in the world. I suppose it is wicked, for my papa wishes me to stay. And bah! it is a prison—a ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... one thing to be told in general terms that Confucius represented conservative forces, disapproved of the quarrelsome wars of his day, and wished in theory to restore the good old "rules of propriety"; but quite another thing to understand in a human, matter-of-fact sort of way what he really did in definite sets of circumstances, and what practical objects he had in view. The average European reader, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... the name had reference to the word Alizay, which means gunpowder, and which had been given to the Indian in his boyhood because of his fiery and quarrelsome disposition. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... lines are being written, the greatest, the bloodiest war of history is in progress. Men are killing men by thousands and hundreds of thousands. How can we explain such actions? Observation of children shows that they are selfish, envious, and quarrelsome. They will fight and steal until they are taught not to do such things. How can we understand this? There is no way of understanding such actions until we come to see that the children and men of to-day are such as they are because of their ancestors. It has been only a few generations, relatively ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... altogether out of the way of it. Rare quarrels, no doubt, occur to everyone, but rare quarrelling is no quarrelling at all. Like beer, smoking, sea-bathing, cycling, and the like delights, you cannot judge of quarrelling by the early essay. But to show how good it is—did you ever know a quarrelsome person give up the use? Alcohol you may wean a man from, and Barrie says he gave up the Arcadia Mixture, and De Quincey conquered opium. But once you are set as a quarreller you quarrel and quarrel ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the most quarrelsome of all Sandy Chipmunk's neighbors was Rowdy Red-Squirrel. He was happiest when he was fighting. But perhaps that was because he had never lost a fight. If Rowdy had had a sound beating, maybe fighting would not have seemed so ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey
... has fallen a great quarrel, And a striving within the doors, And quarrelsome words have the Bailies said, And eke ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... once a tailor, who was a quarrelsome fellow, and his wife, who was good, industrious, and pious, never could please him. Whatever she did, he was not satisfied, but grumbled and scolded, and knocked her about and beat her. As the authorities at last heard of it, they had him summoned, and put in prison in order to ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... massive-looking fellows have shrunk to thin and useless beings. As regards character, after about four to six months out here one seems to see his fellows in all the nakedness of truth. I have seen the genial man turn irritable, the generous man mean, the good-tempered man quarrelsome, the smart and particular man slovenly, the witty man dull, the bow-and-arrow ideal (looking) sabreur anything but dashing in action, the old-womanly man indifferent to danger, and the objectionable man the best of comrades. These ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... conceive it, is by no means a very lofty one; they seem to have a great deal of earth and grimy dust clinging about them, as was probably the case with the stalwart and quarrelsome people who sprouted up out of the soil, after Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth. And yet, though the individual Englishman is sometimes preternaturally disagreeable, an observer standing aloof has a sense of natural kindness towards them in the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are usually represented to be more quarrelsome than those of any other American state; and, when they come to blows, they fight like wild beasts. They bite and kick each other with indescribable fury; and endeavour to tear each other's ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... seventh day of July of this year 1810, inflicted upon me a deadly insult, touching my personal honour, and likewise tending to the humiliation and confusion of my rank and family. The said nobleman, of repulsive aspect, has also a pugnacious disposition, and is full to overflowing with blasphemy and quarrelsome words." ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a quarrelsome neighbour, go the wrong way to work. A kind word, and still more a kind deed, will be more likely to be successful. Two children wanted to pass by a savage dog: the one took a stick in his hand and pointed it at him, but this only made the enraged ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... remarkable but by no means inexplicable thing. A tone of public expression, jealous and patriotic to the danger-point, is an unavoidable condition under which democratic governments exist. To be patriotically quarrelsome is imperative upon the party machines that will come to dominate the democratic countries. They will not possess detailed and definite policies and creeds because there are no longer any detailed and definite public ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Though they were so quarrelsome among themselves, the boys that my boy went with never molested girls. They mostly ignored them; but they would have scorned to hurt a girl almost as much as they would have scorned to play with one. Of course, while ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... enough to pester himself with a dinky country church. But I guess people like Seth and Mr. Austin ain't the kind of people that have much to say. He's doing regular minister's work, comforting the sick and picking up the fallen and pacifying the quarrelsome, and it's work like ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... even more irritable than his own. Under the terms of the new Constitution the members excluded in the preceding year took their places again in the House; and it was soon clear that the Parliament reflected the general mood of the nation. The tone of the Commons became captious and quarrelsome. They still delayed the grant of supplies. Meanwhile a hasty act of the Protector in giving to his nominees in "the other House," as the new second chamber he had devised was called, the title of "Lords," kindled a strife between the two Houses which was busily fanned ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... before, came to the front once more. Dutch Sam hurled a shilling down upon the table, and offered to fight the Pride of Westminster for it if he ventured to say that Mendoza had been fairly beaten. Joe Berks, who had grown noisier and more quarrelsome as the evening went on, tried to clamber across the table, with horrible blasphemies, to come to blows with an old Jew named Fighting Yussef, who had plunged into the discussion. It needed very little more to finish the supper by a general ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Burt. He was a man of such a turbulent and quarrelsome disposition that he was always ready to go out of his way to ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and others, his poems are full of growls at patrons. These cannot be mere echoes of Oldham and Johnson, but their exact reason is unknown. His son's reference to it is so extremely cautious that it has been read as a confession that Crabbe was prone to his cups, and quarrelsome in them—a signal instance of the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... the Roman Stefano dei Fabii, who is a member of the duchess's escort. Both grasped their arms, whereupon one Pizaguerra, also in the service of the illustrious Don Sigismondo, happening to ride by on his horse, wounded Stefano's hostler on the head. Thereupon Stefano, who is naturally quarrelsome and vindictive, became so angry that he declared he would accompany the cavalcade no farther. About this time we reached the castle of Spoleto, and he passed the illustrious Don Sigismondo and Don Ferrante without speaking to them ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... element in that condition which a great physician described in a masterly manner under the name of "Horrores." Hence their moroseness of disposition, which none can account for, their wavering fancies and inclinations, their disgust at what used to give them pleasure. The amiable man grows quarrelsome, the merry man cross, and he who used to lose himself, and gladly, in the bustle of the world, flies the face of man and retires into a gloomy melancholy. But underneath this treacherous repose the enemy is making ready for a deadly onslaught. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... contest of words rose to such a height—men, women, and even children, on both sides, taking part in it—that the bystander would have thought it impossible they could separate without a fight. But matters always came to a peaceable conclusion, for the French are by no means a quarrelsome people. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... buja f. candle, taper. bulto m. dim form. bulla f. bustle, throng, noise. bullicio m. tumult, bustle. bullidor, -a restless, merry. burla f. joke. buscar seek, hunt, look for. buscarruidos m. quarrelsome fellow. caballeresco, -a gentlemanly. caballero m. knight, gentleman, nobleman, sir; mal ——! scoundrel! caballo m. horse, steed, figure on horseback in Spanish pack of cards, equivalent to the queen; a —— ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... you please, a country remarkably similar in its physical characteristics to the Blue Ridge Region of our own South, with the same warm summers and the same brief, cold winters, peopled by the same poverty-stricken, illiterate, quarrelsome, suspicious, arms-bearing, feud-practising race of mountaineers, and you will have the best domestic parallel of Albania that I can give you. Though during the summer months extremely hot days are followed by bitterly cold nights, and though ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... so much to venture!" I remonstrated. "Suppose the red should not turn up?" The Grandmother almost struck me in her excitement. Her agitation was rapidly making her quarrelsome. Consequently, there was nothing for it but to stake the whole four thousand ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... man, becoming violently angry. "I am of a quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... police-court, to look her last on her lover, when the door of their one little room in Sparrow Street was burst rudely open, and Granger, his face red and bloated, and his whole manner indicating that he had reached the quarrelsome stage of insobriety, entered the room with heavy strides. He was a big man, powerfully made, and when in his present condition even Bet thought it wisest to let him alone. He entered the room and glared about him savagely. A great deal of this manner was put on, for he was acting ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... syncope so admirably, as to deceive a whole room full of company—in an instant he would become pale, motionless, and ghastly as death; the action of his heart has even appeared to be diminished: his sham fits, if possible, exceeded his fainting. He was very quarrelsome when in his cups; and when he had aggravated any one to the utmost, to save himself from a severe beating would apparently fall into a most dreadful fit, which never failed to disarm his adversary of his rage, and to excite the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... moral shock she had sustained, was difficult to the point of impossibility. She needed a witness, visible and material, to the fact of those former happier conditions; and found it, quaintly enough, in the untidy person and humorous, quarrelsome, brick-dust coloured face—as much of the said face, that is, as was discoverable under the thick stiff growth of sandy hair surrounding and invading it—of the Irish doctor, as he sat by her bed, ministered to and soothed her with reverent and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sense or reverts to it entirely, humanity itself is atrophied. And humanity is tormented and spoilt when, as more often happens, a man disbelieving in reason and out of humour with his world, abandons his soul to loose whimseys and passions that play a quarrelsome game there, like so many ill-bred children. Nevertheless, compared with the worldling's mental mechanism and rhetoric, the sensualist's soul is a well of wisdom. He lives naturally on an animal level and attains a kind of good. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... whose characteristics might be, in other respects, very estimable; and it must be acknowledged, that vulgar and obtrusive impertinence is an unfortunate accompaniment to an introduction. But the schoolmaster never meant to be impertinent, for he was far from being quarrelsome (except with his scholars), and the idea that any one could be otherwise than pleased with his notice, however given, never entered his mind. Though his questions were, for the most part, asked to gratify a constitutional curiosity, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... lies principally in charging Denham with plagiarising "Cooper's Hill" and "Sophy," with gambling, and with overreaching the King as Surveyor of the Public Buildings, and with an overbearing and quarrelsome temper—but it contains no allusion to his domestic infelicity. Some have hinted that the cause of his insanity lay in jealousy—that Denham suspected his wife to be too intimate with the Duke of York—that he poisoned her, and maddened in remorse. Whatever ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... and left her to her invocations. In the long passage that led from the dressing-rooms he ran into Estelle, who was just sufficiently drunk to be excitable and quarrelsome. She still had on her dancer's costume of short skirts of poppy-coloured tulle, and scarlet shoes and tights. She was further adorned with long, dangling, coral ear-rings, and a black bruise on the left side of her face ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... misprision. As for the women found among these men, they were to suffer the cucking-stool—this is a tumbrel, the name of which is composed of the French word coquine, and the German stuhl. English law being endowed with a strange longevity, this punishment still exists in English legislation for quarrelsome women. The cucking-stool is suspended over a river or a pond, the woman seated on it. The chair is allowed to drop into the water, and then pulled out. This dipping of the woman is repeated three times, "to cool her ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... certain animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. [Footnote: Fuller was, in early life, when a farmer lad at Soham, famous as a boxer; not quarrelsome, but not without "the stern delight" a man of strength and courage feels in their exercise. Dr. Charles Stewart, of Dunearn, whose rare gifts and graces as a physician, a divine, a scholar, and a gentleman, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... life, and the tigress becomes, if possible, fiercer than he is, and buries herself in the gloomiest recesses of the jungle. When the young are born, the male tiger has often been known to devour his offspring, and at this time they are very savage and quarrelsome. Old G., a planter in Purneah, once came across a pair engaged in deadly combat. They writhed and struggled on the ground, the male tiger striking tremendous blows on the chest and flanks of his consort, and tearing her skin in strips, while the tigress ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... drawing-room, resting after the tact and tumult of the bruncheon. Claire had been here long enough now for the Gilsons to forget her comfortably, and be affectionate and quarrelsome and natural, and to admit by their worrying that even in their exalted social position there were things ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... enough of it, Jaap, or your manners would be better," I thought it necessary to put in, for the fellow had never before manifested so quarrelsome a disposition in my presence; most probably because I had never before seen him at variance with an Indian. "Let me hear no more of this, or I shall be obliged to pay off the ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... at a parson's table, and have known more than one parish in which the Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen lived together on amicable terms. But such a feeling as that above represented was common, and was by no means held as proof that the parties themselves were quarrelsome or malicious. It was a part of their religious convictions, and who dares to interfere with the religious ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... a time, was there movement. The wood warbler was cheeping inquiringly at this sudden change in the deportment of his friend behind the shoulder of shale. The sandpiper, a bit startled, had gone back to the edge of the river and was running a race with himself along the wet sand. And the two quarrelsome jays had brought their family squabble to the edge ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... and observances attached to these animals appear to be current throughout the kingdom, and by no means suffer any diminution in this county. Among others of less common occurrence, we have the belief that they will not thrive in a quarrelsome fammily. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... shaved and rubbed in his hand into a proper condition for smoking. Mark, though by no means an intemperate man, is fond of a drop now and then, and when he has just a thimbleful too much, the way he will swear is emphatically a sin. And yet he is anything but quarrelsome or contrary, even when a shade over the line of strict sobriety. He is a great, strong, square-shouldered, big-breasted, good-natured specimen of the genus homo, a giant in physical strength, and were I a wolf, I would prefer letting him ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... of the lock-picker—pitched to a cautious key, was heard in protest as though objecting to some intentions evident in the new arrival. Whispered expostulations continued for a while, then the voices became quarrelsome and louder; and somebody suddenly rapped ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... I am inclined to think that smoking has conduced to make the society of men, when alone, less riotous, less quarrelsome and even less vicious than it was. Where young men now blow a common cloud, they were formerly driven to a fearful consumption of wine; and this in their heads, they were ready and roused to any iniquity. But the pipe is the bachelors wife. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... the world under such conditions are bequeathed a heritage that will have a demoralizing effect upon their whole after life. Children, who every day hear quarrels and strife between those they should honor, lose something of the beauty of life; they become hardened and quarrelsome. Of course these divorces must not be granted promiscuously; for in bringing children into the world, parents assume an obligation that cannot be neglected. In considering a separation, the parents' first ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... perturbed when he heard of the proposed visit. Of all the wrangling, quarrelsome party, Dmitri was the only one who could regard the interview seriously. All the others would come from frivolous motives, perhaps insulting to the elder. Alyosha was well aware of that. Ivan and Miuesov would come from ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... while crying their wares. Many of these boatmen seemed as dark in complexion as any East Indian on board, and nearly all wore ear-rings, generally of silver, in the dingy lobes of their ears. They seemed noisy and quarrelsome, and often shrieked what seemed like terrible imprecations at each other, shaking their fists and scowling darkly, only to be laughing carelessly the next minute, as if nothing mattered. Dwight was about motioning one man to fling him up a bunch of figs, in exchange for the silver coin in ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... the Vril-ya; and if we take the cultivated lands of the other races of Ana, we must utterly destroy the previous inhabitants. Sometimes, as it is, we take waste spots, and find that a troublesome, quarrelsome race of Ana, especially if under the administration of Koom-Posh or Glek-Nas, resents our vicinity, and picks a quarrel with us; then, of course, as menacing our welfare, we destroy it: there is no coming to terms of peace with a race so idiotic that it is always changing the form of government ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... tell thee now, and thou mayst put Jeanne after 'my well-beloved' at the top, an' thou wilt. Art satisfied now, thou quarrelsome fellow?" ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... appears in one of its commonest forms in the tale of "Loppi and Lappi" (Kreutzwald), a quarrelsome couple who are granted three wishes by a fairy. At supper-time the wife wishes for a sausage, which is wished on and off her nose, and the couple remain as poor ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... Indies. The daughters are very beautiful, accomplished, and amiable, especially the youngest, Lucy. I came very near being at my old game of falling in love, but I find that love and painting are quarrelsome companions, and that the house of my heart is too small for both of them; so I have turned Mrs. Love out-of-doors. Time enough, thought I (with true old bachelor complacency), time enough for you these ten years to come. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... lasted for about three months, for the cast of the players was changed several times—the usual fuss and confusion of provincial theaters where none of the ladies want to assume the part of an old, quarrelsome, or shady character, or that of a maid, but all ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... stiff hair, splay-footed; to give him his right, he had the most piercing judgment naturally upon a figure of theft, and many other questions, that I ever met withal; yet for money he would willingly give contrary judgments, was much addicted to debauchery, and then very abusive and quarrelsome, seldom without a black eye, or one mischief of other: this is the same Evans who made so many antimornal cups, upon the sale whereof he principally subsisted; he understood Latin very well, the Greek tongue ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... call before them such witnesses as they pleased, and to force them to make oath of such things as might discover what they sought after."[*] Some civil powers were also given the commissioners to punish vagabonds and quarrelsome persons. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume |
