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More "Bicker" Quotes from Famous Books



... heart-stirring, soul-inspiring scandal. On that day there was no excise of the commodities of character. They might be bought or sold at a wanworth, or handed or banded about in any way that suited the tempers of the people. The bottle and the bicker had already, even in the forenoon, been, to a certain extent, employed as a kind of outscouts of the array that was to appear at night, and the gossipers were in that blessed state, between partial possession and full expectation, that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... few of us delight in really serious fighting. We do love to bicker; and we box and knock each other around, to exhibit our strength; but few normal simians are keen about bloodshed and killing; we do it in war only because of patriotism, revenge, duty, glory. A feline civilization would ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... about the hill, An' todlin down on Willie's mill, Setting my staff wi' a' my skill, To keep me sicker; Tho' leeward whiles, against my will, I took a bicker. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... temper, is a deep and fatal mistake. The world moves onwards patiently and inevitably, obeying a larger and a mightier law. What is rather the duty of all who love what is noble and beautiful is not to carp and bicker over faulty conditions, but to realise their aims and hopes, to labour abundantly and patiently, to speak and feel sincerely, to encourage rather than to condemn, Serviendum lietandum says the brave motto. To serve, one cannot avoid that; but to serve with blitheness, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... his office, immersed among papers and accounts. Before him was a large bicker of oatmeal porridge, and at the side thereof a horn spoon and a bottle of two-penny. Eagerly running his eye over a voluminous law-paper, he from time to time shovelled an immense spoonful of these nutritive viands into his capacious mouth. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... the smuggling, an exciseman was put among us, and the first was Robin Bicker, a very civil lad that had been a flunkey with Sir Hugh Montgomerie, when he was a residenter in Edinburgh, before the old Sir Hugh's death. He was a queer fellow, and had a coothy way of getting in ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... of thousands of acres to favorites of the Family Compact; on peculations of public funds in Quebec by irresponsible executives; on mistrials of disorders in the Fur Country, when North-Wester and Hudson's Bay traders cut each other's throats; on the constant bicker and bark between Protestant Ontario and Catholic Quebec, which kept the country rent by religious dissensions when men should have ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... battle-fields of backbiting and mockery. The feuds were as bitter, if not as deadly, as those that flourished around the fountains in medieval Italian towns. Two girls would perch on the drug-store stools back to back, and bicker in pretended ignorance of each other's presence. Tudie Litton would order "sahsahpahrillah," which she hated, just to mock Amelie's manner; and Amelie, assuming to be ignorant of Tudie's existence, would retort by ordering "a strorrburry ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... are so constantly the theme of ridicule and the text of warnings to the unwedded that we lose sight of the plain truth that husbands and wives bicker no more than parents and children, brothers and sisters. In every community there are more blood-relations who do not speak to one another than divorced couples. Wars and fightings come upon us, not through matrimony so much as through ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... living under one roof, one name, and one bond of family unity—there is likely to be a great similarity of feeling upon all questions of family pride, especially among people who discuss everything with vehemence, from European politics to the family cook. They may bicker and squabble among themselves,—and they frequently do,—but in their outward relations with the world they act as one individual, and the enemy of one is the enemy of all; for the pride of race and name is very great. There is a family in Rome who, since ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... Bicker, daughter of an influential burgomaster of Amsterdam, in 1655, by whom he had two ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... winking across the table at Julian. "Seems to me there was a powerful lot of fighting in the Old Testament, and the Lord was generally on one side or the other. But you and I ain't going to bicker, Mr. Fenn. The first decision this Council came to, when it embraced more than a dozen of us of very opposite ways of thinking, was to keep our mouths shut about our own ideas and stick to business. So give me a fill of baccy ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... kept, From poppies breath'd, and banks of pleasant green, Where never yet was creeping creature seen. Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets play'd, And hurled every where their water's sheen, That, as they bicker'd through the sunny glade, Though restless still themselves, a ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... oor oxters in snaw, the morn, Wattie," chirrupped one damsel, in the bicker of rustic wit and empty ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... briskest kind of a bicker that ensued for a little while there on the bosky, broomy hill-side in the evening light. Ah, Dessauer was down at last and Cannstadt at his throat! I went about with a whirl, leaving my own man for the moment, and rushed upon the Count's false second. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... has burst a-bloom like CERES' daughter; The painters bicker and the plumbers flee; The H. tap in the bathroom gives cold water Endlessly, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various

... shiver, twitter, twire^, writhe, toss, shuffle, tumble, stagger, bob, reel, sway, wag, waggle; wriggle, wriggle like an eel; dance, stumble, shamble, flounder, totter, flounce, flop, curvet, prance, cavort [U.S.]; squirm. throb, pulsate, beat, palpitate, go pitapat; flutter, flitter, flicker, bicker; bustle. ferment, effervesce, foam; boil, boil over; bubble up; simmer. toss about, jump about; jump like a parched pea; shake like an aspen leaf; shake to its center, shake to its foundations; be the sport of the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... has been taken, and all set thick with precious stones) he shall be hanged. Away he goes at once to a traktir, or tavern, and sets to work to drown his grief in drink. After awhile he begins to totter. "Now then," he says, "I'll take home a bicker of spirits with me, and go to bed. And to-morrow morning, as soon as they come to fetch me to be hanged, I'll toss off half the bickerful. They may hang me then without my knowing anything ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... undoubtedly hurt her. He had been clumsy enough to hurt her. She was nearing forty, and he also was close behind her on the road to forty; she was a perfectly decent sort, and he reckoned that he, too, was a perfectly decent sort, and yet they lacked the skill not to bicker. They no longer had the somewhat noisy altercations of old days concerning real or fancied interferences with the order and privacy of Edwin's sacred chamber, but their general demeanour to one another had dully soured. It was as if they tolerated one another, from motives of self-interest. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... brows of certain two speeding eastward through London, enhansomed, on the night of the feast of St. Box: alter, Geoffrey Dizzard, called "The Honourable," lieu-tenant in the Guards of Edward the Peace Getter; altera, the Lady Angelica Plantagenet, to him affianced. Devil take the cause of the bicker: enough that they were at sulks. Here's for a sight ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... end of Boston Island, and bring up in seven fathoms opposite a white sandy beach, three-quarters of a mile off shore. There is also excellent anchorage at the entrance to Spalding Cove, bringing the western point of the promontory of Cape Donnington to bear north by east, and the northernmost of Bicker's Island west by north, you will lay in seven fathoms, muddy bottom. Having arrived at Bicker's Island and bound for Boston Bay, stand directly over to the westward, passing the south end of Boston Island, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... defender?—why, Alan Fairford. Who beat me soundly when I brought the arrogance of an only son, and of course a spoiled urchin, to the forms of the little republic?—why, Alan. And who taught me to smoke a cobbler, pin a losen, head a bicker, and hold the bannets?—[Break a window, head a skirmish with stones, and hold the bonnet, or handkerchief, which used to divide High School boys when fighting.] Alan, once more. If I became the pride of the Yards, and the dread of the hucksters in the High School Wynd, it was under thy ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... he meant to sell them some day," Cousin Jasper answered, "for there were several that were of almost as much value as the house itself. But less than ever was I willing to bicker and haggle over what I had really loved, and since he would not sell them to me I gave the matter up. Even then, there was a little justice on his side, for the pictures had been purchased with money from the lands that he called his. But it was my great ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs

... will in now, and do my leechdoms with the sick man. But do thou go across the stream, thou barefoot, and thou wilt find on the other side, by the foot of the quicken-tree yonder, honeycombs and white bread and a bicker of wild goats' milk. Bathe thee then if thou wilt, and bring those matters over hither; and then shalt thou go in and kiss thy mate's sick face with thy fresh one, and thereafter shall we sit here by the ripple of the water and ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... extraordinarily beautiful thing. The road, while still almost in the street, passes across a little embankment; and on the left hand you look down into a pit, like a quarry, full of ash-trees, and with a thick undergrowth of bushes and tall plants. From a dozen little excavations leap and bicker crystal rivulets of water, hurrying down stony channels, uniting in a pool, and then moving off, a full-fed stream, among quiet water-meadows. It is one of the sources of the Cam. The water is deliciously cool and clear, running as it does straight off the chalk. ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... round about the hill, And todlin' down on Willie's mill, Setting my staff, wi' a' my skill, To keep me sicker; [secure] Tho' leeward whyles, against my will, I took a bicker. [run] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... resolute, and cheerful eye, to which careless and fearless freedom and inward daring gave fire and expression, notwithstanding its light grey colour. A stoup of wine (for in those days it was erved out from the cask in pewter flagons) was placed on the table, and each had his quaigh or bicker before him. But there was little appearance of conviviality. With folded arms, and looks of anxious expectation, they eyed each other in silence, each wrapt in his own thoughts, and holding no communication with his neighbour. At length the younger broke ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... victim slumberless, And drag forth prisoned madness, And cruelly murder all quiet and innocent gladness. What will be the end of this commotion? Where the shore to this turmoiling ocean? What seeks the tossing throng, As it wheels and whirls along? On! on! the lustres Like hell-stars bicker: Let us twine in closer clusters. On! on! ever thicker and quicker! How the silly things throb, throb amain! Hence, all quiet! Hither, riot! Peal more proudly, Squeal more loudly, Ye cymbals, ye trumpets! Be-dull all ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... the haunts of Pan than any I have seen in Italy. I eagerly anticipate the placid hours we shall pass, perhaps next summer, on the wild range which belongs to our sylvan deities. In their deep fastnesses I will hide myself from the world, and never allow its glare to bicker through my foliage. You will follow me, I trust, into retirement, and equally forget the turmoils of mankind. What have we children of the good Sylvanus to do with the miseries or triumphs of the savages that prowl ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... souls—all living under one roof, one name, and one bond of family unity—there is likely to be a great similarity of feeling upon all questions of family pride, especially among people who discuss everything with vehemence, from European politics to the family cook. They may bicker and squabble among themselves,—and they frequently do,—but in their outward relations with the world they act as one individual, and the enemy of one is the enemy of all; for the pride of race and name is very great. There is a family in Rome who, since the memory ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... awe in mortals' joy, A deep mysterious fear Half of the heart will still employ, As if we drew too near To Eden's portal, and those fires That bicker round in wavy spires, Forbidding, to our frail desires, What cost us ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... presented his Majesty with a huge silver bowl, in token of their love and loyalty. The King seemed highly pleased with the gift, and observed to the Duke of Buckingham, loud enough to be heard by the bystanders, who reported his speech to me, 'God's santie! it's a braw bicker, Steenie, and might serve for a christening-cup, if we had need of siccan a vessel, which, Heaven be praised, we ha'e na!' After this there was a grand banquet in the town-hall; and when the heat of the day was over the King left with his train for Hoghton Tower, visiting the alum mines on ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... This race-type keeping, They saw men creeping Over the ridges, scant fodder reaping. They saw men eager Toil on the sea, though their take was meager, Plow the steep slope and trench the bog-valley, To bouts with the rock the brown nag rally. Saw their faults flaunted,— Buck-like they bicker, Love well their liquor,— But know not defeat,—hoist ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... much with us, small and great: We are undone of chatter and on dit, Report, retort, rejoinder, repartee, Mole-hill and mare's nest, fiction up-to-date, Babble of booklets, bicker of debate, Aspect of A., and attitude of B.— A waste of words that drive us like a sea, Mere derelict of Ourselves, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... by their aid, with their own soldiers, and the forced labour of the Britons, to have made the huge embankments, of which there are remains still existing in “The Roman Bank,” near Sutterton and Algarkirk, Bicker, and other places. The Car Dyke, skirting the Fens, on the west, some four miles from Kirkstead, was their work, and a few miles westward is Ermine Street, the great Roman highway, which stretches from Sauton on the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... Oh, oh, oh!" Surely, I had fainted away, for, when I came to myself, I found my red comforter loosed, my face all wet, Isaac rubbing down his waistcoat with his sleeve—the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker—and the brisk brown stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the alarm, whizz-whizz, whizzing in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... an' tak the gate, In blast an' blaudin', rain, deil hae 't! The hale toon glintin', stane an' slate, Wi' cauld an' weet, An' to the Court, gin we 'se be late, Bicker oor feet. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ashes moulder on the plain. Rem. (You've said that once before. Say it again.) Rom. Remus, my blackguard brother, hold thy tongue. Rem. Romulus, may I be spared to see thee hung. Maidens. Alas! to see two brothers bicker thus is sad, Let's laugh and sport and turn to something glad. Mary Ann (blushing). I'll sing you a simple ballad if you like. (All shuddering). Good gracious! (Aside) Certainly, by all means. Mary Ann. How doth each naughty little lad Delight to snarl ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... maxims against the bad effects of darling, heart-stirring, soul-inspiring scandal. On that day there was no excise of the commodities of character. They might be bought or sold at a wanworth, or handed or banded about in any way that suited the tempers of the people. The bottle and the bicker had already, even in the forenoon, been, to a certain extent, employed as a kind of outscouts of the array that was to appear at night, and the gossipers were in that blessed state, between partial possession and full expectation, that makes every part of the body languid and lazy except ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... whiles cam wi' their pocks, Cause they kent that I liked a bicker; Sae I bartered whiles wi' the gowks, Gaed them grain for a soup o' their liquor. I had lang been accustom'd to drink, And aye when I purposed to quat it, That thing wi' its clappertie clink Said aye to me, Tak it, man, tak it. Hey for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... of age, Thomas Borrow was articled for five years to a maltster; but just as that period expired, at Menheniot Fair a bicker arose in which Borrow and other young heroes triumphed over the braves of that town. Constables appeared, but were promptly felled by the brawny Borrow, and, to crown his misdeeds, he knocked over the ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... when were you in a stone bicker last?" quoth Randal; and I hung my head, for it was not yet six months gone since the sailors and we students were stoning ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... Sheridan showed so little capacity as a boy, that he was presented to a tutor by his mother with the complimentary accompaniment that he was an incorrigible dunce. Walter Scott was all but a dunce when a boy, always much readier for a "bicker," than apt at his lessons. At the Edinburgh University, Professor Dalzell pronounced upon him the sentence that "Dunce he was, and dunce he would remain." Chatterton was returned on his mother's hands as "a fool, of whom nothing could ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... lithe snakes turning, as bright stars burning, They bicker and beckon and call; As wild waves churning, as wild winds yearning, They flicker and ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... a row begins, a bicker between the sailmaker and bo'sun. Old Dutchy is laying it off because someone has spilt water on the main-hatch, where a sail is spread out, ready for his work. In course, the bo'sun has called him a 'squarehead,' and 'Sails,' a decent ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... was wild; against the glass The rain did beat and bicker; The church-tower swinging over head, You scarce ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the gear Is gone where glint the pawky een. And aye the stound is birkin lear Where sconnered yowies wheepen yestreen. The creeshie rax wi' skelpin' kaes Nae mair the howdie bicker whangs, Nor weanies in their wee bit claes Glour light as lammies wi' ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... little embankment; and on the left hand you look down into a pit, like a quarry, full of ash-trees, and with a thick undergrowth of bushes and tall plants. From a dozen little excavations leap and bicker crystal rivulets of water, hurrying down stony channels, uniting in a pool, and then moving off, a full-fed stream, among quiet water-meadows. It is one of the sources of the Cam. The water is deliciously cool and clear, running as it does straight off the chalk. No words of mine can do justice ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... may rail at town land till all have gone to wrack, The very straws may wrangle till they've thrown down the stack; The very door-posts bicker till they've pulled in the door, The very ale-jars jostle till the ale is on the floor, But this ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats

... Sarah scorned to bicker with her slave, yet the rage she felt found vent in these words to Abraham:[120] "It is thou who art doing me wrong. Thou hearest the words of Hagar, and thou sayest naught to oppose them, and I hoped that thou wouldst take my part. For thy sake did I leave my native land and the house of my father, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... Gallery excel it in variety, but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The Syndics and The Night Watch are worth a wilderness of other painters' work. The Night Watch has been removed from the old room, where it used to hang, facing the large Van der Heist, Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is only in temporary quarters; the gallery destined for it is being completed. We were permitted to peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in one gallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De Stallmeesters. Better lighted than ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... to give a dim ornament to the future;—not a star to be seen;—no permanent light to gild my horizon;—only the fading helps to transient gaiety in the lamps of Tunbridge;—no Law coffee-house at hand, or any other house of relief;—no antagonist to bicker one into a control of one's cares by a successful opposition, [Footnote: Richardson was remarkable for his love of disputation; and Tickell, when hard pressed by him in argument, used often, as a last resource, to assume the voice and manner ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... a Burns, or the pencil of a Hogarth, to paint the scene which follows. The ambrosial food is despatched in aspiring draughts by the family, who soon give evident proofs of the enlivening effects of the Lagan-le-vrich. As soon as each despatches his bicker, he jumps out of bed—the elder branches to examine the ominous signs of the day,[84] and the younger to enter on its amusements. Flocking to the swing, a favourite amusement on this occasion, the youngest of the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... of working together to produce a budget on which this nation could live. Let us negotiate soon and hard. But in the end, let us produce. The American people await action. They didn't send us here to bicker. They ask us to rise above the merely partisan. "In crucial things, unity"—and this, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... on two useless legs you surely are, And born beneath some wayward sauntering star To sit for ever swinging on a gate, And laugh at wiser people passing through.' So spake the bard De Lacy: for they two In frequent skirmishes of fierce debate Would bicker, tho' their mutual love was ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... burst a-bloom like CERES' daughter; The painters bicker and the plumbers flee; The H. tap in the bathroom gives cold water ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various









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