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More "Ill-tempered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disposition, always making the best of everything, and when accidents did happen, always more inclined to laugh than to look grave. His name was Osborn. The first mate, whose name was Mackintosh, was a Scotsman, rough and ill-tempered, but paying strict attention to his duty—a man that Captain Osborn could trust, but whom he did ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... had served me long and faithfully, and who determined to get a wife, and was married to the most ill-tempered woman in all the country; and when he found that neither by good means or bad could he cure her of her evil temper, he left her, and would not live with her, but avoided her as he would a tempest, for if he knew she was in any place he would go in the contrary direction. When she saw that he avoided ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... not tell the boys all I was feeling or thinking; they could hardly have understood the depth of my anger and wounded pride, though I really don't think it was a very bad kind of pride. I had always been trusted at home. When I was cross or ill-tempered, mother spoke seriously to me, sometimes even sternly, but she seemed to believe that I wanted to be good, and that I had sense to understand things. And now to be spoken of behind my back, and before my face too, as if I was a regularly naughty ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... 1000 killed and wounded; but I have the satisfaction of knowing that, as far as mortal can see, six months will see the end of this rebellion, while if I had continued inactive it might have lingered on for six years. Do not think that I am ill-tempered, but I do not care one jot about my promotion or what people may say. I know I shall leave China as poor as I entered it,[3] but with the knowledge that through my weak instrumentality upwards of eighty to one hundred thousand lives have been spared. I want ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... herself and my father, and, as the only child, a favourite amongst the attached members of our household, my wants had been all anticipated, and every pleasure suited to my age had been planned for me so ingeniously, that I had never had the chance of showing myself selfish or ill-tempered. She feared that when for the first time I found myself not first considered in all arrangements, I might fail in those particular points of conduct in which she was most ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... for I was ill-tempered from the heat. "It's perfectly clean out here in mid-stream and there is no danger from sharks here, as there was at ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Dilapidated One, who has just been detected having a row on the lake, all by himself. Not that this is a very prodigious aquatic feat, seeing that three or four good strokes either way take you either into the bank, or on to the heels or tails of a couple of very ill-tempered, and irascible swans, who appear to think, and with some reason, that there's not too much waterway as it is, and resent the intrusion of the boat on their domain as a ridiculous superfluity. However, the effort is one that the Dilapidated ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... no more, for though he was both curious and ill-tempered he had not the courage to disturb the lady, knowing by the richness of her attire that she was of the quality; and the iron of serfdom was driven deep into his soul. So he went to sleep on his stool, as he had been bidden. But in the middle of the night he was awakened by a gusty wind and the banging ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... were, of 'personal talk' and gossip not always kindly to the stranger within the gate? The view of Mr. Bronte, presented by Mrs. Gaskell in the early editions of her biography of Charlotte Bronte, is that of a severe, ill-tempered, and distinctly disagreeable character. It is the picture of a man who disliked the vanities of life so intensely, that the new shoes of his children and the silk dress of his wife were not spared by him ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the world to weep or cheer; but a silent, unnoticed, almost ignominious summons, scarcely less sudden and far more painful than the bullet or the sword-cut. The Egyptians, in spite of their fatalistic creed, manifested profound depression. The English soldiers were moody and ill-tempered. Even the light-hearted Soudanese lost their spirits; their merry grins were seen no longer; their laughter and their drums were stilled. Only the British officers preserved a stony cheerfulness, and ceaselessly endeavoured by energy and example to sustain the courage of their men. Yet they suffered ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Spalatin a letter intended to deceive: "It was believed without reason that he was at the Wartburg. He was living among faithful brethren. It was surprising that no one had thought of Bohemia;" and then came a thrust—not ill-tempered—at Duke George of Saxony, his most active enemy. This letter Spalatin was to lose with well-planned carelessness so that it should come into the hands of the enemy. But in this kind of diplomacy he was certainly not logical, for as soon as his leonine ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... of nice perceptions will here perceive that, it being morning, Turkey's answer is couched in polite and tranquil terms, but Nippers replies in ill-tempered ones. Or, to repeat a previous sentence, Nippers' ugly mood was on duty ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... know how to work, and would not leave town; for they had lovers enough who would be glad to marry them, though they had no longer any fortune. But in this they were mistaken; for when the lovers heard what had happened, they said, "The girls were so proud and ill-tempered, that all we wanted was their fortune: we are not sorry at all to see their pride brought down: let them show off their airs to their cows and sheep." But everybody pitied poor Beauty, because she was so sweet-tempered and kind to all, and several gentlemen offered to marry her, though she had ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... to Oscar, and back came another letter from him, more ill-tempered than the first, saying he had never thought I would take his scenario; I had no right to touch it; but as I had taken it, I must really pay ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... positions to my own, but meritoriously filled, though a little more style would have well become so great an occasion. That malevolent old Moke—may his next thistle choke him!—disgraced us all with his jibbing—the ill-tempered old ass! Young Neddy is shaggy and shy, but not amiss, if he'd held his ears up, and not kept his eyes on the grass. Nothing is more je-june (I may say vulgar) than to seem anxious to eat when the crisis calls for public spirit, enthusiasm, and an elevated tone; And I wish, Brother ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was not an ill-tempered king; and, in any matter of less moment, he would have let the queen have her own way, with all his heart. This, however, was an ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... don't believe there's a good-tempered person in the world. It's all hypocrisy! I never had a good-temper! My mother was an ill-tempered woman, and ruled my father, who was a confoundedly severe, domineering man. I was born in an ill-temper. I was an ill-tempered child; I grew up an ill-tempered man. I feel worse than ill-tempered now, and when I die it will be ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... laid out on the bed by his valet, seemed to be waiting for him in a domestic and obsequious attitude. He began to dress himself with a somewhat ill-tempered alacrity. He was impatient to leave the house. He opened his round window, listened to the murmur of the city, and saw above the roofs the glow which rose into the sky from the city of Paris. He scented from afar all the amorous flesh ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... approach. But I was told that ill health had made him unsociable and somewhat morose and testy, and, indeed, there was often the trace of suffering and weariness in his face. It was also remarked in the Senate that at times he was ill-tempered and inclined to indulge in biting sarcasms and to administer unkind lectures to other senators, which in some instances disturbed his personal intercourse with his colleagues. But there was not one of them who did not hold him in the highest esteem as a statesman ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... manner soever afforded us, is equally from God."—Butler's Analogy, p. 264. "For instance, sickness and untimely death is the consequence of intemperance."—Ib., p. 78. "When grief, and blood ill-tempered vexeth him."—Beauties of Shakspeare, p. 256. "Does continuity and connexion create sympathy and relation in the parts of the body?"—Collier's Antoninus, p. 111. "His greatest concern, and highest enjoyment, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... down the double line—twelve in all—pausing now and then to take a closer look and judge of their condition, but keeping always at a respectful distance, for he was aware that almost without exception they were an ill-tempered crew. Contemplating the astonishing rotundity of their well-filled bodies, the spacious ease of their accommodation, the outward dignity of circumstances, and the absolute lack of freedom which conditioned their whole existence, he ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... excuses and remonstrances of Poussin, his friend insisted on his accompanying him to Poitou, assuring him of a hearty welcome from his own parents. From Raoul's father, indeed, the young painter received it; but his mother was a proud, ill-tempered woman, who affected to despise a dauber of canvas, and treated her son's friend as a sort of valet attached to his service. In short, she heaped insults on the young man, which even his love for Raoul could not force ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... will tell us. He will soon set things right. He knows all about horses. Jolly may have thrown his leg over his halter, and got furious. He's rather an ill-tempered horse." ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Think what some lives are in the home circle; all the other members of the family have to devote themselves to keeping some one in a good humour. The children are anxious lest the father or perhaps the mother should be ill-tempered to-day. This so-called Christian, with the primary duty of being loving, sympathetic, considerate, is a creature of moods; father is ill-tempered to-day, and the whole house is miserable; or mother, for some reason unexplained to ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... that nearly everything in this neighbourhood is in ruins there are no people about much, and it felt like being alone in a graveyard, or Pompeii after dark. We almost expected bandits and wolves or jackals. We started, holding on our hats and feeling very ill-tempered, but we had not got a hundred yards on our climb, when a motor tore down upon us, and Gaston and the Senator jumped out; they had been getting quite anxious at our non-arrival and come to look for us. Tom, of course, being an English husband, ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... and looked unwell; but to his affectionate inquiries she used to answer: "My health is good enough, thank you; and I know what you imply when you pretend to be anxious about it—you mean that I am cross and ill-tempered." She made it a point never to plead guilty to any physical ailment, as if it were a weakness unworthy of her, and also to discourage all ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... past ten minutes the spaniel had tried to bite Kerry, nor was Kerry blind to the amusement which his burden had occasioned among the men of K Division whom he had met on his travels. Finally, as he came out into the riverside lane, the ill-tempered little animal essayed a fourth, and successful, attempt, burying his wicked white teeth in the Chief ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... in a greater degree, the necessity is imperative, in the treatment of lacerated tendons, to obtain as perfect a state of immobility as can be obtained compatibly with the disposition of the patient; the natural opposition of the animal, sometimes ill-tempered and fractious at best, under the necessary restraint causing at times much embarrassment to the practitioner in applying the necessary treatment. Without the necessary immobility there can be no close connection of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... and I regard five as tea-time. But as you wish, dear Virginia." Aunt William pulled the bell with manly vigour and ill-tempered hospitality. ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... the king and queen had failed to invite a spiteful and ill-tempered old witch. The old witch was very angry, because she had not been invited to ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... course Carlyle indulged his moods, while Mrs. Carlyle fought against hers; moreover, he had the instinct for translating thoughts, instantaneously and volubly, into vehement picturesque speech. How he could bite in a picture, an ugly, ill-tempered one enough very often, as when he called Coleridge a "weltering" man! Many of his sketches are mere Gillray caricatures of people, seen through bile unutterable, exasperated by nervous irritability. And Mrs. Carlyle had a mordant wit enough. But still both of ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the little town which you may remember near Ragnall, they met a travelling menagerie that was going to some new encampment. At the head of the procession marched a large bull elephant, which I discovered afterwards was an ill-tempered brute that had already killed a man and should never have been allowed upon the roads. The sight of the pony cart, or perhaps a red cloak which my wife was wearing, as she always liked bright colours, for some unknown reason seems to have infuriated ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... good-tempered, lenient, free New York, was millions of miles away and Nigel was so loathly near and—and so ugly. She had never known before that he was so ugly, that his face was so heavy, his skin so thick and coarse and his expression so evilly ill-tempered. She was not sufficiently analytical to be conscious that she had with one bound leaped to the appalling point of feeling uncontrollable physical abhorrence of the creature to whom she was chained for life. She was terrified at finding ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... place where we were treated with disrespect during our trip was in Hebron," said one of a group around a table in the library. "There the natives were an ill-tempered set. They scowled as if resentful of our presence, and when we were driving away some hoodlums of the town threw chunks of mud and stone after ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... understood how the queen he had had for some time past had been so ill-tempered. He at once had a sack drawn over her head and made her be stoned to death, and after that torn in pieces by untamed horses. The two young fellows also told now what they had heard and seen in the queen's room, for before this they had been afraid to ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... very tired being shut up in the room with that ill-tempered boy, all day long—I know him of old—he'd try the patience of a saint. You'd have no gondola rides, no fun with your sisters, no play time at all, and no thanks for your pains either. And I'm not sure your pa'd like to ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... young wife, though otherwise on bad terms with her, married for his second wife a coarse German princess, homely in every sense, and a singular contrast to the elegant creature whom he had lost. She was a daughter of the Bavarian Elector; ill-tempered by her own confession, self- willed, and a plain speaker to excess; but otherwise a woman of honest German principles. Unhappy she was through a long life; unhappy through the monotony as well as the malicious intrigues of the French court; and so much so, that she did her best (though ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the righteous path, but he writhed beneath the yoke of poverty. His pride suffered because he was unable to provide her with more of the luxuries of life; in his selfish way, he loved her. Failure to advance made him surly and ill-tempered, despite her amiable efforts to lighten the shadows around their little home. When the baby boy was born to them, and she suffered more and more from the unkindness of privation, James Bansemer, by ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... s. of a ropemaker, was b. at Saffron Walden, ed. at Camb., and became the friend of Spenser, being the Hobbinol of The Shepheard's Calendar. He wrote various satirical pieces, sonnets, and pamphlets. Vain and ill-tempered, he was a remorseless critic of others, and was involved in perpetual controversy, specially with Greene and Nash, the latter of whom was able to silence him. He wrote treatises on rhetoric, claimed to have introduced hexameters into ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... might be of the superior class of mechanics, and who evidently regarded us with an evil eye, either because we were suspected Anglais or aristocrats. I resolved that he should become amicable. Ill-tempered though he might be, he was still polite, for at every stopping-place he got out to smoke, and extinguished his cigar ere he re-entered. I said to him, "Madame begs that you will not inconvenience yourself so much—pray continue to smoke in here." This ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... even worse for you than I thought, Randal. You're a good man, and I'm an ill-tempered ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... she came to a little hut which stood all alone in a small wood, hard by the King's palace. She entered it and asked if she might be allowed to stay there. The hut belonged to an old crone, who was also an ill-tempered and malicious troll. At first she would not let the Master-maid remain with her; but at last, after a long time, by means of good words and good payment, she obtained leave. But the hut was as dirty and black inside as a pigsty, so the Master-maid said that she would smarten it up a little, that ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... clubs into crowds of prisoners, or knocked down such as were within reach of their fists. These exhibitions were such as an overgrown child might be expected to make. They did not secure any result except to increase the prisoners' wonder that such ill-tempered fools could be given ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... my readers think that they have even a slight encouragement, from this conduct of the bee, to reserve all their sweet smiles and honied words for the world abroad, while they give free vent, in the sacred precincts of home, to ill-natured looks and ill-tempered language; for towards the occupants of its honied dome, the bee is all kindness and affection. In the experience of many years I never saw an instance in which two bees, members of the same family, ever seemed to be actuated by any ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... some word or letter in your answer, and the ignorance of the cathedral clergy will be harped upon; you will make some small mistake, which will be a falsehood, or some admission, which will be self-condemnation; you will find yourself to have been vulgar, ill-tempered, irreverend, and illiterate, and the chances are ten to one, but that being a clergyman, you will have been guilty of blasphemy! A man may have the best of causes, the best of talents, and the best of tempers; he may write as well as Addison, or as strongly ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... reached,—and no alchemist ever looked more eagerly for the moment of projection which was to give him immortality and omnipotence,—a gruff voice startled us with an oath, and an order to desist; and I well recollect looking back, for long after, with terror to the vision of an old and ill-tempered farmer, armed with a bill-hook, and vowing our decapitation; nor did I subsequently remember without triumph the eloquence whereby alone, in my firm belief, my brother and myself had ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... and zeal. It was his very zeal that was his danger, although it brought him slavish followers. He was contemptuous, ill-tempered, and impatient, but, of limited intelligence himself, he understood for that very reason the mental processes of those he would lead. There was a certain simplicity even in his cunning. With Herman he ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... interested himself to find him employment. The said philanthropist made a hobby of the French and British prisoners returned from Germany, and had in mind an officer, a crabbed South African with a bad leg, who needed a servant. He was, it seemed, an ill-tempered old fellow who had to be billeted alone, and since he could speak German, he would be happier with a Swiss native. Joseph haggled somewhat over the wages, but on his aunt's advice he accepted the job, and, with a very complete set of papers and a store ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... in the direction of her neighbour, who only looked at her in a bored and ill-tempered fashion, as befitted one who had gout without arched feet to display ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... exasperating persistence. Whereas Mrs. Elderfield had scrupulously obeyed every direction given by her lodger, Mrs. Jordan was evidently resolved that her husband should live, move, and have his being in the strictest accordance with her own ideal. Not in any spirit of nagging, or ill-tempered unreasonableness; it was merely that she had her favourite way of doing every conceivable thing, and felt so sure it was the best of all possible ways that she could not endure any other. The first serious disagreement between them had reference to conduct at the breakfast-table. After a broken ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... 'How ill-tempered you are! The "old nuisance," as you call him, has behaved very nicely. He sent his son over here to thank us for our kindness, and to ask me to accept a dozen extra cards from himself. The son is a very respectable-looking man, but rather shabby. He ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... talked of it, and shook their heads. They advised him to be cautious and gain time; to lead Ratcliffe on, and if possible to throw on him the responsibility of a quarrel. He was, therefore, like a brown bear undergoing the process of taming; very ill-tempered, very rough, and at the same time very much bewildered and a little frightened. Ratcliffe sat ten minutes with him, and obtained information in regard to pains which the President had suffered during the previous night, in consequence, as he believed, of an ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... unknown in whom the late Captain Stroke had taken such a reprehensible interest. He was a stout, red-faced man, stepping firmly into the fifties, with a beard that even the most converted must envy, and a frown sat on his brows all the way, proving him possibly ill-tempered, but also one of the notable few who can think hard about one thing for at least five consecutive minutes. Many took a glint at him as he passed, but missed the frown, they were wondering so much why the fur of his heavy top-coat was on the inside, where it made ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... father Olaf, who was so ill-tempered that Egil dared not go home and confess that he had become a Christian? Gunnlaug Starkadsson returned this morning from visiting his wife, and she says that last night the old man's horse threw him so that his head hit against a stone, and ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... yokd with a lamb That carries anger, as the flint bears fire; Who, much enforcd, shows a hasty spark, And straight is cold again. Cas. Hath Cassius lived To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus, When grief and blood ill-tempered, vexeth him? Bru. When I spoke that, I was ill-tempered, too. Cas. Do you confess so much? Give me your hand. Bru. And my heart too. Cas. O, Brutus! Bru. What's the matter? Cas. Have you not love enough to bear with me, When that ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of chastity and give it an entirely new seriousness and beauty. The notion of Mr. Newbolt that there were two Miltons, one before and the other after the Civil War, and that the one was "sincerely engaged on the side of liberal manners" while the other was an ill-tempered enemy of civilization and the arts of life, is a complete delusion. The "Lady of Christ's" who was unpopular on account of his severe chastity, was already a strict Puritan of the only sort he ever ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... endeavour to care for the unfortunate child. This wretched little thing was about two years old—a girl; its eyes were nearly closed with inflammation caused by dirt and neglect; it was naked, with the exception of a filthy rag that hung in tatters scarcely below its hips; and as its ill-tempered and over-worked mother alternately raved, or cried, the child, which even at this age depended mainly upon her nursing for its food, joined in a perpetual yell, which at length terminated in a faint and wearied moan, until it laid itself down upon the bare, hard stones, and fell asleep. It was ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... man turned about, flung his arm over his chair-back, and looked up at Dickie. In fact, he stared. His thin lips, enclosed in an ill-tempered parenthesis of double lines, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... mamma sat tending her baby, and looking so like a little old woman that I laughed till the gray monkey with the blue nose scolded at me. He was a cross old party, and sat huddled up in the straw, scowling at every one, like an ill-tempered old bachelor. Half-a-dozen little ones teased him capitally by dropping bits of bread, nut-shells, and straws down on him from above, as they climbed about the perches, or swung by their tails. One poor little chap had lost the curly end of his tail,—I'm afraid the gray one bit it off,—and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... the existence of little Mrs. Sheridan of East Orange. Norma knew in a second that the social ripples had closed over her head; she was of no further possible significance in the life of either. Leslie was pretty, bored, ill-tempered; Annie her usual stunning and radiantly satisfied self. The conversation speedily left Norma stranded, the chatter of engagements, of scandals, of new names, was all strange to her, and she sat through some ten minutes of it uncomfortably, longing to go, and not quite knowing ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... right way of talking, Lady Caergwent," gravely said Mrs. Lacy; and Kate gave herself an ill-tempered wriggle, and ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him as 'a peevish and ill-tempered man,' and not so good a scholar or teacher as Taylor made out. Once the boys perceived that he did not understand a part of the Latin lesson; another time, when sent up to the upper-master to be punished, they had to complain that when they 'could not get the passage,' the assistant would not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... years, even then, fell across his mind. It would have been difficult to find two natures more unlike than were those of Mr. Judson and his wife. The former was stingy, even to miserly niggardliness, as well as ill-tempered, sullen and morose, while the latter was one of the most kind-hearted and motherly old ladies imaginable, that is, had her kindly nature been allowed to exhibit itself. As it was, not daring to act according to the dictates of her own kind heart, through fear of her stern companion, she ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... strength, than the wife of a struggling man who has all the refined tastes and sensitive nerves of a gentleman, without a gentleman's income. I should see him growing more and more careless, more and more haggard, day after day; I should see myself growing old, ugly, ill-tempered, and sick, hour after hour. I have not the moral force of mind, or the physical force of body, to make a cold, half-furnished house seem a haven of rest, a piece of corned-beef and potatoes continued indefinitely ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... a sudden shock of surprise, she recognised in one of the occupants of the prize car the Englishman with the grey eyes. He was sitting beside an extremely pretty woman and looking somewhat haughty and ill-tempered, as though the whole business of the fete bored ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... administer the oaths, I saw how the city was being hoodwinked, and I spoke out repeatedly, protesting and forbidding you to sacrifice Thermopylae and the Phocians: {30} and the men to whom I refer were those who then said that a water-drinker[n] like myself was naturally a fractious and ill-tempered fellow; while Philip, if only he crossed the Pass, would fulfil your fondest prayers; for he would fortify Thespiae and Plataeae; he would put an end to the insolence of the Thebans; he would cut a canal through the Chersonese at his own charges, and would repay you for Amphipolis ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... was very rude to her once, when she said, quite out loud, that Father is very ill-tempered, and that, if Mother had not the temper of an angel, the house could never hold together. Mother was very angry, but Father did not mind. He says our house will hold together much longer than most houses, because he swore at the workmen, and went to law with the builder for using dirt ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... asked by that woman—by any woman—to get her that flower: and to be afraid! It was bad enough to be ill-tempered; but to be a coward, and to be proud thereof! He yielded to a temptation, which he had much better have left alone, seeing that Lucia had not asked him; swung himself easily enough down the ledge; got the flower, and put it, quietly ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... milliner, and it will be better to say nothing at all about the arduous artistic labours of the chorus-singer. The family only met together at dinner-time, and then they would sit round the table with sour, ill-tempered faces, the younger ones grumbling and whining at the meagre food, the elder girls with their appetites spoilt by a surfeit of sweetmeats, every one moody and bored, as if they found each other's company intolerable, and all of them eagerly awaiting ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... down in the library, innocently reading a book, when Mr. Carruthers came in. He looked even better in evening dress, but he appeared ill-tempered, and no ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... an ill-tempered and very dirty ash-cart driver turned up at the stables with a different horse from the one he had driven out that morning, much to the mystification of himself and certain officials of the Department ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... emotions and vengeful desires. Bel Enlil, the air and earth god, was served by the demons of disease, "the beloved sons of Bel", which issued from the Underworld to attack mankind. Nergal, the sulky and ill-tempered lord of death and destruction, who never lost his demoniac character, swept over the land, followed by the spirits of pestilence, sunstroke, weariness, and destruction. Anu, the sky god, had "spawned" at creation the demons of cold and ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... probably, in his openheartedness, have made each creditor a present, over and above, for "his trouble." But, failing the roll of notes, he only staved off the difficulties in the best way he could, and grew cross and ill-tempered on being applied to. His chief failing was his impulsive thoughtlessness. Often, when he had teased or worried Lady Augusta out of money, to satisfy a debt for which he was being pressed, that very money would be spent in some passing folly, arising with the impulse of the moment, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... this distance of time be discerned. Florence Nightingale called him the Bison, and his life's energy seems to have been expended in trying, often with success, to frustrate every single practical reform which she suggested. To the objection that Mr. Strachey has depicted the heroine as "an ill-tempered, importunate spinster, who drove a statesman to his death," he might conceivably reply that if history, grown calm with the passage of years, does so reveal her, it is rather absurd to go on idealising her. Why not study the real Eagle in place ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... from the Atlantic. Slobland is land reclaimed from the sea. This piece is on Donegal Bay. It was protected by a great dyke after the Dutch style. But the Atlantic is sometimes angry, and then he becomes unmanageable. He was ill-tempered one night (being troubled with wind), and he just washed down the dyke and inundated the reclaimed meadows, upon, which I have seen the most beautiful crops. The landlord, the Reverend James Hamilton, a Protestant rector, insists on rent being paid for this ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... effect on the men who fought under him. Though he was a brutal leader, they were ready to follow him anywhere, and had been known to call him le gros caporal, so strong and obvious was this likeness. He was a splendid soldier, though ill-tempered, cruel, and overbearing. He was a man to be reckoned with, and so the amiable Prefect found. Having himself plenty of scruples, plenty of humanity, and a horror of civil war, he found a colleague with ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... a lady of uncertain temper, and she was on this occasion so ill-tempered, and put herself to so much anxiety and agitation, aided and abetted by her shrewish hand-maiden, Miggs, that next morning she was, she said, too much indisposed to rise. The disconsolate locksmith had, therefore, to deliver himself of his story of the night's experiences ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... she could not mean to be ill-tempered—Ana, with a face as broad and placid as a standing pool? No, no, Ana was too simple to wish to pain any one! Yet as Jane dwelt upon Ana's queries, it came slowly to Jane that certain changes in herself ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... day—the mist and wind and clamoring sea and solemn hills, the dour, ill-tempered world wherein we were, our days as grass (saith the psalmist). Ay, an' 'tis so. I remember the day: the wet moss underfoot; the cold wind, blowing as it listed; the petulant sea, wreaking an ancient ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... Columbus has been greatly misunderstood, and his 600 biographers have in turn invested him with the glory of the religious hero and the contumely of the ill-tempered and crack-brained adventurer. An impartial critic must admit, indeed, that he was something of both, though more of the hero than the adventurer, and that his biographers have erred considerably in what Mr. R. L. Stevenson would call ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... of countenance with the butt and trigger-guard of my pistol. Again I must apologise, dear Baron, for so unceremonious and ill-tempered an approach to your hospitality. You will confess it is a sort of country the foibles of whose people one has to grow accustomed to, and Bethune gave me no guidance for such an emergency as banditti on the fringe of Argyll's ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... had no associates; indeed from his earliest days he had kept aloof from boys of his own age. It was not that he was morose, or proud or ill-tempered, but he appeared to have no sympathy with them, and thus, though possessed of many qualities which would have won him friends, he had not a single friend of his own rank or age in the neighbourhood. Whenever he was not out ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... The Horse took youth, and hence young men are high-mettled and impatient of restraint; the Ox took middle age, and accordingly men in middle life are steady and hard-working; while the Dog took old age, which is the reason why old men are so often peevish and ill-tempered, and, like dogs, attached chiefly to those who look to their comfort, while they are disposed to snap at those who are unfamiliar or ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... either love or respect for the ill-tempered governess of her younger brothers and sisters, but readily undertook to do ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... indulging in such conduct. Should the wife abandon her master's roof in despair he can rightfully have her brought back and publicly spanked with an instrument like a paddle, a somewhat severe punishment, which is apt to bring back to reason the most ill-tempered and strong-willed woman. Such a thing, though, very seldom happens, for, as women go, the Corean specimens of feminine humanity seem to be very sensible, and not much given to jealousy or to worrying their little heads unnecessarily ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... fellow, and damaged a lot, But I am a Great Gun, and got off like a shot; Indeed all were well, but for cold Colonel FORD, Who blames me, the Rover! Too bad, on my word! The Pirate of Elswick shall not be the sport of a fussy Commission's ill-tempered Report. To bring me to book is all fiddlededee— I'm afloat, I'm afloat, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... increasing tolerance—not to be loved. Since the death of her parents none had loved her, though many had borne gently with her spoiled fancies. But her coming in had brought no light, and her going out had left nothing dark. She was old and ill-tempered and bitter of speech, and, though all doors opened hospitably at her approach, all closed quickly when she was gone. Her spoiled youth had left her sensitive to trivial stings, unforgivable to fancied ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... out too,' said Lady Harriet. 'I wanted to have come early, and here we are as late as this. I'm so cross and ill-tempered, I should be glad to hide myself in bed as soon as ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... whom we could not refuse; and altogether I do not think we were to blame if, after the policemen and the swords and the crowd had gone and the tricycle was locked up, and we wandered from the hotel in the gathering dusk, we were the two most ill-tempered young people who ever set out to enjoy their first night ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... would seem that the species of anger are unsuitably assigned by the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 5) where he says that some angry persons are "choleric," some "sullen," and some "ill-tempered" or "stern." According to him, a person is said to be "sullen" whose anger "is appeased with difficulty and endures a long time." But this apparently pertains to the circumstance of time. Therefore it seems that anger can be differentiated specifically in respect also of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... are obliged to be put into separate pens in the cars on railroads, and at the depots, while woman must appear with an agreeable countenance, if not in smiles, even when the head, or perhaps the heart, aches, and are expected to permit nothing ill-tempered, disagreeable, or even unhappy to appear outwardly, but to keep all these concealed in their own bosoms to suffer as they may, lest they might otherwise lessen the cheerfulness ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... was higher than usual (min. 58 deg. Fahr.), but my men felt the cold more than the previous night because of the heavy mist which set in after sunset, followed by a drizzling rain which damped everything. My men were all attacked by fever, which rendered them more irritable and ill-tempered than ever—if possible. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Jack was determined that little Helene should not be left in the charge of such an ill-tempered man. If General von Berthold could show such spleen because his man servant displeased him slightly he was apt to treat ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... you can do without me," muttered the old man, feeling as though a weight of anger were being lifted from his heart. "Let somebody else look after you now! I am stingy and ill-tempered. . . . It's nasty living with me, so you try living with other people . . . . ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... little appreciated by some worthy people, who think roughness a proof of sincerity, and that rudeness marks the honest truth of their affections. And where there is little kindness of nature, and a great deal of selfishness and ill-tempered indulgence, as in this cross, old man before us, still the habit of politeness was not without avail; it kept him in a certain check, and certainly rendered him more tolerable. He was not quite such a brute bear as he would have been, left to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... children—three girls and two boys. My father is a mechanic, but sometimes he's out of work, and then didn't he used to scold! Just as though we were to blame! Poor Mother! I've often pitied her for marrying my father, who was naturally cross and ill-tempered even when things didn't go wrong. Half the time mother daren't say her soul was her own, and, besides, she was naturally one of those meek, timid kind that would put up with anything for ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... weather affected the sensitive or ailing in material ways. Daniel Robson's fit of rheumatism incapacitated him from stirring abroad; and to a man of his active habits, and somewhat inactive mind, this was a great hardship. He was not ill-tempered naturally, but this state of confinement made him more ill-tempered than he had ever been before in his life. He sat in the chimney-corner, abusing the weather and doubting the wisdom or desirableness ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... its tones sharp and harsh, and its actions rough and hasty. I took it for a mother's sickly favourite, deformed in character to compensate for physical deformity. Watching them for a short time, I saw the little creature repeatedly break out in all the humours of an ill-tempered, over-indulged youngest-born in an ill-managed family; snatching toys from the others, and now and then slapping or pinching them. But they never returned either word or blow, even when pain or vexation brought the tears to their eyes. When its caprices became ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... that I should have gravitated into journalism in any case; but it was poor old Dr Kenealy, who was afterwards famous as the intrepid, if ill-tempered, counsel for the Tichborne Claimant, who gave me my first active impulse towards the business. The Borough of Wednesbury had just been created, and my own native parish was a part of it. The Liberals chose as ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... me the invisible drip of the trees was as persistent as ever. Very slowly and shakily I scrambled to my feet. My head ached savagely, I was chilled to the core, and every part of my body felt as if it had been trampled on by a powerful and rather ill-tempered mule. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... I now looked around the room. It was rather scantily furnished; I could see nothing but some tubs and barrels, the mast of a boat, and a sail or two. Seated upon the tubs were three or four men coarsely dressed, like fishermen or shipwrights. The principal personage was a surly, ill-tempered-looking fellow of about thirty-five, whom I discovered to be the alcalde of Finisterra. After I had looked about me for a minute, the alcalde, giving his whiskers ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... and had already attained the position of leading lawyer in his native town of Steubenville in Ohio and acted as reporter of the Supreme Court of that State. He was a solemn reserved young man, with a square fleshy face and a strong ill-tempered jaw. His tight lips curved downwards at the corners and, combined with his bold eyes, gave him an air of peculiar shrewdness and purpose. He did not forget that he came of good professional stock—New England on one side and Virginia on the other—and that he was college-bred, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... struck me, or, for instance, the nun-like expression I had seen on her face the day before—all that was unknown and incomprehensible to me. When in my collisions with her I tried to define what sort of a person she was, my psychology went no farther than deciding that she was giddy, impractical, ill-tempered, guided by feminine logic; and it seemed to me that that was quite sufficient. But now that she was crying I had a ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of Hiiaka, sister of Pele. She is journeying with the beautiful Hopoe to feteh prince Lohiau to the court of Pele. They have come by a steep and narrow path to the brink of the Wai-lua river, Kauai, at this point spanned by a single plank. But the bridge is gone, removed by an ill-tempered naiad (witch) said to have come from Kahiki, whose name, Wai-lua, is the same as that of the stream. Hiiaka calls out, demanding that the plank be restored to its place. Wai-lua does not recognize the deity in Hiiaka ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... queen's dignity from some humiliation when wrangles took place, and accusations of cheating were made in her presence. The gaming-table is a notorious leveler of distinctions, and the worst-behaved of the guests were too frequently the king's own brothers; they were rude, overbearing, and ill-tempered. The Count de Provence on one occasion so wholly forgot the respect due to her, that he assaulted a gentleman in her presence; and the Count d'Artois, who played for very high stakes, invariably lost his ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... beetle-browed fellow, swung his long blow-pipe with its lump of glowing glass in a full circle, high in air and almost to touch the ground; another was at a 'bocca' in the low glare; all were busy, and the air was very hot and close. The men looked grim and ill-tempered. ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... together—we regret and pity her. We wonder she was so good—we sorrow at the impurity,—not so much of the beset actress, as of her position. We know that, though fallen, she was not depraved. She was not avaricious, nor intriguing, nor ill-tempered, nor unjust. Her regard for literature (though she could hardly sign her own name) proved the up-looking of her better nature; and her charity was unbounded. Shall we—reared and instructed in all righteous ways—shall we show less charity to the memory of one who in her latter days rose out of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... or ill-tempered declared it would be impossible to cook the edifice which Mother Mitchel had built; and the doctors were, no one knows why, the saddest of all. Mother Mitchel, smiling at the general bewilderment, mounted the summit of the tart; she waved her crutch in the air, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... his team at the well, with the sound of oaths. He was tired, hungry, and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate to care. His poor, overworked team did not move quickly enough for him, and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyes gleamed wrathfully from ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... predictions at one period astonished Europe; his presence, like some portentous comet, threatening war and disaster, perplexing even emperors and princes, and filling them with apprehension and dismay. But Dee was somewhat fallen from this high and dangerous celebrity. He was become querulous and ill-tempered. Never satisfied with his present condition, but always aiming at some greater thing, he generally contrived to lose what he already possessed. At one time, to control the destinies and acquire the supreme direction ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... changed and he became so ill-tempered and surly that there was no going near him. He began to be more often absent from home, too. I did not meet Raissa at all. From time to time, I caught a glimpse of her in the distance, rapidly crossing the street with her beautiful, light step, straight as an arrow, with ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Tracy spoke archly, intended as a hint to induce Julian to remain: but he had other thoughts—and simply said, in an ill-tempered tone of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... as one of its members, though we welcome everyone, and, like all the girls of the village, she enjoys the use of our library. She is not clever, however. She is an envious and a rather ill-tempered girl, with very little of the spirit of sisterhood in her. And she nurses her defect of isolation and self-sufficiency. I hope that we may win her over to wider, sweeter outlooks ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... that Sophie was really determined not to dress her for some time, she sat down on the floor in silence, and leaning her head up against the side of her crib, kicked about for some minutes in a very ill-tempered way indeed. After a while she grew tired of this conduct, which to her great surprise did not seem to make Sophie the least bit angry, and not knowing what to do with herself she sat staring about the room with a very sulky expression on ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... was so intense that her eyes filled with tears, awakening the tortures of jealousy in her lover. After these interviews, Desnoyers was more ill-tempered and ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... know not why I love him so; It is enchantment, surely! He's dry and snuffy, deaf and slow Ill-tempered, weak and poorly! He's ugly, and absurdly dressed, And sixty-seven nearly, He's everything that I detest, But if the truth must be confessed, I ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... that hammer on my foot which made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up with my father's ill-tempered mare, so he would say, "D—n it, can't you whip her? Can't you whip better than that? The strokes of that whip of yours are so feeble that they wouldn't kill a fly!" Nobody could say that of his hitting. I had a little young dog that was very dear to me, and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... of Bias's Amalekite friend gladly rendered him the help and guidance for which he had been reluctant to ask his ill-tempered slave, and he soon became accustomed to the simple fare of the nomads. Bread and milk, fruits and vegetables from his neighbour's little garden, satisfied him, and when the wine he had drunk was used, he contented himself, obedient to old Tabus's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and friendly Malmaison; she left all this in Paris with the stiff Madame Etiquette, who once in the Tuileries had poisoned the existence of the Queen Marie Antoinette, and now sought to intrude herself upon the consulate as an ill-tempered sovereign. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... accident to his little son had angered Pargeter, and made him feel ill-used, but that it should have been followed by this mystery concerning his wife's whereabouts seemed to add insult to injury. So it was an ill-tempered, rather than an anxious man who joined Vanderlyn on the worn steps of the huge frowning building wherein is housed that which remains the most permanent and the most ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... come again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old sorrows over a game of piquet again. But it is a tedious cut out of a life of fifty-four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two. And to make me more alone, our ill-tempered maid is gone, who, with all her airs, was yet a home-piece of furniture, a record of better days; the young thing that has succeeded her is good and attentive, but she is nothing. And I have no one here to talk over old matters with. Scolding and quarrelling ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... attendant will show Sully's private cabinet and antechamber, with the rich decorations as they were left by his successor, including a ceiling painted by Vouet. Many an intimate outpouring of the Victor of Ivry's domestic woes did Sully endure here—complaints of his ill-tempered Marie's scoldings, the contrast between his lawful wife's sour greetings and the endearing graces and merry, roguish charms of his mistresses; their quarrels and exactions. All of which the great ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... truer than the truest friend, He must be tenderer than a woman's love, A father better than the best of sires; Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin Oftener than did the brother we are told We—poor ill-tempered mortals—must forgive, Though seven times ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... haughtiness of our cabin companion is something of a relief in this terrible heat. For it is hot. I am writing in the cabin, and in spite of the fact that there are two electric fans buzzing on either side of me, I am hotter than I can say, and deplorably ill-tempered. Four times this morning, trying to keep out of Mrs. Albert Murray's way, I have fallen over that wretched hat-box, still here despite our hints about the baggage-room, and now in revenge I am sitting on it, though what the owner would say, if she came in suddenly ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... good man, of a cheerful, happy disposition, always making the best of everything, and when accidents did happen, always more inclined to laugh than to look grave. His name was Osborn. The first mate, whose name was Mackintosh, was a Scotsman, rough and ill-tempered, but paying strict attention to his duty—a man that Captain Osborn could trust, but whom he ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... scold, Xantippe; porcupine; spitfire; fire eater &c (blusterer) 887; fury &c (violent person) 173. V. be irascible &c adj.; have a temper &c n., have a devil in one; fire up &c (be angry) 900. Adj. irascible; bad-tempered, ill-tempered; irritable, susceptible; excitable &c 825; thin-skinned &c (sensitive) 822; fretful, fidgety; on the fret. hasty, overhasty, quick, warm, hot, testy, touchy, techy^, tetchy; like touchwood, like tinder; huffy, pettish, petulant; waspish, snappish, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and the splashing of countless cataracts where overloaded gutters spilled their surplus on mosaic pavement fifty or a hundred feet below. No light showed, saving at the guard-house by the main gate, where a group of sentries shrugged themselves against the wall—ill-tempered, shivering, alert. However mutinous a Roman army, or a legion, or a guard might be, its individuals were loyal to the ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... being could object to," declares Monica, with such an amount of vigor as startles Kit. "But of all the ill-tempered, bearish, detestable men I ever met in my ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... taken with her, and in foreign hotels was even more shown about, flattered and snubbed, petted and neglected, than she had been when at home in London. Everything that could be done was done to make her vain, wilful, ill-tempered; and the little creature came to know that she might have anything she pleased if only she could make ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... and to talk about, whenever she had anybody to listen! When she was in good humour, she could admire the bright polish of its sides, and the rich border of beautiful faces and foliage that ran all around it. Or, if she chanced to be ill-tempered, she could give it a push, or kick it with her naughty little foot. And many a kick did the box—(but it was a mischievous box, as we shall see, and deserved all it got)—many a kick did it receive. But, certain it is, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... who is, according to popular prejudice, a victim of bad luck, and I will show you one who has some unfortunate crooked twist of temperament that invites disaster. He is ill-tempered, or conceited, or trifling; lacks character, enthusiasm, or some ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... same as if the causes were strictly moral ones. For instance, if you know that by sitting up at night an hour or two later than usual, or by not taking regular exercise, or by eating of indigestible food, you will put it out of your power to avoid being ill-tempered and disagreeable on the following day, the failure is surely a moral one. That the immediate causes of your ill-humour may be physical ones, does not at all affect the matter, seeing that such causes are, in this case, completely under your own control. From ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... least—disgraced, it was knowing that he thought me pretty poor truck, without giving me a chance to be anything better. I humped over the rail at the stern, and watched the waves slap at us viciously, like an ill-tempered poodle, and felt for all the world like a dog that's been kicked out into the rain. Maybe the medicine was good for me, but it wasn't pleasant. It never occurred to me, that night, to wonder how dad felt about it; but I've often ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... some lives are in the home circle; all the other members of the family have to devote themselves to keeping some one in a good humour. The children are anxious lest the father or perhaps the mother should be ill-tempered to-day. This so-called Christian, with the primary duty of being loving, sympathetic, considerate, is a creature of moods; father is ill-tempered to-day, and the whole house is miserable; or mother, for some reason unexplained to the children of the family, for days together allows ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... though otherwise on bad terms with her, married for his second wife a coarse German princess, homely in every sense, and a singular contrast to the elegant creature whom he had lost. She was a daughter of the Bavarian Elector; ill-tempered by her own confession, self- willed, and a plain speaker to excess; but otherwise a woman of honest German principles. Unhappy she was through a long life; unhappy through the monotony as well as the malicious intrigues of the French court; and so much so, that she did her best (though without ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... love as that. There was no longer any uncertainty; there was none of the keenness of pursuit dear to the old hunting instinct inherent in man; there was not even the charm of variety in her moods. She was always the same to him; always she pouted a little at first, and looked ill-tempered, and reproached him; and always she came round again at his very first kind word, and poured out her heart in a torrent of worship at his feet. Maurice knew it all by heart, the sulks and the cross words, and then the passionate denials, and the ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... of transforming into an open and declared enemy, owing to the influence the Marechal exerted over others. Tormented with agitating thoughts, every day that delayed his nomination seemed to him a year. Dubois became doubly ill-tempered and capricious, more and more inaccessible, and accordingly the most pressing and most important business was utterly neglected. At last he resolved to make a last effort at reconciliation with the Marechal, but mistrusting ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... life's energy seems to have been expended in trying, often with success, to frustrate every single practical reform which she suggested. To the objection that Mr. Strachey has depicted the heroine as "an ill-tempered, importunate spinster, who drove a statesman to his death," he might conceivably reply that if history, grown calm with the passage of years, does so reveal her, it is rather absurd to go on idealising her. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... as the boys laughed at this story—a true one—"we cannot accuse any of our men here of being ill-tempered. They are using this haul as they have for maybe a hundred years or so. This is the Hudson's Bay Company's idea of getting its goods north. With the use of a few hundred dollars and the labor of a few men they could improve all these portages through here so that they ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... Prince came. So she went away, and when she had walked a short distance she came to a little hut which stood all alone in a small wood, hard by the King's palace. She entered it and asked if she might be allowed to stay there. The hut belonged to an old crone, who was also an ill-tempered and malicious troll. At first she would not let the Master-maid remain with her; but at last, after a long time, by means of good words and good payment, she obtained leave. But the hut was as dirty and black ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... saying, "Well, here I am; what do you want me to do?" A beating is the last thing that they would think of. I am not now speaking of Bronti and Fiddy in particular, but all the dogs that ever I had. The reason is, that the dog is the very fondest creature that breathes; and any but a really ill-tempered dog may be managed by means of this fondness; while, as I before remarked, a really bad-tempered one should not be kept to be punished, ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... more may unreservedly be said for the Indians while they were under the control of the fathers. That there were occasionally individual cases of harsh treatment is possible. The most loving and indulgent parents are now and again ill-tempered, fretful, or nervous. The fathers were men subject to all the limitations of other men. Granting these limitations and making due allowance for human imperfection, the rule of the fathers must still be admired for its wisdom and commended ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... a right way of talking, Lady Caergwent," gravely said Mrs. Lacy; and Kate gave herself an ill-tempered wriggle, and ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Lady Harriet. 'I wanted to have come early, and here we are as late as this. I'm so cross and ill-tempered, I should be glad to hide myself in bed as ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the process was such, that he forgot even the hunger that was rendering him faint. He had often seen cows in the city, but had never suspected what they were capable of. When the girl caught sight of him, staring with open mouth, she was taken with such a fit of laughter, that the cow, which was ill-tempered, kicked out, and overturned the pail. Now because of her troublesomeness this cow was not milked beside the rest, and the shed where she stood was used for farm-implements only. The floor of it was the earth, beaten hard, and worn into hollows. When the milk settled in one ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... which shake the world, and others the tiny tubes which make a feeble cry, almost unheard. No one of us must sound his note save in that proper place and at that proper time which Duty indicates. We mar a perfect harmony by ill-tempered silence, and perhaps ruin the labors of our associates by a continuous sounding of our own ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... peremptory tone. What! disturb the duke! before he had called for him! it would be as much as his life was worth to do it; he would as soon venture unarmed into the cage of a furious lion, or the den of a royal tiger. The duke was always more or less surly and ill-tempered on first waking in the morning, even when he had gone to bed in a good humour, as his servants knew to ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... be a work of supererogation to describe it here. But strange mutation of disposition!—Mr. Pelby could bear these fits of perverseness with a philosophy that would have astonished even himself, could he have for a moment realized his former state of mind. When Henry became ill-tempered from any cause, he had, from loving him, learned that to get into an ill-humour also would be only adding fuel to flame; and so, on such occasions, he sought affectionately to calm and soothe his ruffled ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... non-juror, consecrated in 1693 suffragan bishop of Thetford by three of the deprived non-juror bishops. Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xvii. 450. Burnet (Hist. of his own Time, iv. 303) describes him as 'an ill-tempered man, who was now [1712] at the head of the Jacobite party, and who had in several books promoted a notion, that there was a proper sacrifice made in the Eucharist.' Boswell mentions ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... I believe," answered Martha. "People hereabouts wonder at their keeping the ill-tempered, arbitrary hussy. They say she rules the whole house ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... It was in this garden that Schiller placed the little drama he describes in Der Handschuh. Schiller gives the Spanish version of the story, where the gallant smacks the lady's face with the glove he had retrieved for her from among the lions, and then struts away for evermore. Romantic, but ill-tempered, whereas the local version here is that the gallant married the lady—perhaps she became insistent; anyway, a useful ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... attached members of our household, my wants had been all anticipated, and every pleasure suited to my age had been planned for me so ingeniously, that I had never had the chance of showing myself selfish or ill-tempered. She feared that when for the first time I found myself not first considered in all arrangements, I might fail in those particular points of conduct in which she was most ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... considerations, there are reasons why persons of the same disposition should not be united and wedlock. An amiable wife to a choleric man is like oil to troubled waters; an ill-tempered one will make his life a misery and his home a hell. The man of studious habits should marry a woman of sense and spirit rather than of erudition, or the union will increase the monotony of his existence, which it would be well ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Now the ill-tempered elder sister was very jealous of this good luck, and determined to get a bag of gold for herself. So she in her turn packed up a bundle and started to seek service by the same road. But when she came to ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... expect to enjoy the luxury of being ill-tempered without having to pay the price for it. I only ask that you may not make the price too heavy. When you choose to return to the Abbey you ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... was accepted; and James soon occupied the seat recently vacated by poor John. So well did he avail himself of the circumstances, that he succeeded in convincing Nelly that his brother was a very ill-tempered person, whom it would be well for her to avoid. On this, with the true instinct of a flirt, she endeavored to persuade him that she had never really cared for John's attentions. James was but too willing to be convinced of this; and he ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... slightly out of countenance with the butt and trigger-guard of my pistol. Again I must apologise, dear Baron, for so unceremonious and ill-tempered an approach to your hospitality. You will confess it is a sort of country the foibles of whose people one has to grow accustomed to, and Bethune gave me no guidance for such an emergency as banditti on the fringe ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... with a right to a seat in the chapel. And as he looked he saw some faces he thought he should like, and some that he thought he would dislike; there were merry, bright-eyed boys, like himself, and there were ill-tempered, sullen-looking boys; there were boys haggard with hard-reading, and boys who looked as if their heads were ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... dear," said Caroline, with flushed cheeks. "I'm often hasty and ill-tempered, and make Herbert worse than he might be if I ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... some whiffling husky cachinnations as if they were laughing through wool. Of none such comes good." A young lady must not speak too loud or be too boisterous; she must even tone down her wit, lest she be misunderstood. But she need not be dull, or grumpy, or ill-tempered, or careless of her manners, particularly to her mother's old friends. She must not talk slang, or be in any way masculine; if she is, she loses the battle. A young lady is sometimes called upon to be a hostess if her mother is dead. Here her liberty becomes greater, but she should always ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Your ill-tempered child destroys everything he touches. Do not vex yourself; put anything he can spoil out of his reach. He breaks the things he is using; do not be in a hurry to give him more; let him feel the want of them. He breaks the windows of his room; let the wind blow upon ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... darkness of an early March morning, and all round me the invisible drip of the trees was as persistent as ever. Very slowly and shakily I scrambled to my feet. My head ached savagely, I was chilled to the core, and every part of my body felt as if it had been trampled on by a powerful and rather ill-tempered mule. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... my position of dependence upon Aunt Eliza too unspeakably galling. What a monstrous injustice it seems that I—who if I had been born a boy, must have been Earl of Gaverick, should be at the mercy of an ill-tempered, miserly, old woman who may leave the home of my forefathers to a crossing-sweeper if she pleases. I suppose it ought to go to Chris, but one doesn't feel called upon to arraign Fate on behalf of a distant cousin who by rights has no business to ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... their study he begins to get right again, as he watches Arthur's intense joy at seeing Martin blowing the eggs and gluing them carefully on to bits of cardboard, and notes the anxious, loving looks which the little fellow casts sidelong at him. And then he thinks, "What an ill-tempered beast I am! Here's just what I was wishing for last night come about, and I'm spoiling it all," and in another five minutes has swallowed the last mouthful of his bile, and is repaid by seeing ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... suitable prey, or it establishes itself upon the branches of a tree which overhangs the water or the track of game. Being eminently aquatic this snake is viviparous. It is the only large boa which is decidedly ill-tempered. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... comical-looking one in the town belonged to a cross, ill-tempered, ugly brute of a hunchback, who, as soon as he learned that the artists wanted to paint him, asked such a price for his loan that they found themselves obliged to give up all hopes of taking his portrait. One morning, as Caper was walking out of the inn-door, he nearly tumbled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Tired, ill-tempered, and covered with muck as we all were, there was a tendency among us to resent this late arrival of Master Dandy Jack's; and this feeling, you may be sure, was not lessened by a contemplation of the extravagant cleanliness and daintiness of ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... labor, to arrive at that quiet enjoyment which they own without struggle, and which our anxious strife unfits us to enjoy when the means for it are obtained. The general, popular idea, that an Italian is quarrelsome, and ill-tempered, and that the best are only bandits in disguise, is quite a mistake; and when studied as they exist out of the track of travel, where they are often debased and denaturalized, they will be found to be simple, kind-hearted, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... know Mr. Lear,' Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer, But a few ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... him ill-tempered, must not play at all. He certainly cannot win, since loss of temper involves loss of judgment. A game like Poker, which it must be confessed is not calculated to rouse the finer feelings of humanity, is only tolerable when played under ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... a ropemaker, was b. at Saffron Walden, ed. at Camb., and became the friend of Spenser, being the Hobbinol of The Shepheard's Calendar. He wrote various satirical pieces, sonnets, and pamphlets. Vain and ill-tempered, he was a remorseless critic of others, and was involved in perpetual controversy, specially with Greene and Nash, the latter of whom was able to silence him. He wrote treatises on rhetoric, claimed to have introduced hexameters into English, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... him in a temper, or heard him speak a sharp word. He had a droll, woebegone face that never smiled, but a face everybody—from the mayor to the poorest mill hand—loved and respected. How often Benson had come in from school, ill-tempered and sour-visaged at something that had gone wrong in the class-room, only to have that droll face of his father's and some equally droll remark upset all his dignity and indignation into laughter and consequent ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... wants to work and prosper. And the hard fact is, that Adam's sons are not yet cherubs, nor their homestead, among the stars, just yet an outlying field of paradise. It is a planet whose private affairs are badly muddled. Its tenants for life are a quarrelsome, ill-tempered, unruly set of creatures altogether. As things go, they will break each others' heads sometimes. It is very unreasonable. I can see that. But men are not always reasonable. It is not for their own interest. I can see that too. But how often does interest, the best and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cannot bear the thought of his daughter marrying, on account of the dowry he would be expected to give with her, and he will not even allow her to see any visitors, lest her beauty should become known, and he tells all who ask for her that she is very ugly and ill-tempered, so no one will marry her on that account; but if you love Khadijah, my mistress, go to the Sheikh and say that you will take her without any dowry, and then he will, perhaps, be tempted to give ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... were not many people in Fentown Falls, and when much money was made by the lumber trade, Bartholomew Toyner's father grew rich. He was a Scotchman, not without some education, and was ambitious for his son; but he was a hard, ill-tempered man, and consequently neither his example nor his precepts carried any weight whatever with the son when he was grown. The mother, who had begun life cheerfully and sensibly, showed the weakness of her character in that she ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... the tail to drop off, but the people here have discovered a very artful trick of fastening it on again, and it needs a vigorous pull to expose the fraud. Among other tricks of the country is that of drenching an ill-tempered and unmanageable horse with two litres of wine before taking him to the fair. He then becomes as quiet as a lamb. I heard the story of a cure, who was thus imposed upon by one of his own parishioners. He wanted a very quiet horse, and he found one at the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... group Alpha is, or how the group Beta; again let him salute the group Rho; the name of the letters following its own proper sign. And upon the simpler and more guileless place the name Iota; and upon those who are more ill-tempered and less righteous the letter Xi. And thus in harmony with the principles and the life and manners of them arrange the names of the letters, only the spiritual understanding ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... The bus-drivers used to be past masters at it, poking their quiet fun impartially at their fellow-drivers and ordinary citizens. Whether it is that the drivers of motor-buses realise that no joke could be heard above the din, or whether it is that they feel as ill-tempered as they look, their arrival has made fatal inroads on the geniality of London. An artist with uncut hair can still awaken a spark of the old wit if he goes down a back street, and women and children will revive for his benefit the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Franciscans and Theatins did not attend the conference, nor did they send their opinions—excusing themselves by letter, with various pretexts, which did not taste like honey to him. The archbishop wrote to the guardian of St. Francis an ill-tempered letter, threatening him with vengeance; but the guardian was not asleep, nor did he forget the rule of "interrogation and reply," etc. At the said conference were present the Troyan, the Augustinian and Recollect provincials, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... and better nature of Iris recovered its influence at these words. "It is I who ought to beg pardon," she said. "Oh, I wish I could think before I speak: how insolent and ill-tempered I have been! But suppose I turn out to be right, Hugh, what ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... spoke archly, intended as a hint to induce Julian to remain: but he had other thoughts—and simply said, in an ill-tempered tone of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... to the wrong man—she was trying to escape her mother, or some such thing. And she'd moved into this apartment where her next-door neighbor, a nice woman really, had rather strange sexual tendencies. Well, what with those problems, and the husband himself—a rather ill-tempered brute, but a nice fellow basically—and her eventually meeting Mr. Right, ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... without any outward complaint, but with many an inward groan, the penance which she had imposed upon herself: the extent of it can be comprehended only by those who have been doomed to live with a thoroughly ill-tempered woman. The reward was surely proportioned to the sufferings. Miss Turnbull received a smile, or a nod, or something like a curtsy from Lady Pierrepoint, whenever she met her in public; her ladyship's cards were ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... go into your workshop, you find everybody sulky, touchy, and ill-tempered, everybody at daggers-drawn with everybody else, some of the men not on speaking terms with some of the others, and the whole FEEL of the place miserable and unhappy. The Kingdom of God is not thee, for ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... Heron!" she cried, jumping up with a dainty movement of coquetry and embarrassment. "Why did not Aunt Marie announce you?... It is indeed remiss of her, but she is so ill-tempered on baking days I dare not even rebuke her. Won't you sit down, citizen Heron? And you, cousin," she added, looking down airily on Armand, "I pray you maintain no longer ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... and what is not, anything to make me question my senses.... We tumbled quite suddenly on to some men, a small Red Cross shelter and two or three hundred soldiers sitting under the trees by the road resting—most of them sleeping. The doctor in the Red Cross place—a small fussy man—was ill-tempered and overworked. There were at least thirty dead men lying in a row outside the shelter, and the army sanitars were bringing in more wounded every minute. "Why weren't there more wagons? What was the use of coming with so few? Where was the other doctor, some one ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... the same complaints about us. They put us down as contentious, ill-tempered faultfinders. But these are the crafty passes of the devil, with which he seeks to overthrow our faith. We answer with Paul: "A little leaven leaveneth the ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... ever been ruled by a woman, and the Empress Maude, as she still called herself, was a proud, disagreeable, ill-tempered woman, whom nobody liked. So her cousin, Stephen de Blois—whose mother, Adela, had been daughter of William the Conqueror —thought to obtain the crown of England by promising to give everyone what they wished. ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as I trudged on, my mind was exercised on the question as to whether this part of the world was peopled only by ill-tempered bullies, surly wretches, or bovine fools. So came I to a place where the ways divided and I was deliberating which to follow when I heard a shrill whistling and glancing about, beheld a large woman who ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... than the wife of a struggling man who has all the refined tastes and sensitive nerves of a gentleman, without a gentleman's income. I should see him growing more and more careless, more and more haggard, day after day; I should see myself growing old, ugly, ill-tempered, and sick, hour after hour. I have not the moral force of mind, or the physical force of body, to make a cold, half-furnished house seem a haven of rest, a piece of corned-beef and potatoes continued indefinitely through the week seem a delicious repast, or an old-fashioned ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... were true," returned Hatty sorrowfully, and then her ill-humor vanished. "No, don't pet me, Bessie; I don't deserve it," as Bessie stroked her hand in a petting sort of a way. "I have been cross and ill-tempered all the week, just unbearable, as Christine said; but oh, Bessie, it seemed as though I could not help it. I was so miserable every night to think you were going away, that I could not sleep for ever so long, and then my head ached, and I felt as though I were strung on wires when I came down ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... be absurd to say of Mr. Quinn that he was an ill-tempered man, but it would also be absurd to say that he was of a mild disposition. William Henry Matier, a talker by profession and a gardener in his leisure moments, summarised Mr. Quinn's character thus: "He'd ate the head off you, thon lad would, an' beg your ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... "an ill-tempered girl can make matters very unpleasant; but such people pay very highly, as I pointed out only yesterday to one of our most promising Brothers. 'She is rather a common girl,' I said, 'but you know you were very unlucky at Newmarket lately; ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... for luncheon or dinner, and then, as she listened, some thought would occur to her, and, although she did not dream, her definite tracking of her idea would lead her to forget all time. Soon there would be Martha's knock on the door and her surly ill-tempered voice: ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... never idle. He had no associates; indeed from his earliest days he had kept aloof from boys of his own age. It was not that he was morose, or proud or ill-tempered, but he appeared to have no sympathy with them, and thus, though possessed of many qualities which would have won him friends, he had not a single friend of his own rank or age in the neighbourhood. Whenever he was not out fishing, he was engaged ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... harmlessly for the most part, with the inexperience and idiosyncrasies of various newcomers. After tiring themselves with the freaks of a mad Irish boy who had entered into the spirit of his own cross-examination with a high sense of buffoonery which refused to grow ill-tempered, they were now playing on the extreme gullibility of a heavy, open-mouthed, bullet-headed fellow, named Plumber, from whom the most astounding information could extract no greater evidence of sensation than a little wider stare of the eyes, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... her sweet influence kept his efforts along the righteous path, but he writhed beneath the yoke of poverty. His pride suffered because he was unable to provide her with more of the luxuries of life; in his selfish way, he loved her. Failure to advance made him surly and ill-tempered, despite her amiable efforts to lighten the shadows around their little home. When the baby boy was born to them, and she suffered more and more from the unkindness of privation, James Bansemer, by nature an aggressor, threw off restraint and plunged into the traffic that soon made him infamously ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... men who fought under him. Though he was a brutal leader, they were ready to follow him anywhere, and had been known to call him le gros caporal, so strong and obvious was this likeness. He was a splendid soldier, though ill-tempered, cruel, and overbearing. He was a man to be reckoned with, and so the amiable Prefect found. Having himself plenty of scruples, plenty of humanity, and a horror of civil war, he found a colleague with none of these difficult to manage. Nothing, for instance, was ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... and in consequence of several of the remarkable spoors of these animals having been seen the evening before, had taken four mounted Hottentots in my suite, all excepting Piet had, as usual, slipped off unperceived in pursuit of a troop of koodoos. Our stealthy approach was soon opposed by an ill-tempered rhinoceros, which, with her ugly old-fashioned calf, stood directly in the path, and the twinkling of her bright little eyes, accompanied by a restless rolling of the body, giving earnest of her mischievous intentions, I directed Piet to salute her with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... article of his creed is that children should have a reverence for their parents which would be exaggerated in the slave of an Eastern despot. We can pardon Clarissa for refusing to die happy until her stupid and ill-tempered old father has revoked a curse which he bestowed upon her. But we cannot quite excuse Sir Charles Grandison for writing in this fashion to his disreputable old parent, who has asked his consent to a certain family arrangement ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... hammer on my foot which made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up with my father's ill-tempered mare, so he would say, "D—n it, can't you whip her? Can't you whip better than that? The strokes of that whip of yours are so feeble that they wouldn't kill a fly!" Nobody could say that of his hitting. I had a little young dog that was very dear to me, and when it pleased my father one ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... great surprise I had become singularly attached to Francesca. A man is but weak and foolish, carried away by the merest trifle, and a coward every time that his senses are excited or mastered. I clung to this unknown girl, silent and dissatisfied as she always was. I liked her somewhat ill-tempered face, the dissatisfied droop of her mouth, the weariness of her look; I liked her fatigued movements, the contemptuous way in which she let me kiss her, the very indifference of her caresses. A secret bond, that mysterious bond of physical love, which does not satisfy, bound me to her. I told Paul ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... which met her entrance with an ill-tempered jangle. From somewhere in the black depths of the shop the dealer came forward. He had a clammy white face, with a sparse black beard, and wore a skull cap and spectacles. Mrs. Wilton spoke to ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... answered, passing his arm round her waist in a momentary embrace of reassurance. "It is I that am ill-tempered. I couldn't help thinking from the way this Burr pursues you that there must have been something in the story about your having been engaged, ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... great deal of crying, and punishments, very hard things to learn, and no fun any more. If that's what it really is going to be, I shall get so unhappy that I shall soon run away home again! And then you think I shall have to grow cross and ill-tempered, too—that is the ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... know that I have not gained a little. It is something, Jo, to know that I am not in the power of a bad, or even an ill-tempered man. I can sit by my fire and know that no one will come home to fret at me,—that I shall encounter no cold looks, no sneers, no bursts of anger, no snarl of stinginess, no contempt of my opinion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... will not listen to that warning voice of God. They see other people, even their own fathers and mothers, punished for their sins; perhaps made poor by their sins, perhaps made unhealthy by their sins, perhaps made miserable and ill-tempered by their sins: and yet they go and fall into, or rather walk open-eyed into, the very same sins which made their parents wretched. Oh, how many a young person sees their home made a complete hell on earth by ungodliness, and the ill-temper ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... westwards, mind and slouch thy hat well over thy brows. Then men will ask who is this tall man, and thy mates shall say, 'Here is Huckster Hedinn the Big, a man from Eyjafirth, who is going about with smith's work for sale.' This Hedinn is ill-tempered and a chatterer — a fellow who thinks he alone knows everything. Very often he snatches back his wares, and flies at men if everything is not done as he wishes. So thou shalt ride west to Borgarfirth offering all sorts of wares for sale, and be sure often ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... dogged,—to shows signs of very bad nature. Knowing this was most unprofitable to him I yielded indulgence. To be good-natured in cases of Emergency is a most valuable trait; and to whip a man for being ill-tempered, when nothing can be made ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... all I would say. I would not tell the boys all I was feeling or thinking; they could hardly have understood the depth of my anger and wounded pride, though I really don't think it was a very bad kind of pride. I had always been trusted at home. When I was cross or ill-tempered, mother spoke seriously to me, sometimes even sternly, but she seemed to believe that I wanted to be good, and that I had sense to understand things. And now to be spoken of behind my back, and before my face too, as if I was a regularly naughty child who didn't want to be ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... sleep under the same roof again;" to which John replied, with much, "Whare the deil can your honour be ganging?"] On the other hand, when spoiled by the indulgence or indolence of their superiors, they were very apt to become ill-tempered, self-sufficient, and tyrannical; so much so, that a mistress or master would sometimes almost have wished to exchange their crossgrained fidelity for the smooth and accommodating duplicity of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... tender pressure of the honey-moon. But women wear out, like other things, with time; and one fine morning Mr. Waldron woke up with a doubt in his mind whether he had not acted like a fool. He was an ill-tempered man; he was discontented with himself; and of course he made his wife feel it. Having begun by quarreling with her, he got on to suspecting her, and became savagely jealous of every male creature who entered the house. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... and the "coronet" of which Arline had been so proud; and mingled with it was an undercurrent of shuffling feet, a mere whisper of sound, cut sharply now and then by the sharp commands of the floor manager. They were dancing—in her honor. And she was a fool; a proud, ill-tempered, ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... as rich as Leonora longed for him to be. She was glad Dumont seemed to be putting him in the way of making a fortune. He was distasteful to her, because she saw that he was an ill-tempered sycophant under a pretense of manliness thick enough to shield him from the unobservant eyes of a world of men and women greedy of flattery and busy each with himself or herself. But for Leonora's sake she ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... had a long consultation as to the best method of proceeding to obtain employment, for O'Brien was anxious to be again afloat, and so was I. I regretted parting with my sister, but my father was so morose and ill-tempered, that I had no pleasure at home, except in her company. Indeed, my sister was of opinion, that it would be better if I were away, as my father's misanthropy, now unchecked by my mother, appeared ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... should,—should you not know another woman from Laura, if you got into bed with two women in the dark?" said she to Fred. "I am not sure for the moment if with a woman just her size, and as much hair on her cunt," said he. "I tell you what Fred, I won't have it," said Laura ill-tempered, "talk about some one else, I won't have beastly talk about me." "I'll bet," said I, "that if the ladies were to feel our pricks in the dark, they would not tell whose they each had hold of." Roars of laughter followed. "I should like to try," said Mabel. "So would I," said another. "Would ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... of mankind has led to the opinion, that there are few more disagreeable beings in creation than ill-nurtured bears,—bears that have been ill-licked,—those great, fierce, sullen, cross-grained and ill-tempered beasts, that are, unhappily, to be found in every part of this various world; but when all these unhandsome qualities are found in one individual of the species, and that one happens to have a sore head into the bargain, it is easy to believe the at home which he honours or ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... ashamed of the survival of our old beliefs and try to hide them, but let nobody say that as a people we believe no longer in charms, and the evil eye, and good spirits and bad. I know we do. It would be easy to give you a hundred illustrations. I remember an ill-tempered old body living on the Curragh, who was supposed to possess the evil eye. If a cow died at calving, she had witched it. If a baby cried suddenly in its sleep, the old witch must have been going by on the road. If the potatoes were blighted, she had looked ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... was about two years old—a girl; its eyes were nearly closed with inflammation caused by dirt and neglect; it was naked, with the exception of a filthy rag that hung in tatters scarcely below its hips; and as its ill-tempered and over-worked mother alternately raved, or cried, the child, which even at this age depended mainly upon her nursing for its food, joined in a perpetual yell, which at length terminated in a faint and wearied moan, until it laid itself down upon the bare, hard stones, and fell asleep. It ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... was very ill-tempered and impatient, continually crying for his supper, like little Tom Tucker, and complaining of the loss of his wonderful hen, which we verily believe he would have eaten, disregarding the treasures which she produced. Jack therefore rejoiced that he had not only got ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... doctor bethought himself, too, that there might be very natural explanations of the curate's escort. How else, to be sure, could she have got home on a dark winter night through that lonely road? Perhaps, if he himself had been less impatient and ill-tempered, it might have fallen to his lot to supersede Mr Wentworth. On the whole, Dr Rider decided that it was necessary to make one of his earliest calls this morning at ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... as are made by any town in France. The tradition of its founding lies hidden in the mists of heroic legend, and is the more momentous because it is so impressively vague. Over its very name the etymologists wrangle with such violence that one is lost in amazement at their ill-tempered erudition; and over its structure the archaeologists—though a bit more civil to each other—are almost as violently at cross-purposes. The best esteemed of those antiquary gentry—at least the one whom I esteem the most, because I like the fine boldness of his claim—is the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... is neither mere fancy nor is it ridiculous. It colours the whole of our relations to one another; it gnaws at my feelings, and then I torment her, make you angry, and lead an idle, empty, ill-tempered existence— ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Lazarus,"—quietly said the Roman, playing with his golden chain; "thou art even horrible, my poor friend; and Death was not lazy that day when thou didst fall so heedlessly into his hands. But thou art stout, and, as the great Caesar used to say, fat people are not ill-tempered; to tell the truth, I don't understand why men fear thee. Permit me to spend the night in thy house; the hour is late, and I ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... Lady Rowley was greatly grieved and thoroughly dismayed. It was not only that Mr. Glascock was the eldest son of a peer, but that he was represented by the poor suffering wife of the ill-tempered man to be a man blessed with a disposition sweet as an angel's. "And she would have liked him," Emily had said, "if it had not been for this unfortunate young man." Lady Rowley was not worse than are other mothers, not more ambitious, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the Sunday excursionists began to return from all over the South-Western "lung"—Barnes, Wimbledon, Richmond Park, Kew, and so forth—at unnaturally early hours; but not a soul had anything more than vague hearsay to tell of. Everyone connected with the terminus seemed ill-tempered. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... a letter intended to deceive: "It was believed without reason that he was at the Wartburg. He was living among faithful brethren. It was surprising that no one had thought of Bohemia;" and then came a thrust—not ill-tempered—at Duke George of Saxony, his most active enemy. This letter Spalatin was to lose with well-planned carelessness so that it should come into the hands of the enemy. But in this kind of diplomacy he was certainly not ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... of the farm, which had been bought by both, was assumed by the surviving brother. This man had a selfish, ill-tempered wife, and a family of great boys. Minnevich himself was naturally a good, honest man; but Frau Minnevich wanted the entire property for her own children, hated Carl because he was in the way, and treated ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... "Light and knowledge, in what manner soever afforded us, is equally from God."—Butler's Analogy, p. 264. "For instance, sickness and untimely death is the consequence of intemperance."—Ib., p. 78. "When grief, and blood ill-tempered vexeth him."—Beauties of Shakspeare, p. 256. "Does continuity and connexion create sympathy and relation in the parts of the body?"—Collier's Antoninus, p. 111. "His greatest concern, and highest enjoyment, was to be approved in the sight of his Creator."—Murray's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... about with him under his cloak. During the seven years' war, he was pursued by a party of Austrian dragoons, and compelled to take shelter, with his favourite, under the dry arch of a bridge. Had the little animal, that was naturally ill-tempered and noisy, once barked, the monarch would have been taken prisoner, and the fate of the campaign and of Prussia decided; but it lay perfectly still, and clung close to its master, as if conscious of their ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... been able to gather from the butler, who had immediately repaired to Daphne's room for instructions, and was labouring under great excitement, my sister's orders had been but grudgingly obeyed. Mrs. Chapel had been ill-tempered and obstructive, and had made no attempt to disguise her suspicion of the chef. The latter had consequently determined to be as nasty as the circumstances allowed, had eyed her preparations for dinner with a marked contempt, ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... another pile of plump ripe acorns, and three little piles of dainty looking brown seeds. But the thing that Happy Jack couldn't keep his eyes off was right in the middle. It was a huge pile of big, fat hickory nuts. Now who could remain ill-tempered and cross with such a lot of goodies spread before him? Certainly not Happy Jack or his cousin, Chatterer the Red Squirrel. They just had to smile in spite of themselves, and when Striped Chipmunk urged them to sit down and help themselves, ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... or knocked down such as were within reach of their fists. These exhibitions were such as an overgrown child might be expected to make. They did not secure any result except to increase the prisoners' wonder that such ill-tempered fools could be ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... proportions, hedged in by high palisades, through the interstices of which many a black muzzle now protruded, sniffing like ill-tempered women, or uttering shrill whines of despair. As Yorke, with his hands buried in his pockets, for they were cold, though his head was too well provided with clustering hair to be conscious of the absence of a hat, was contemplating this spectacle with cynical amusement, up strode the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... be vulgar, some might be ill-tempered, some might be ugly; others might be burdened with disagreeable connexions. I can understand that you should object to a daughter-in-law under any of these circumstances. But none of these things can be said of Miss Robarts. I ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... firmly fixed in the centre of the group of stones, a slender, swaying pine-tree, which creaked and croaked, and snapped and snarled with every gust of wind, as the princess had hardly ever done in her most ill-tempered moments. And as her limbs stiffened under their magical transformation, the hideous figure of the wood-wife might have been seen hovering round the charmed circle, her arms half changed into bird's wings, and her hands into claws. And as the king's daughter fairly turned into a ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... within the past ten minutes the spaniel had tried to bite Kerry, nor was Kerry blind to the amusement which his burden had occasioned among the men of K Division whom he had met on his travels. Finally, as he came out into the riverside lane, the ill-tempered little animal essayed a fourth, and successful, attempt, burying his wicked white teeth ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... so cross and fierce that I should be afraid of him: he was dreadfully ill-tempered when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... It would seem that the species of anger are unsuitably assigned by the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 5) where he says that some angry persons are "choleric," some "sullen," and some "ill-tempered" or "stern." According to him, a person is said to be "sullen" whose anger "is appeased with difficulty and endures a long time." But this apparently pertains to the circumstance of time. Therefore it seems that anger can be differentiated ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farm-yard, and guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior, and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings, and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart —sometimes tearing up the earth ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... coachman, opening the door; "no offence, I hope—but you have the most ill-tempered rascal of a dog! Since you put him into my coach, he has never ceased howling like a roasted cat, and looks as if he would eat us all up alive!" In fact, My Lord, who detested solitude, was yelling ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... her room, surrounded by her little court. It consisted of five creatures almost equally near to her heart; a big-cropped, learned bullfinch, which she had taken a fancy to because he had lost his accomplishments of whistling and drawing water; a very timid and peaceable little dog, Roska; an ill-tempered cat, Matross; a dark-faced, agile little girl nine years old, with big eyes and a sharp nose, call Shurotchka; and an elderly woman of fifty-five, in a white cap and a cinnamon-coloured abbreviated jacket, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... born for solitude: In all the freedom of youth and gaiety, She scrupled not to treat as ridiculous many ceremonies which the Nuns regarded with awe; and She was never more happy than when her lively imagination inspired her with some scheme to plague the stiff Lady Abbess, or the ugly ill-tempered old Porteress. She looked with disgust upon the prospect before her: However no alternative was offered to her, and She submitted to the decree of her Parents, though not ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... the old trader, came to me after a sitting of the precious Legislative Council. We were very friendly, and I had done all I could to get the Government to listen to his views. He was a dour, ill-tempered Scotsman, very anxious for the safety of his property, but perfectly careless ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... that day, and perhaps that was the reason that Speug grew sulky and ill-tempered, taking offence if anyone looked at him, and picking quarrels in the corridors, and finally disappearing during the dinner-hour. It was supposed that he had broken bounds and gone to Woody Island, that forbidden Paradise of the Seminary, and that while the ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... on a farm. His father had a number of mules, which he used in plowing his fields. Two of the young mules were very ill-tempered. Milton's father was very careful to keep the little pigs and calves out of their way, for fear the mules ...
— A Hive of Busy Bees • Effie M. Williams
... will I tell: God let his soul never come into hell. And yet was he to me the moste shrew;* *cruel, ill-tempered That feel I on my ribbes all *by rew,* *in a row And ever shall, until mine ending day. But in our bed he was so fresh and gay, And therewithal so well he could me glose,* *flatter When that he woulde have my belle chose, Though he had beaten me on every bone, Yet could he win again my ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... had many a kitten, too; and morose and ill-tempered as he was, found in them much amusement. His love for them, however, was not that unselfish love which led Mahomet to cut off his sleeve; but simply a selfish desire for passing amusement. He cared nothing for that most interesting process, the development of a kitten into a cat, and ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
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