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More "Meddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enthusiasts? Men who have abandoned their lawful callings, in which by industry they might have been useful members of society, to take upon themselves concerns the most sacred, with which nothing but their vanity and their ignorance could have excited them to meddle. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... man accepts as fate. Praise let the author try to obtain by wholesome effort; censure let him avoid, if possible, by care and industry. But when they come, let him take them as coming from some source which he cannot influence, and with which be should not meddle. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... hugged and kissed him. And there was no one ever so happy as poor little Tom, and he gaily swam away with them to their home in the caves beneath St. Brandan's fairy isle. But I wish Tom had given up all his naughty tricks. He would meddle with the creatures, frighten the crabs, and put stones in the anemones' mouths to make ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... thought proper to give Catholic Europe a warning not to meddle with Catholic Ireland. In the words of the official report immediately sent home to Walsingham, as soon as the fort was yielded, 'all the Irish men and women were hanged, and 600 and upwards of Italians, Spaniards, Biscayans and others put to the sword. The Colonel, Captain, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... go on with your work, Wimble, which you do understand, and not meddle with things ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... too ignorant to wish to comprehend her husband lest she should meddle in his pursuits, and who should find her crumb of the happiness that human life and family compact ought to yield, in "acting as a breakwater" to protect him, and "never disturb his peace," was a great artist's view of the education ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... I trembled some for the result) I had to let it go on, for she wuz one of the relations on his own side, and I knew it wouldn't do for me to interfere too much, and meddle. ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... Emperor Francis will never deem himself authorized to meddle with the domestic affairs of foreign states, or to arrogate to himself a controlling influence on their system of government, on their legislative and administrative affairs, or on the development of their military strength. He demands a just reciprocity. Far from being ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the contrast if we reflect that the Act was introduced in the House of Commons. In 1571, when the Commons began to stir matters of the same kind, Elizabeth sent them more than one sharp message forbidding them to meddle with such concerns. The speed, moreover, with which the Bill passed the Commons leaves little room for doubt that all was fully prepared beforehand, the revision of the Book completed, and the enforcement of its use alone made ...
— The Acts of Uniformity - Their Scope and Effect • T.A. Lacey
... Le Tort's Letter, brought this Bundle of Skins as a Present to me; but I told the Messenger, I would not meddle with it; he might leave it if he pleased: The Affair appear'd to me in a bad Light, and I would represent it to the Six Nations, who were expected in Town every Day. This is the Fact as I have it from Le Tort: I desire to be inform'd if you know any thing of this Matter; and if you do not, ...
— The Treaty Held with the Indians of the Six Nations at Philadelphia, in July 1742 • Various
... suggested to others, "that is the ostensible purpose of her frequently prolonged visits." He often walked by the lighted windows of the sanctum and occasionally slipped into the dark hall-way, so the watchman later said. The same irrepressible propensity to meddle in the affairs of everybody in the household where he was employed, in the councils of the various labor unions, in the meetings of political associations, in the official duties or off-hand chats of the men at military head-quarters, in the management of the ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... countries; for at this era it was a maxim with them, never to leave their own country. The low opinion they entertained of commerce may be gathered from Herodotus, who mentions, that the men disdained to meddle with it, but left it entirely to ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... that he was a very eccentric character, and for many years before his death he made gardening his one occupation. He never suffered any one but himself to garden here, not even so much as to mow the grass. After he was dead the poor old grandmother locked it up. She didn't like any one else to meddle with it." ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... a President or Governor-general, appointed and paid by the crown, and holding office during its pleasure; and secondly, of a Grand Council composed of representatives elected every third year by the legislatures of the several colonies. This federal government was not to meddle with the internal affairs of any colony, but on questions of war and such other questions as concerned all the colonies alike, it was to be supreme; and to this end it was to have the power of levying taxes for federal purposes directly upon ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... to eat. They take great care in catching him, for they are very much afraid of him, thinking that his sharp spines are poisoned, and can inflict a deadly wound. But in this they are too hard upon the fellow. He can prick them deeply and painfully, and he will if they meddle with him; but he is a perfectly respectable fish, and would not think of such a cowardly thing ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... were quite as real as any Frideswide had wrought. But though sickness and death, in the prior's story, avenge the insult to his shrine, no earthly power, ecclesiastical or civil, seems to have ventured to meddle with "Deus-cum-crescat." The feud between the priory and the Jewry went on unchecked for a century more to culminate in a daring act of fanaticism on the Ascension-day of 1268. As the usual procession of scholars and citizens returned from St. Frideswide's, a Jew suddenly burst ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... to agree with Miss Barfoot. I think that as soon as we begin to meddle with uneducated people, all our schemes and views are unsettled. We have to learn a new language, for one thing. But your missionary ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... you must. I have not the courage to make or meddle in this matter; in short, I wash my hands ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... the man in office; and as an experimentalist in several out-of-the-way provinces of life, I may say it has but to be felt to be appreciated. Well, this golden age of which we are speaking will be the golden age of officials. In all our concerns it will be their beloved duty to meddle, with what tact, with what obliging words, analogy will aid us to imagine. It is likely these gentlemen will be periodically elected; they will therefore have their turn of being underneath, which does not always sweeten men's conditions. The laws they will have to administer will ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that all opposition on your part will be fruitless, and will be visited upon you hereafter with severe pains and penalties. Forget not, also, that your characters will be irrecoverably damaged from your connexion with parties charged with the heinous offence of witchcraft. Meddle not, therefore, in the matter, but go your ways, or, if you would act as best becomes you, aid me in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... business to do anything of the sort. It's very wrong in a little girl to meddle. You shouldn't have gone into my room in the first place and you shouldn't have touched a brooch that didn't belong to you in the second. Where did you ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he said. "You don't like it to go out of your own hands. Well, you must just act 'dog in the manger' if you will, my boy. It is for yourself to judge. I never meddle with other people's affairs, whether about toys or big things! You shall do exactly as you like with your boat, my boy; and I daresay it won't be so very long before you and Walter will be able to go ...
— The Good Ship Rover • Robina F. Hardy
... friend. "A lone woman" in Margaret's position has in these days numberless objects of interest of which Margaret never dreamed. She would have thought it a kind of impiety to advise her minister, or meddle in church affairs. These simple parents attended themselves to the spiritual training of their children—there was no necessity for Sunday Schools, and they did not exist. She was not one of those women whom their friends call "beings," and who have ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... more than she deserves. Why should you suffer? It is nobody's business to meddle between ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... for the Augustinians over the other orders and makes various explanations regarding his attitude toward the orders. He then urges the bishop to follow his suggestions, and thus to fulfil his obvious and pressing duties—advising Salazar not to meddle with the encomenderos, and other matters which do not concern his office. Dasmarinas also complains that the bishop does not provide laymen to instruct the natives; that he allows the Indians to come to Manila too often ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... isn't the coolest thing I ever saw!" exclaimed Mr. Ketchum mentally, and, feeling that he had made a great discovery, was at first for sharing it immediately with Parsons's mistress; but on reflection he thought differently. "It is her funeral: I guess I had better not meddle: there would be a great scene," he thought. "At any rate, I'll wait until they are leaving before putting her on her guard." He went back to the dining-room to his newspaper, and sat there until ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... forced to sing low songs, and to dance low dances, and not to meddle with those of a higher character. It is said that when the Thebans made their celebrated campaign in Lacedaemon, they ordered the Helots whom they captured to sing them the songs of Terpander, and Alkman, and Spendon the Laconian; but they begged to be excused, for, they said, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... succumbs to him, and they say in spite of his behaviour is very much attached to him, though so incessantly worried that his health visibly suffers by his presence. There is nothing in which he does not meddle. The Reform Bill he had a principal hand in concocting, and he fancies himself the only man competent to manage our foreign relations. Melbourne, who was present at this scene, said, 'If I had been Lord Grey, I would have ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... she was laid up, the princess-dowager and Bute persuaded George to change his mind. They at once arranged a marriage for him with the Princess Charlotte, a daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and the marriage took place on September 8. The queen did not meddle in affairs of state; she bore fifteen children, and had many domestic virtues. On the 22nd the king and ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... good-will that once a year makes gracious the universal human face. This brotherhood swam and beamed before the cow-puncher's brooding eyes, and in his ears the greeting of the season sang. Children escaped from their mothers and ran chirping behind the counters to touch and meddle in places forbidden. Friends dashed against each other with rabbits and magic lanterns, greeted in haste, and were gone, amid the sound of ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... been your presumption and daring to come to correct the Council of the King. Casas must be at the bottom of this; who puts you, the King's preachers, to meddle in government affairs which the King entrusts to his Councils? The King does not maintain you for this, but to ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... I'm thinkin' about? He came in to see me to-day for the first time. He hates smallpox, and he smelt so of iodoform he nearly made me sick. About all he had to say was that it was very foolish of me to meddle with the clothes of them patients, and he could hardly believe I was so crazy's not to be vaccinated when the other nurses were. Just as if it wasn't him that admired my lovely arms. Look ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... "They won't meddle with persons who touch nothing," he remarked. "The dogs are right to be vigilant. Take a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... trees.} {SN: Soyle.} Fruit-trees most common, and meetest for our Northerne Countries: (as Apples, Peares, Cheries, Filberds, red and white Plummes, Damsons, and Bulles,) for we meddle not with Apricockes nor Peaches, nor scarcely with Quinces, which will not like in our cold parts, vnlesse they be helped with some reflex of Sunne, or other like meanes, nor with bushes, bearing berries, as Barberies, Goose-berries, or Grosers, Raspe-berries, ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... wholesome. Some things benefit us but put us under no obligation: for instance a man who intended to kill a tyrant, cut with his sword a tumour from which he suffered: yet the tyrant did not show him gratitude because by wounding him he had healed a disease which surgeons had feared to meddle with. ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... severity of the Austrian police. I know nothing about the propriety of the measures which have been resorted to for curbing the excesses of the Carnival: I think if people will run away instead of fighting for their national rights, they must be content to suffer accordingly—but I meddle not with politics, and with all my heart abhor them. Whatever the gaities of the Carnival may have been formerly, it is scarce possible to conceive a more fantastic, a more picturesque, a more laughable scene ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... they had found tumbling about in the current of the Brenta. For he had looked out suddenly upon them where the sea and the river strive together, and the water boils up in great smooth, oily dimples that are not wholesome for men to meddle with. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... not; and even if she was, there's not the shadow of an excuse for your conduct. You're just making a mess of everything you meddle with. Getting me jilted like this! What do you suppose people will say? What'll they be thinking of me? ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... of this, Marie!" said the Lady Catharine, sternly. "After this have better wisdom, and do not meddle in things which you do ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... send you to Siberia after all," he said thoughtfully, "only that country is in far too delicate a condition for you to meddle with at present. Go away to somewhere where I can't see you," he continued bitterly, "for I feel inclined to do you an injury, something permanent and serious." ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... instructed them how to act with reference to the mortgages on the Chaldicotes property. Miss Dunstable was in the habit of speaking of herself and her own pecuniary concerns as though she herself were rarely allowed to meddle in their management; but this was one of those small jokes which she ordinarily perpetrated; for in truth few ladies, and perhaps not many gentlemen, have a more thorough knowledge of their own concerns or a more potent voice in their own affairs, than was possessed by Miss Dunstable. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... he went away for a spell, always sed I wan't to meddle with it," he explained. "This time I reckoned his goin' was just about the same thing, only he won't be comin' back, so I—I just locked the box up in the cubberd and hitched the staple into the door and come ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... does you no credit, sir. You promised not to meddle, but just to let things take their course, and I must say that you are constantly improving. At times you grow suspicious—yes, you know you do—but, take it all in all, you ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... should not know of his brother's death. He went to Mustapha A'gha, and told him not to tell anyone in my house till I was better, because he knew 'what was in my stomach towards his family,' and feared I should be made worse by the news. And how often I have been advised not to meddle with sick Arabs, because they are sure to suspect a Christian of poisoning those who die! I do grieve for the graceful, handsome young creature and his old father. Omar was vexed at not knowing of his death, because he would have liked to help to ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... every way which does not limit the corresponding freedom of his fellow-man. But I fail to connect that great induction of political science with the practical corollary which is frequently drawn from it: that the State—that is, the people in their corporate capacity—has no business to meddle with anything but the administration of justice and external defence. It appears to me that the [228] amount of freedom which incorporate society may fitly leave to its members is not a fixed quantity, to be determined a priori by deduction from the fiction ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... firm in the faith, and all she could tell me of God's revelation to man I accepted gladly, without doubt or cavil. She had taught us that faith and knowledge are things apart, and I felt that there could be no more peace for my soul if I suffered knowledge to meddle with faith. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... them they are on dangerous ground. Will they be wiser than God? He knows our natures, and what to prescribe to us in our intercourse with him. I would as soon meddle with a law of nature, as with God's ordinances. I might as well neglect a law of nature, and think to be safe and well, as to neglect one of God's ordinances, ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... the boy may be brave and likable enough, but how are we to know what he really is? I don't like to take the risk. I don't like to meddle in such affairs." ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... intermediate state, whence their souls return to animate noble or base creatures according to their deserts. They give their children the names of filthy beasts, at the recommendation of their priests, that the devil may be loth to meddle with them. They believe in one God in Trinity; the son having become a man and died, yet is now in heaven. God equal with the father, yet man at the same time; and that his mother was a woman who is now in heaven: And they compute the time of the death of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... drop that notion out of your mind, and don't ever meddle with it again. Tilbury set that trap for you. Don't you know it's a trap? He is on the watch, and fully expecting you to blunder into it. Well, he is going to be disappointed—at least while I am ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... haughty and violent temper, and inveterate disposition to meddle in public affairs, were the real cause of her continual disquietude and ultimate disgrace and ruin. The minister of the day dreaded the ascendancy of so imperious and furious a character, should she ever become reconciled ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... jes' naturally lazy and no 'count. Like most no 'count people, he used to make a regular nuisance of hisself, poking his nose into ev'ybody's business and never 'tending to his own. Wasn't anything going on that this trifling member of the Buzzard fam'ly didn't find out about and meddle in. He could ask mo' questions than Peter Rabbit can, an' anybody that can do that has ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... have done nothing! That is just it. Oh, you see, when I start to meddle I do it very thoroughly! It is not what you have done but what you might do. And I was going to tell you what the real handicap is. It is not the being-without-things, without advantages, which has restricted the fuller growth of such men as Bat ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... happened to me! After all, if it does bring harm to some one, that is not my fault in the least: it is Providence which has done it all; it is because it wishes it so to be, evidently. Have I the right to disarrange what it has arranged? What do I ask now? Why should I meddle? It does not concern me; what! I am not satisfied: but what more do I want? The goal to which I have aspired for so many years, the dream of my nights, the object of my prayers to Heaven,—security,—I have now attained; it is God who wills it; I can do nothing against the will of God, and why does ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the others, with a touch of sullenness in their voices. "You have led us a fine chase, truly; first to be made fools of by that dashing young spark, whom it is not good to meddle with, and then disturbing this honest citizen and his daughter! Zounds! you drunken fellows, if you lead us this sort of dance we shall believe no word you say again. I trow well that you were all of you ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 1865, Parliament was dissolved, the Ministry having held office for six years. They had lost prestige over the Schleswig-Holstein negotiations. Lord Derby, with justification, denounced their policy as one of "meddle and muddle," and Palmerston only escaped a vote of censure in the Commons by being able to point to the prodigious success of the Ministry's finance. His personal popularity and ascendancy, however, ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... the gate was closed and bolted on the inside. Panna had been obliged to go out with the others, but she would not leave the spot, where she was joined by her father, though she entreated him to return home or go to his work in the field and not meddle with anything. ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... can concern me, or you, either. You must pardon me if I say that I dislike meddling, and people who meddle." ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... and then resumed with a smile: "No; I'm not going to meddle! It's better to wait. He's a man, after all; you really have some charm, ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... Drury to sound them in this matter; "aiming still at this, that it might be so done as the blame might be removed from herself." This nefarious commission Davison strangely consented to execute, though he declares that he had always before refused to meddle therein "upon sundry of her majesty's motions,"—as a thing which he utterly disapproved; and though he was fully persuaded that the wisdom and integrity of sir Amias would render the application fruitless. The queen repeated her injunctions ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Benedetti was instructed to submit a regular scale of concessions—the frontiers of 1814 and the annexation of Belgium, or Luxemburg and Belgium, Benedetti received the most courteous attention and nothing more. This was irritating. The French had been accustomed for more than two hundred years to meddle directly in Germany and find there allies, either against Austria, Prussia, or England; and the habit of centuries had been more than confirmed by the colossal raids, victories, and annexations of Napoleon I. A Germany which should escape from French ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... world. Napoleon, to use familiar English, "did not see it." When he liked women he liked them pretty and feminine; he had not the faintest idea of admitting any kind of partner in his glory; he had no literary taste; and not only did Madame de Stael herself meddle with politics, but her friend, Constant, under the Consulate, chose to give himself airs of opposition in the English sense. Moreover, she still wrote, and Bonaparte disliked and dreaded everyone who wrote with any freedom. Her book, De la Litterature, in 1800, was taken as a covert attack on ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... of John Kepler, or Lunar Astronomy," the object of which was to describe the phenomena seen from the moon; but he died while he and Bartschius were engaged in its publication, and Bartschius having resumed the task, died also before its completion. Louis Kepler dreaded to meddle with a work which had proved so fatal to his father and his brother-in-law, but this superstitious feeling was overcome, and the work was published at Frankfort ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... is very great; they make strange work in the reprints of French and Italian; and the Latin, I suspect, does not fare much better: I believe they do not often meddle with Greek. ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... you believe. Go and ask him yourself, if you are not satisfied; and don't meddle with what ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... any wild-animal species is a leap in the dark. On general principles it is dangerous to meddle with the laws of Nature, and attempt to improve upon the code of the wilderness. Our best wisdom in such matters may easily prove to be short-sighted folly. The trouble lies in the fact that concerning transplantation it is impossible ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... the reach of his arm, and by good fortune I was the last. He cut off the heads of the ten highwaymen, beginning with the first; and when he came to me he stopped. The caliph, perceiving that he did not meddle with me, grew angry: Did not I command thee, said he, to cut off the heads of ten highwaymen? Why, then, hast thou cut off but nine? Commander of the faithful, said he, Heaven preserve me from disobeying your majesty's orders! Here ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... me, Sir, to meddle with such matters as these."—"Yes, my dear, it does, when I ask your opinion."—"I beg pardon, Sir.—My opinion then is, that Mr. Williams will not care to do any thing that requires a dispensation, and which would be unlawful without it."—"Madam," ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... value your life... nay, look well to your safety. I shall not fail, by night or day, to think and do everything I can in the Pope's service; and bear this well in mind, that when you have reported these words to his Holiness, you never in any way whatever meddle with the least of my affairs, for I will make you recognise your errors by the punishment they merit." The fellow related everything to the Pope, but in far more brutal terms than I had used; and thus the matter rested for a time while I again attended ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... careful and sly we must be. An' do ye not bother yer poor head wi' yer sister's new notions. It's a nation o' throuble I'd have with a pair o' ye at once; and ye're no earning money, Phelim, boy, to buy off the praste. Kape a still tongue, lad, an' ye bite it in two; an' don't go for to meddle wi' matters concerning yer sowl. The praste an' yer poor mother will kape a sharp look-out; an' it will go hard, shure, if between us ye are not saved ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... aside the mask entirely, if, indeed, so thin a veil as that he ordinarily wore when not in the presence of his employers deserved such a name, and appeared the miscreant he truly was,—a strange admixture of cowardly superstition, (for few meddle with superstition without getting more or less entangled in its meshes,) of low cunning, and of the most abject and gross sensuality and vice. The invention and wit of Pippo, at all times ready and ingenious, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... heed to thyself what thou doest, and what thou sayest; and direct all thy purpose to this, that thou please Me alone, and desire or seek nothing apart from Me. But, moreover, judge nothing rashly concerning the words or deeds of others, nor meddle with matters which are not committed to thee; and it may be that thou shalt be disturbed little or rarely. Yet never to feel any disquiet, nor to suffer any pain of heart or body, this belongeth not to the ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... was Mr. Brough's condescension, that when some of his fashionable servants refused to meddle with the trunks, he himself seized a pair of them with both bands, carried them to the carriage, and shouted loud enough for all Lamb's Conduit Street to hear, "John Brough is not proud—no, no; and if his footmen are too high ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conscience and the hundreds of helpless, unfortunate poor men and women you have been the means of depriving of their hard- earned money. You have already been kept in prison for three days. Let me hope that will be a warning to you not to meddle in future with fraud, if you wish to pass as an honest man. If you touch pitch, sir, you must expect to be denied. Return to paths of honesty, young man, and seek to recover the character you have forfeited, ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... effort which fairly convulsed him. His face changed. He sprang up, went over to Charlotte, took hold of her head, bent it back, and kissed her. "For God's sake, honey, don't talk in that way!" he said. "All this is not for you to meddle with nor ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... appointed another of his brethren to be his deputy over Egypt.] He also gave him all the other authority of a king, but with these only injunctions, that he should not wear the diadem, nor be injurious to the queen, the mother of his children, and that he should not meddle with the other concubines of the king; while he made an expedition against Cyprus, and Phoenicia, and besides against the Assyrians and the Medes. He then subdued them all, some by his arms, some without fighting, and some by the terror of his great army; ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... you wish it, Vincent; but I cannot believe for a moment that this Jackson or any one else would venture to meddle with any of ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... met with Sir Samuel Morland, who chewed me two orders upon the Exchequer, one of L600, and another of L400, for money assigned to him, which he would have me lend him money upon, and he would allow 12 per cent. I would not meddle with them, though they are very good; and would, had I not so much money out already on public credit. But I see by this his condition all trade will be bad. I staid and heard Alderman Barker's case of his being abused by the Council of Ireland, touching his lands ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... bit, Grandmother," said the old man, in his feeble, quavering voice. "Did not I hear Tom say that he'd teach the little one to meddle with his job? You must go down the path and see for yourself if it is not one of his tricks. Something must have ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... together, discussed and quarrelled till three o'clock. Now he is sleeping in the adjoining room. I could not at first persuade him to undertake the mission. "My dear fellow," he said, "what right have I, a stranger, to meddle in your family affairs, and such a delicate affair too? Pana Aniela could reduce me to silence at once by saying, 'What business is ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... it on the back as he had seen the soldiers at Jamestown. But he dried it so long, they peeping over it to see his skill, it took fire, and blew him to death, and one or two more, and the rest so scorched they had little pleasure any more to meddle ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... plot between uncle and herself, so we won't meddle. All right, Phebe? Pull away, Prince"; and off they went to be received with ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... according to the old traditional pattern,—you as well as another. Where the material is hard, they put on more power,—where it is soft, more care; wherefore I caution you here, as I would in a mill at Lowell or Lawrence,—Don't meddle with the shafts,—don't go too near the wheel,—in short, keep clear of the machinery. And Hulia does so; for, at the last attack of Padre Doyaguez, she suddenly turns upon him and says, "Sir, you are a Doctrinary and a Propagandist." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a din as I had never heard before, and have never heard since. The bugles screeched, and the iron bars rang, and above all sounded the wild Border slogan, "Wha dare meddle wi' me?" which the men shouted with all their might. One would have thought that the whole men in Scotland were about the ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... men and victuals.' Later, letters were sent demanding that a large sum should be raised 'to set a fleet at sea ... we having but six or seven days to raise the money, and to return it to London; but our county refused to meddle therein.' John Northcote was Sheriff just at this time, and was most probably held responsible for ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... pleasure. [Lodovico sprinkles Brachiano's beaver with a poison. Enter Francisco Your will is law now, I 'll not meddle with it. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... in New York. Nothing can escape its eye or elude its grasp. It can soar high; it can stoop low. It can enjoin a Governor in New Orleans; it can jug a woman in Rochester. Nothing is too big for it to grapple with; nothing is too small for it to meddle with.... By the by, we advise Miss Anthony not to go to jail. Perhaps she feels that she deserves some punishment for voting for General Grant, but it is a bailable offense. "Going to jail for the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... perhaps, not having any answer at all, and Ina smiled and went out into the court by himself, saying that he would not meddle with such matters. So I was left to the queen by ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... vigorous opposition from the Tories and the merchants of Liverpool; and in March the first indication of its desire to open the question of religious equality by allowing Catholic officers to serve in the army was met on the part of the king by the demand of a pledge not to meddle with the question. On the refusal of this pledge the Ministry was dismissed. Its fall was the final close of that union of parties in face of the war with France which had brought about the junction of the bulk of the Whig party ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... a while written different things and rubbed them out again, when I exclaimed impatiently, "It will not do!"—"So much the better," said the dear girl in a grave tone: "I wished that it might not do! You should not meddle in such matters." She arose from the distaff, and, stepping towards the table, gave me a severe lecture, with a great deal of good sense and kindliness. "The thing seems an innocent jest: it is a jest, but it is not innocent. I have already ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Hepzibah's he could neither enter upon nor join in any general conversation; and so marked was his silence and embarrassed his manner that the assembled party came to the charitable conclusion that something had gone wrong in the adjustment of his liquor; and knowing it was ticklish work to meddle with a man who with a glass beyond had fallen a drop short, they made no opposition to Eve's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... that gentleman, with a grimace. "I learned the nature of benzine pretty thoroughly when I first came on the Creek. I had been at work over one of the wells, and got my clothes pretty oily, but thought I would not ask my wife to meddle with them. So I sent for a pail of benzine, and, shutting myself up in my shop, set to work to wash my clothes. I succeeded very well for a first attempt; and when I had done, and hung them up to dry, I felt quite proud. Then, as it was pretty cold, I thought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... my graceless pupil. Urge the foaming steed, and strike terror into the rapid stag, but meddle not with matters too high ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... erroneously, that your safety and honour are concerned. I am sure—at least I think, my father would approve of my writing; for Mr. Rubrick is fled to his cousin's at the Duchran, to to be out of danger from the soldiers and the Whigs, and Bailie Macwheeble does not like to meddle (he says) in other men's concerns, though I hope what may serve my father's friend at such a time as this cannot be termed improper interference. Farewell, Captain Waverley! I shall probably never see you more; for it would be very improper to wish you to ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... do him to meddle in that fashion?" burst from Reade. "The mean, worthless fellow! And we had plenty of reason to feel grateful to Colonel Garwood, Amos's father, after the handsome uniforms ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... comrades were brought into a very pitiable situation. The women particularly, much more fierce than the men, took delight in tormenting us. Our masters could not make any great resistance; they appeared; on the contrary, much better pleased that they should teaze us, than meddle with the lading ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... gives the flower a better chance of developing, a much larger blossom being the result. Even Her Majesty would help with this work. She was very particular about these plants, and would not allow any of us to meddle with them if our hands were not perfectly cool, as to touch them with hot hands would cause the leaves to shrivel up. These flowers are generally in full bloom about the end of the ninth moon or beginning of the ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... Dragon, with cuts, Mandringo's Pismires rebuffeted and retro-confounded, Is qui me dubitat, or a flap against the Maggot of Heresie, Efflorescentina Flosculorum, or a choice collection of F. (sic) Withers Poems or the like, I do not intend to meddle with it. Alas, sir, I am as unlikely to read your book that I can't get down the title no more than a duck can swallow a yoked heifer'—and then follows an imitation of gulps straining at the divided ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... themselves to slavery as a permanent system. Meanwhile, South Carolina and Georgia found in the institution the source of their economic well-being and hotly challenged the right of other sections to speak ill of it or meddle with it in any way, lest their domestic security be endangered. [Footnote: See Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation, XVI.)] When the south became fully conscious that slavery set the section apart from the ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... "Lords, my lady would not for aught have allowed that you should have seen her or troubled yourself about her. There were enough and to spare of good leeches, but never did my lady please that one or other of them should see her who could meddle with her illness." "No?" "By my faith, that did she truly not." Then they remembered Solomon, and that his wife hated him so much that she betrayed him under a pretence of death. Perhaps this lady has done the same thing; but if they ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... now favourably situated in Natal. They had established an equitable if not a legal claim to it; Dingaan was out of the way; and the British Government seemed indisposed to inter-meddle. But the fatal and grotesque alliance with Panda, which culminated in his installation as King of the Zulus by Pretorius in 1840, and which was entirely inconsistent with the attitude hitherto assumed towards the natives, was the undoing of ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... undertake to say, under the rational and fair administration of foreign affairs by the noble Lord the Member for King's Lynn, is just as much respected by all foreign Powers as she was when we were ready to meddle in every stupid quarrel that occurred ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... reasoning?" It is with something of the same satisfaction that Renan, writing of 1898, says that the finer dreams had been disastrous when brought into the domain of facts, and that human concerns only began to improve when the ideologues ceased to meddle ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... look upon a life-passage such as was written in Wallingford's Book of Memory. The brief but fierce struggle was over with him; and he was moving steadily onward, sadder, no doubt, for the experience, and wiser, no doubt. But the secret was his own, and I felt that no one ought to meddle therewith. Still, a relation of the fact, showing how deeply the man could feel, and how strong he was in self-mastery, could not but raise him in the estimation of Mrs. ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... was certain to take sides against her. He, therefore, thought it advisable that English diplomacy should be brought to bear at Vienna, so as to 'produce a frank abandonment of Lombardy and Venice on the part of Austria.' He declared that it was not to the advantage of England to meddle with the internal affairs of Spain; but he thought there was a favourable chance of coming to an understanding with Germany, where the Schleswig-Holstein question already threatened disturbance. 'It is our interest,' are the final words of this significant ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... just that sort of a trick. Of course, Sara is rich enough without accepting a sou under the will, but she's a canny person. She hasn't handed it back to us on a silver platter, with thanks; still, on the other hand, she refuses to meddle. She makes us feel pretty small. She won't sell out to us. She just sits tight. That's what gets under ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... girl who leaves her plain country home, and sacrifices her health, and perhaps her virtue, in a city workshop. Disputatious people, passionate people, those who indulge in personalities, and those who meddle with what don't concern them, are very apt to wish they had let well enough alone. People who are forever changing their residence or their store, their clerks, or their domestics, frequently find reason for such a wish. ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... the barn. I question not But he, who search'd our volume, leaf by leaf, Might still find page with this inscription on't, 'I am as I was wont.' Yet such were not From Acquasparta nor Casale, whence Of those, who come to meddle with the text, One stretches and another cramps its rule. Bonaventura's life in me behold, From Bagnororegio, one, who in discharge Of my great offices still laid aside All sinister aim. Illuminato here, And Agostino join me: two they were, Among the first of those ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... and that Lord Wharton knew that I understood it so. He said that he had written twice to Lord Wharton about me, who both times said nothing at all to that part of his letter. I am advised not to meddle in the affair of the First-Fruits, till this hurry is a little over, which still depends, and we are all in the dark. Lord President told me he expects every day to be out, and has done so these two months. I protest, upon my ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... forbidden, monsieur, to meddle in your affairs; but Madame de Saint-Esteve is in business, and will attend to your orders," replied ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the landlord repeated heartily. "I do not meddle in politics, being content to earn my living by my business, and to receive all who can pay their reckoning, without caring a jot whether they be ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... into a trench,—a half-mile, for instance, of promiscuous corpses. This is the fate of all, except those whose friends choose to pay an exorbitant sum to have them buried under the pavement of a church. The Italians have an excessive dread of corpses, and never meddle with those of their nearest and dearest relatives. They have a horror of death, too, especially of sudden death, and most particularly of apoplexy; and no wonder, as it gives no time for the last ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it up," remarked Mr. MacGlue. "The first words she addressed, sir, to the man who had dragged her out of the very jaws of death were these: 'How dare you meddle with me? why didn't you leave me to die?' Her exact language—I'll take my Bible oath of it. I was so provoked that I gave her the change back (as the saying is) in her own coin. 'There's the river handy, ma'am,' I said; 'do it again. I, for one, won't stir a hand to save you; I promise ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... you now we are both grown-ups. There's one for you! You wouldn't meddle with my business, if you behaved decently. I don't meddle ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... slothful is his look, And his words, as from a book, Issue glibly from his tongue. With an air of self-content, High he lifts his fair white hands: "Stand ye still! ye restless nations; And be happy, all ye lands! Fate is law, and law is perfect; If ye meddle, ye will mar; Change is rash, and ever was so: We are happy ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... might look for help, is the rara avis in terris, and, in regard to his sympathy with the clergy, would often be thought by them to deserve the rest of the hexameter; but it is really to his credit that he is loth to meddle with church music. Its social vexations, its eye to the market, its truckling to vulgar taste and ready subservience to a dominant fashion, which can never (except under the rarest combination of circumstances) ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... sciolists, and will continue to have them; and in every age literature has also had, and will continue to have its sincere and devoted followers, few in number, but enough to trim the everlasting lamp. It is when sciolists meddle with State affairs that they become the pests of a nation; and this evil, for the reason which you have assigned, is more likely to increase than to be diminished. In your days all extant history lay within compassable bounds: it is a fearful thing to consider ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... Nouember, and accordingly deliuered that inclosed to the king of this place, requiring of him, according as you did command vs in her Maiesties name, that he would vouchsafe to giue order to all his Captaines and Raies that none of them should meddle with our English shippes comming or going to or from these parts, for that they haue order not to passe by the Christian coast, but vpon the coast of Barbary, and shewing him of the charter giuen by the Grand Signior, requiring him in like case that for the better fulfilling of the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... for which a fast is usually proclaimed. If any man has a mind to enter on such a voluntary abstinence, it might not be improper to give him the caution of Pythagoras in particular, Abstine a fabis, "Abstain from beans," that is, say the interpreters, "Meddle not with elections," beans having been made use of by the voters among the Athenians in the ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... good and excellent reasons Coupeau answered with a shrug of his shoulders. What did he care for talk and gossip? He never meddled with the affairs of others; why should they meddle ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... to wife, and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle." "So thou hast smitten the Edomites, and thine heart lifteth thee up to boast. Abide now at home; why shouldst thou meddle to thine hurt, that thou shouldst fall, even thou and Judah with thee." But Amaziah would not heed, and the two kings encountered each other in battle, and Judah suffered a disastrous defeat, and Joash, the king ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... well for fathers," he went on; "an' when you're fathers yourselves, an' able to thrash me—not as I think you'd want to, kids—I sha'nt ha' no call to meddle with ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... girls of your acquaintance never meddle in such matters; but the truth is, papa always ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... he replied. "Don't you meddle with such matters as that. So you had a good look round ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... and subsequently returned of his own free will, which looked like meditating treachery.[16] Having once given up his province and returned to Italy, he was out of the reach of danger, but the passion for revolution had induced him to resume his title and meddle in the civil war. It was Cornelius Fuscus who had persuaded him to this—not that he needed his assistance, but because he felt that, especially at the outset of the rising, the prestige of an ex-consul would be a ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... exclaimed Mr. Ketchum mentally, and, feeling that he had made a great discovery, was at first for sharing it immediately with Parsons's mistress; but on reflection he thought differently. "It is her funeral: I guess I had better not meddle: there would be a great scene," he thought. "At any rate, I'll wait until they are leaving before putting her on her guard." He went back to the dining-room to his newspaper, and sat there until ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... some gracious visitation. The horror, at least, was lifted from my mind; I could look with calm of spirit on that great bright creature, God's ocean; and as I set off homeward up the rough sides of Aros, nothing remained of my concern beyond a deep determination to meddle no more with the spoils of wrecked vessels or the ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exact account of everything relating to the Queen—making her appear in the most favourable light possible. Little by little she introduced into her letters details respecting public events; without, however, conveying a suspicion of her own ambition, or that she wished to meddle in these matters. Anchored in this way, she next began to flatter Madame de Maintenon, and by degrees to hint that she might rule over Spain, even more firmly than she ruled over France, if she would entrust her commands to Madame des Ursins. Madame ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... to meddle with it, in terror of that witchcraft which he knew pertained to all written characters; but he feared the Black Baron's frown even more than the fiends who had undoubtedly nailed the documents on the gate, for he knew no man in all that well-cowed district ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... case at once," she said; "I am afraid, if you wave it about like that, you will drop it, and I value it very much. You had no right to come into my room and meddle with my things, and poke and pry in all ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... it will soon grow to a bold specimen. Plants three years old are 2ft. across; rockwork or ordinary borders are alike suitable for it, but if planted on the former, it should be of a bold character, so as to harmonise. I have observed that neither grubs nor slugs seem to meddle with this plant, which is certainly a rare recommendation. Its propagation may be carried out at ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... success of the project—then he is urged to take the practical mind of Smith to his counsels. Though Smith's leanings were not to practical life, his judgment, as any page of the Wealth of Nations shows, was of the most eminently practical kind. He had little of the impulse to meddle in affairs or the itch to manage them that belongs to more bustling people, but had unquestionably ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... you mix yourself up in my affairs at all?' he went on. Again she made no reply, but the question set her thinking: why had she mixed herself up in this mysterious business? It was quite at variance with the usual methods of her gay and butterfly existence to meddle at all with serious things. Had she acted merely from a desire to see justice done and wickedness punished? Or was it the desire of adventure? Or was it, perhaps, the desire to be of service to His Serene Highness Prince Aribert? 'It is no ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... English!" he was excitedly saying—"such children!—blue, clear eyes that see nothing—the devil! why should they meddle in such affairs? To play at such a game!—fool's mate; scholar's mate; asses and idiots' mate—they have scarcely got a pawn out, and they are wondering what they will do, when whizz! along comes the queen, and she and the bishop have finished all the fine combinations ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the use of being a gentleman if you couldn't help another gentleman out of a scrape? As for Herr Rabbit—the poor little Herr Rabbit-here he stroked his fur—what more honorable end than gracing the table of the Honorable Painter? Ah, these dogs of the law—when would they learn not to meddle with things that did ...
— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... [Beermann bows slightly—Commissioner continuing contemptuously.] Well, have you accomplished your mission? [Beermann nods.] Are you satisfied with this arrest or would you like to have us do more? [Angrily.] Once for all, Sir, I forbid you to meddle with the affairs of this office. You can preach your principles wherever else you like, but here I will stand for no interference. [Beermann timidly creeps along the wall, and bows himself out.] [Commissioner to Baron Schmettau.] ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... secret, I've no more to say; for I never meddle with any man's secrets that he does not choose to trust me with. But I wish, neighbour Grant, you would put down that book. You are always poring over some book or another when a man comes to see you, which is not, according to my notions (being a plain, UNLARNED Englishman bred and born), so civil ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... men's words but works they should be judged. And why do not we follow that rule in our judging? Do we mock God as one mocks another? Job xxxiv. 11, Psal. lxii. 12, Jer. xxxii. 19, Rom. ii. 6, Ver. 21, &c. Men given to change, false deceitful men, meddle not with such, if thou either fear God or respect man. For such will be sure to no interest but their own. Then calamity shall come suddenly. Therefore have nothing to do with them. For "who knoweth the ruin of them both," of them and all other wicked ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... little definite failure that is within the circle of one's vision. And even so, there sometimes comes what is the most evil and subtle temptation of all, which creeps upon the mind in lowly guise, and preaches inaction. What concern have you, says the tempting voice, to meddle with the lives and characters of others—to guide, to direct, to help—when there is so much that is bitterly amiss with your own heart and life? How will you dare to preach what you do not practice? The answer of the brave heart is that, if one ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... when they leap, they not only hold fast with their claws, but with their tails also, by which they often hang to the boughs, either to rest themselves or to sport. It happened that one Ballaster brought one of these cats out of a wood, having knocked him from a tree, and not daring to meddle with it when down because of its fierceness, he cut off one of its fore paws and brought it on board in that mutilated condition. Even in that maimed state, it terrified a good dog we had on board, but put one of the Indian hogs ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... him I'm thinkin' about? He came in to see me to-day for the first time. He hates smallpox, and he smelt so of iodoform he nearly made me sick. About all he had to say was that it was very foolish of me to meddle with the clothes of them patients, and he could hardly believe I was so crazy's not to be vaccinated when the other nurses were. Just as if it wasn't him that admired my lovely arms. Look at ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... during the recess; nearly all the girls took it into their hands to look at it, for it had a number of blades, and was rather curious; some of them tried the knife to see how sharp it was. We had been told not to meddle with her things, and all of us knew it was wrong; as I was one of the small girls, I did not get a chance to look at it till all had seen it; but, when the others ran out to the play ground, and I was left alone, I went to the desk, and took ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... hear the flute, harsh-grating, that invites With twy-mouthed music to her lewd delights, Where boxen pipe and timbrel from afar Shriek forth the summons to her sacred rites. Put by the sword, poor dotards as ye are, Leave arms to men, like us, nor meddle with ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Wellington is not to be at the head of our forces if he divides the substance. And after all this, Mr. Gladstone tells us, that it would be wrong to imprison a Jew, a Mussulman, or a Buddhist, for a day; because really a Government cannot understand these matters, and ought not to meddle with questions which belong to the Church. A singular theologian, indeed, this Government! So learned, that it is competent to exclude Grotius from office for being a Semi-Pelagian, so unlearned that it is incompetent ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hat in the mirror, and with her own dainty fingers setting the feather more airily to her liking. "Bigot is bound fast enough to me now that she is gone! and when he discovers that I hold his secret he will not dare meddle with mine." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... made so many changes in me that I dare not make any but minor changes in this novel. The author of "The Hoosier School-Master" is distinctly not I; I am but his heir and executor; and since he is a more popular writer than I, why should I meddle with his work? I have, however, ventured to make some necessary revision of the diction, and have added notes, mostly with ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... answered hastily, hurrying on. (She might restrict my eatables, but I'd be hanged if I was going to have her meddle with my drinks.) "Then you go down the corridor, and at the back of the palace there's a great big park—the finest park you ever saw. And there's ponies to ride on, and carriages and carts; and a little railway, all complete, engine and guard's van and all; and you work ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... he meddle? Do I stick my nose into his business? In the first place, it's a matter that concerns Bompain, not him. And what does it amount to? What is it that he finds fault with me for? The butcher sends me five baskets of meat every morning. I use only two ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... won't have to economize on love, and with lots of that you won't miss the other things. Now, Daphne, I suppose I shouldn't meddle in this, it ain't none of my business, but I like Dr. Eaton, and I more'n like you, and I don't want you to make a mistake. Dr. Eaton won't promise you a life of roses and leave you to pull out all the thorns. I know him. ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... against "the hated Venetian." At length he took the bold step of expostulating with Francesco upon his intercourse with the captivating rival of Giovanna. The Prince was furious, and warned his brother never to name the subject again, and on no account to meddle with his ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... pot on the fire, old 'ooman, and bile thee own bakkon," John answered her, very sharply: "nobody no raight to meddle wi' a man's bad ooman but himzell. Wull, here was all these here men awaitin', zum wi' harses, zum wi'out; the common volk wi' long girt guns, and tha quarlity wi' girt broad-swords. Who wor there? Whay latt me zee. There ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... on himself, and he shows the most perverted ingenuity in embroiling with his family any outsider who may rashly attempt to restrain his ebullitions. He is, in fact, like the Scottish thistle: no one may meddle with him with impunity. It is better to "never mind him," as one of the evils under the sun for which ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... ther wa'n't no partickler need o' his hurryin' so, seein' his family was all grow'd up. Such a critter as he pickt out, tew! 'twas very onsuitable—but every man to his taste—I hain't no dispersition to meddle with nobody's consarns. There's old farmer Dawson, tew—his pardner hain't ben dead but ten months. To be sure, he ain't married yet—but he would a-ben long enough ago if somebody I know on'd gin him any incurridgement. But 'tain't for me to speak o' that ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... in doubt a long time, whether I should meddle at all with the Greek comedy, both because the pieces which remain are very few, the licentiousness of Aristophanes, their author, is exorbitant; and it is very difficult to draw, from the performances of a single poet, a just idea of Greek comedy. Besides, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... she cried. "Why do you meddle in what does not concern you? Do you mean to say that any one meddled ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... you meddle with God's ordering of the future!" cried Pare. "Honest men can have but one motto: Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra!—do thy duty, come what will. That is what I did at the siege of Calais when I put my foot ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... scientific gent, to measure the mesa. We was going back home ter-night, an' was takin' a last look around when you come along. I'll give you my word—and you know it's good—that we don't want ter meddle with your affairs so long as they don't affect us. Run all the guns you want—for I know that's your little game—but we've got some kids with us, and it's up to me to get 'em back home safe. Let us git out of here peaceable, and no ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... advisers are trying to get him to interfere without waiting for the excuse, but he's not quite willing to go that far. So our business is not to give him any excuse—not even the very slightest. Suppose we meddle in this affair of Schloshold-Markheim, which is really his dependency—don't you see, he might easily, and quite logically, claim that as a precedent for meddling in the affairs of the Transvaal, which ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... speaker threw in a mess of trite, threadbare, exasperating quotations from the ancient poets and philosophers, delivering them with unction in the sounding grandeurs of the original tongues, they being from the Mastodon, the Dodo, and other dead languages.] "Perhaps I ought not to presume to meddle with matters pertaining to astronomy at all, in such a presence as this, I who have made it the business of my life to delve only among the riches of the extinct languages and unearth the opulence of their ancient lore; but still, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you are, young gentleman," she said. "This is no matter for boys to mix and meddle in. Sybil, my daughter—Sybil, I say! Come and stand near me, for I gets confused at times, and I fears I may not explain myself to the noble gentlewoman with all the respect that I could wish. She says a great deal that is very true, my daughter, and ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... that exists, all animals from the smallest seen by the microscope to the largest gigantic creatures in pairs and fully grown, seems to solve the problem of the egg and the hen, but has long since been refuted by science, so that we need not further meddle with it, and so much the less as thereby the question of the origin of life is not even touched. Let us now make a violent leap from man out into infinite space and back millions of years before the origin ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the old traditional pattern,—you as well as another. Where the material is hard, they put on more power,—where it is soft, more care; wherefore I caution you here, as I would in a mill at Lowell or Lawrence,—Don't meddle with the shafts,—don't go too near the wheel,—in short, keep clear of the machinery. And Hulia does so; for, at the last attack of Padre Doyaguez, she suddenly turns upon him and says, "Sir, you are a Doctrinary and a Propagandist." And the good Father suffers her to depart in peace. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... have made this room look a little less forlorn. They haven't wanted to meddle with my things, I suppose." And Molly stooped once again among the chattels destined for Vermont. Out they came; again the bearskin was spread on the floor, various possessions and ornaments went back into their ancient niches, the shelves grew comfortable with books, and, last, some flowers ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... you arrest Howard Van Burnam for murder, I may be tempted to meddle with matters which ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... had left us alone we should have left them alone; and they had only themselves to thank for the loss of some of their braves. 'We have,' I said, 'many friends, who will protect us, and much harm will fall on the Indians who venture to meddle with us.' ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... revellers had retired, and the watch was set. Many of the stars that had witnessed the events we have recorded had sunk, and others had risen in their stead. The midnight air was chill and cold; Jeromio's body lay where it had fallen, stiffening in its gore; for no one cared to meddle with it till the Skipper's pleasure was known as to how it was to be disposed of. Dalton gazed upon it but for an instant, and then ordered that a man named Mudy, the black, and butcher of the ship, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... face bloody. Isabel was alarmed. "Nothing but a few scratches," answered he, "which I can cure with vinegar while you mend my coat. I will tell you how I got them presently; but do you unpack the books, while I take care of the poney. Stop a moment; there is something in the cart you must not meddle with." Isabel inquired what it was. "Women are so inquisitive," continued Eustace. "Well then, it is a lute; Constance's own lute, which she lost the night of the fire." Isabel inquired how he recovered it. "Fought for it," answered he; "I see you will not be easy, so I must ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Vanheimert wished to peep into the other tent, but its open end was completely covered in for the night, and prudence forbade him to meddle with his hands. He had an even keener desire to steal one or other of the horses which he had seen before nightfall tethered in the scrub; but here again he lacked enterprise, fancied the saddles must be in Stingaree's tent, and ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... office to watch over the doctrines and conduct of ministers—Another part of their office to meet the ministers of the church, and to confer and exhort for religious good—None to meddle at these conferences with the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... fingers out of the fire," said Morgan, looking at the ground, rolling a fallen apple with his toe, "you'll not get scorched. You stick to your knittin' and don't meddle with mine. That'll be about the ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... sought. It was a heresy. If the Christians had any success, the deduction might be made against the Moslems, but not contrariwise. All nations have treated in this way the deductions about the approval of the superior powers. If there are any superior powers which meddle with history, it is certain that men have never yet found out how their ways and human ways react on each other, nor any means of interpreting ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... calmly, "but we won't argue about it. I'll tell you one thing, though, Sam Pitman, if this thing goes on—I say, if Joe is overworked like this any more—a single other time—and it comes to my knowledge, I'll take you smack-dab to court. I don't meddle in things that don't concern me, as a general thing, but I'll take this in hand ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... that we do not always mix ourselves up with them a little; but it is a received maxim that they take no notice of us, and of our sex.' 'Your sex, ladies' said Cazotte, 'your sex will not protect you this time; and you had far better meddle with nothing, for you will be treated entirely as men, without any difference whatever.' 'But what, then, are you really telling us of Monsieur Cazotte? You are preaching to us the end of the world.' 'I know nothing on that subject; ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... Secrets: the Tail he wore behind, and the Wings were plac'd upon each Arm. This Dress of his answer'd several Ends; for in the first place it cover'd his Nakedness, and help'd to keep him warm, and then it made him so frightful to the Beasts, that none of them car'd to meddle with him, or come near him; only the Roe his Nurse, which never left him, nor he, her; and when she grew Old and Feeble, he us'd to lead her where there was the best Food, and pluck the best Fruits for her, and ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... It was not probable, they agreed, but it was more than possible; and all my elders were quite positive that the Petersens would not undertake the care of Tony and Matty until they felt assured that the parents were not likely to meddle with them, or to make trouble for those ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... mean? It means that he must not meddle with other peoples' fights and quarrels. He must not take sides; that is, he must not help either of the herds to beat the other. That is the usual rule in the jungle which a wise elephant leader tries ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... denied the mirth that her lips affirmed, and Appleton had such a sudden, illogical desire to meddle with her career, to help or hinder it, to have a hand in it at any rate, that he could ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... said, with a little warmth. "You go too fast. Let me tell you first, that, for my honour, I take care of it myself; and, secondly, for your master, I do not allow even my own to meddle with my household." ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... Don't go for to meddle with my medicine. Everything's all right at last. I've found the long trace that leads to my little sister. She's waitin' to put her hand in mine, as she used to do ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... fire-eyes of his Burgundian Grace meet these clear eye-glances, convey them swift to his heart: he bethinks him that probably this feeble, fearless, hoary Figure has in it something of the Most High God; that probably he shall be damned if he meddle with it,—that, on the whole, he had better not. He plunges, the rough savage, from his war-horse, down to his knees; embraces the feet of old Anselm: he too begs his blessing; orders men to escort him, guard him from being ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... tell me that my full efforts can be of no service; and that it does not belong to my humble station to meddle with the concerns of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Egyptians had no civil laws or rights that they cared about; they had nothing left that they valued but their religion, and this the Romans took good care not to meddle with. Had the Romans made war upon the priests and temples, as the Persians had done, they would perhaps in the same way have been driven out of Egypt: but they never shocked the religious feelings of the people, and ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... said the stern old lady; "my brother Bridgenorth hath permitted you to make a Herodias of Alice, and teach her dancing. You have only now to find her a partner for life—I shall neither meddle nor make more ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... perceptibly drunkish; raised into a kind of cloudy narcotic Olympus, and opaquely superior to the ills of life; in which state he walks uncomplainingly to bed. Government, when it can by any art be avoided, he rarely meddles with; shows a rugged sagacity, where he does and must meddle: consigns it to Walpole in dog-latin,—laughs at his "MENTIRIS." This is the First George; first triumph of the Constitutional Principle, which has since gone to such sublime heights among us,—heights which we at last begin to suspect might be depths, leading down, all men now ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which though conducted by rules, does not meddle unduly with a gentleman's ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... that within a few days he became stark blind. His company being astonished at the Divine hand which thus conspicuously and signally appeared, put him ashore at Providence, and left him there. A physician being desired to undertake his cure, hearing how he came to lose his sight, refused to meddle with him. This account I lately received from credible persons, who knew and have often seen the man whom the devil (according to his own wicked wish) made blind, through the dreadful ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... sovereignty against which the only proper argument was a jest. Shortly afterwards he wrote to the speaker of the House of Commons, "These are, therefore, to command you to make known in our name unto the House that none therein shall presume henceforth to meddle with anything concerning our government or deep matters of state." He insisted that "these are unfit things to be handled in Parliament except your king requires it of you. "As to the privileges of Parliament James wrote, "We cannot allow of the style calling ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... "did not see it." When he liked women he liked them pretty and feminine; he had not the faintest idea of admitting any kind of partner in his glory; he had no literary taste; and not only did Madame de Stael herself meddle with politics, but her friend, Constant, under the Consulate, chose to give himself airs of opposition in the English sense. Moreover, she still wrote, and Bonaparte disliked and dreaded everyone who wrote with any freedom. Her book, De la Litterature, in 1800, was taken as a covert attack on ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... remember his saying to me, when first I saw him after the discovery of "Evelina"...... I see what it is you can do, you little witch—it is, that you can hang us all up for laughing- stocks; but hear me this one thing—don't meddle with me. I see what they are, your powers; but remember, when you provoke an Italian you run a dagger into your own ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... of his bad behaviour. So thou shalt ride to Northwaterdale, and to Hrutfirth, and Laxriverdale, till thou comest to Hauskuldstede. There thou must stay a night, and sit in the lowest place, and hang thy head down. Hauskuld will tell them all not to meddle nor make with Huckster Hedinn, saying he is a rude unfriendly fellow. Next morning thou must be off early and go to the farm nearest Hrutstede. There thou must offer thy goods for sale, praising up all that is worst, and tinkering up the faults. The master of ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... The ministry of clerics is concerned with better things than corporal slayings, namely with things pertaining to spiritual welfare, and so it is not fitting for them to meddle with ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... a glare that knocked all the spirit out of me. What business had I, it seemed to demand, to meddle in his ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... time and long afterwards, the Licenser regarded it as his chief duty to protect the court against all possibility of attack from the stage. With the morality of plays he did not meddle much; but he still clung to the old superstition that the British drama had only a right to exist as the pastime of royalty; plays and players were still to be subservient to the pleasure of the sovereign. The British public, who, after all, really supported the stage, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Reilly, for such was his name, "neither make nor meddle with that family afther this night. If you do, that terrible relation of mine will hang ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Sir Rudeger, went each to his lodging. They desired not to meddle with the strife, and they bade their men ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... father Masakado had killed, attacked the rebels in a moment of elated carelessness, shattered them completely, and sent Masakado's head to the capital. The whole affair teaches that the Fujiwara aristocrats, ruling in Kyoto, had neither power nor inclination to meddle with provincial administration, and that the districts distant from the metropolis wore practically under the sway of military magnates in whose eyes might constituted right. This was especially notable in the case of the Kwanto, that is to say the eight provinces surrounding the present ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... cousin's death while he was still on shore settled the question. He was a fair-haired, well-made young lad, looking like a sailor, and every inch a gentleman. Had he believed that the Lady Anna was the Lady Anna, no earthly consideration would have induced him to meddle with the money. Since the old Lord's death, he had lived chiefly with his uncle Charles Lovel, having passed some two or three months at Lovel Grange with his uncle and aunt. Charles Lovel was a clergyman, with ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... on his knee, and snatched at my hand. And therewith came a great howl of rage like an angry lion, and Humfrey bounded right over the sweetbrier fence, and cried out, 'Off, fellow! No Papist traitor knave shall meddle with her.' And then Antony gave him back the lie for calling him traitor, and they drew their swords, and I ran away to call father, but oh! mother, I heard them clash!" ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have you to meddle with affairs that are not your own?" said Saul, with hesitation in ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... saw anything that needed a rebuke, or exhortation, or warning, but that I felt it was my place to meddle with it. I have been called a "meddler". Yes I say: "It is my place to meddle with the devil's business. Jesus meddled with the law-breakers ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... impossible to find a woman whose stomach is where it belongs. This is a serious matter, because no organ can do its work properly when it is out of its rightful position. We understand this in any machinery except that of the human body. We would not meddle with a man-made machine because that would hinder its perfect working, but we do not hesitate to interfere with the body, forgetful that it, too, is a machine, divinely created, and with powers most fateful to us for ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... woods behind for a piece of nature for the general good,—a real Union Park; a place for children to play in, and grown folks to rest and walk and take tea in, if they choose; but for nobody to change or meddle with any further. And these twenty houses to be let to respectable persons of small means, at rents that will give him seven per cent, for his whole outlay. Don't you see? Young people, and people like Miss Waite ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... read his own essay again and, finding no flaw in it, frowned once more on his fellow pupils and wrote: "My father won the Victoria Cross Meddle." Having written this he looked round again somewhat defiantly. His eye caught one of the new boys ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... of Fates and, cloy'd with life, Give the Gods backe their unregarded gift? But he hath neither Catoes mind nor cause; A man given ore to pleasures and soft ease. Which makes me still to doubt how in affaires Of Princes he dares meddle or desires. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... mean, common room, stretched where he had been struck back upon the bed, I found the boy who had elected to meddle in the ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... waves began lashing themselves into violence of temper. What if I had to go to Madrid while such weather as this was brooding? To get to the capital one is obliged to embark at Bayonne for Santander, and proceed thence by rail—so long as no Carlist partidas meddle ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... up with a gun and shot him dead. They went through and through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than a wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making baskets, the miracle of which was that they were so clean. They had seen ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cellar where the eggs were supposed to be hatching in their nest. An unwary hound sniffing about the door got a throatful of the stinging smoke and fled yowling. Hydrochloric acid, vitriol and nitre-glycerine are kittle things to meddle with, and the place was ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Marie!" said the Lady Catharine, sternly. "After this have better wisdom, and do not meddle in things which ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... with Monsieur about it, but I did positively say that he had noe relation to my knowledge to the King my Master, and if he should have I make a question or noe whither in this case the King will owne him. However, my Lord, I had nothing to doe to owne or meddle in a buisines that I was so much a ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... American law best, and discharged me after I paid my self-imposed fine. The administering of justice in cases of importance was, of course, relegated to the United States Circuit Courts, but Uncle Sam did not care to meddle with the many troublesome alcaldes or justices of the peace, as he did not understand the Spanish language very well. This was certainly humiliating and embarrassing, but who can blame him, as no one is over anxious to be rated ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... publicly stopped in the afternoon, one were angered at not being allowed to keep open shop, because he had been in the forenoon; or when in one house he observeth some servant take a thing in his hand, which the butler is not suffered to meddle with; or something permitted out of doors, which is forbidden in the dining-room; and should be angry, that in one house, and one family, the same thing is not allotted every where, and to all. Even such are they who are fretted to hear something to have been lawful for righteous ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Act. They could not admit Kansas to the Union as a free state. They could not carry out one bit of their policy. In their platform they had declared that they had no intention to interfere with slavery in the states. Lincoln had said over and over again that Congress had no right to meddle with slavery in the states. The Southern leaders knew all these things. But they made up their minds that now the time had come to secede from the Union and to establish a Southern Confederacy. For the first time all the southernmost ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... brawl break out in your jollities—were knives drawn—a throat in danger—this right band struck down the uproar, crushed back the coward murder. If I did not join in your rogueries, it was because they were sneaking and pitiful. I came as your Patron, not as your Pal; I did not meddle with your secrets—did not touch your plunder. I owed you nothing. Offal that you are! to me you owed drink, and meat, and good fellowship. I gave you mirth, and I gave you Law; and in return ye laid a plot amongst you to get rid of me;—how, ye white-livered scoundrels? Oho! not by ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to do what is to be done," Ashe's companion replied. "So some of the enemy fled. Well, perhaps they have learned one lesson, not to meddle with others' devices. Ahh, so much gone which will never come again! ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... House of Commons only changed the form of oppression, without lightening its burdens; that government in the colonies was instituted not for the British Parliament, but for the colonies themselves; that the British Parliament had no right to meddle with their Constitution, or to prescribe either the number or the pecuniary appointments of their officers; that they had a right to give their money without coercion, and from time to time; that they alone were the judges, alike of the public exigencies ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... body, one might say — with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love — that is, the love of all things in their proper relation — unless you are suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty; unless you are suffused with beauty, do not meddle with love; unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness; — in a word, unless you are suffused with beauty, truth, wisdom, goodness, AND love, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Missouri, unless they point exclusively to them, as I have shown they do not. The guarded manner, too, in which some of the gentlemen have occasionally expressed themselves on this subject, is somewhat alarming. They have no disposition to meddle with slavery in the old United States. Perhaps not—but who shall answer for their successors? Who shall furnish a pledge that the principle once ingrafted into the Constitution, will not grow, and spread, and fructify, and overshadow the whole land? ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... touch it!" cried her aunt, in agitation. "I wouldn't have you meddle with it—But there! it's locked. I al'ays forgit that. I feel as if the things could git out an' walk. Here! you let it alone, an' byme-by we'll open it. Se' down here on the lounge. There, now! I guess I can tell ye. It was sister 'Liza's chist, an' she kep' ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... for they are very much afraid of him, thinking that his sharp spines are poisoned, and can inflict a deadly wound. But in this they are too hard upon the fellow. He can prick them deeply and painfully, and he will if they meddle with him; but he is a perfectly respectable fish, and would not think of such a cowardly ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... intellect takes upon itself to meddle with such things, a learned professor may explain that a certain musical note is composed of vibrations—so many thousand per second—which are communicated to particles of matter in suspension in the air and carried ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... for a while written different things and rubbed them out again, when I exclaimed impatiently, "It will not do!"—"So much the better," said the dear girl in a grave tone: "I wished that it might not do! You should not meddle in such matters." She arose from the distaff, and, stepping towards the table, gave me a severe lecture, with a great deal of good sense and kindliness. "The thing seems an innocent jest: it is a jest, but it is not innocent. I have already lived ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the unadulterated sunshine. He looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed to old volumes of sermons, and had no more right than one of those portraits would have to step forth, as he now did, and meddle with a question of human guilt, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... little cad, how dare he meddle and pry into the Misses Templeton's family affairs! There is something I mistrust in the man; he is smooth and plausible, but he is crafty too; he is deep—deep—and if I do not ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... heaven, and by labouring virtuously, to obtain everlasting fame in this world? And, of a truth, so extraordinary and sublime a gift as that possessed by Fra Giovanni, should scarcely be conferred on any but a man of most holy life, since it is certain that all who take upon them to meddle with sacred and ecclesiastical subjects, should be men ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... wouldn't," I returned, and I recalled my severity to Tedham in refusing his prayer with more satisfaction than it had given me at the time. "I told him that I had no business to interfere, and that I was not sure it would be right even for me to meddle with the course things had taken." I was aware of weakening my case as I went on; I had better left her with a dramatic conception of ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... a flock of sheep for a long time, but made no attempt to molest them. The Shepherd at first kept a sharp eye on him, for he naturally thought he meant mischief: but as time went by and the Wolf showed no inclination to meddle with the flock, he began to look upon him more as a protector than as an enemy: and when one day some errand took him to the city, he felt no uneasiness at leaving the Wolf with the sheep. But as soon as his back was turned the Wolf attacked them and killed the greater number. When the Shepherd ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... it is, sir. I am afraid that when I let my thoughts meddle with such matters I am no longer a servant. But I am so devoted to the countess; if she were my own child I couldn't love her more. That is how I come to be so bold, sir. They say you want ...
— The American • Henry James
... judge Luther harshly; he had done splendidly, and it is difficult to meddle with worldly things without soiling one's fingers and depressing one's heart; but I ask which of these two quotations expresses man's most central character best—the desire for nobler life—which reveals the more ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... about in this article not only hurt my feelings but injure me. Mr. Clark in making these statements must have known that he was giving circulation to lies; and had I been aware of his intentions to meddle in my affairs, I should most assuredly have treated him as a foe in disguise. For enemies I care nothing; from friends I have much to fear, it seems. There never was a more scandalous insult to my feelings than this officious misstatement.... ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... a country-raised woman. I had a light stroke and cain't work in the field. I get $8.00 and commodities. I like to live here very well. I don't meddle with young folks business. Seems like they do mighty foolish things to me. Times been changing ever since I come in this world. It is the people cause the times to change. I wouldn't know how ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... know the law-courts? Very good. Well, he is cousin and heir to M. Pons, to our old conductor whose funeral you attended this morning. I do not blame you for going to pay the last respects to him, poor man.... But if you meddle in M. Schmucke's affairs, you will lose your place. I wish very well to M. Schmucke, but he is in a delicate position with regard to the heirs—and as the German is almost nothing to me, and the President ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... bronzed hunter, pressing to the front, 'that what I hold of thee, King William, on tenure of homage, and of two good horses and staunch hounds yearly, I yield to no English mongrel churl, who dares to meddle with me.' ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with sharp scorn. "Don't use that word to a consul-elect, who has the whole Senate and Pompeius behind him. Laws are very dangerous tools for a young man to meddle with in a case like this. You will be wise not to resort ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... the scorpion's filthy nest Nurses a far less deadly, poisonous brood Than are the hellish lusts, the avarice,— The pride—the hate—the double-faced deceits— That make his breast their dwelling. If he be not beneath hell's wish to damn, Too lost for even fiends to meddle with, How must they laugh to hear him, in his pride, Baptize his vices, virtues; making use Of holy names to designate his crimes; Giving his lust the sacred name of love; Calling his avarice a goodly sin, Care for his household; naming ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... took two years ago. First there were months of delay, then, when the ransom was settled, the pasha took four-fifths of it for himself, and Ibrahim got far less than he would have done had he sold him as a slave. The pashas here, and the sultans of the Moors, are all alike; if they once meddle in an affair they take all the profit, and think they do well by giving you a tithe of it. There are plenty of wealthy Moors who are ready to pay well for a Christian slave, especially when he is a good looking young fellow such as this. He will fetch as much as all those eight sailors ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... us, and the statement is quoted by Bernhardi with approval, that "the end all and be all of a state is power, and he who is not man enough to look this truth in the face should not meddle with politics." To this Bernhardi adds that the State's highest moral duty is to increase its power and in so doing "the State is the sole judge of the morality of its own action. It is in ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... not like to ask Altringham to do anything for me. No man ever had a kinder friend than I have had in him, and I know he objects to meddle in the money matters of other people. But if he could lend me his name for a thousand pounds till I can get these things settled, I believe I could get over every other difficulty. I should as a matter of course include ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... satisfied that she had left with her own consent, and that she was now where he could take no legal steps to reclaim her from any false position in which she might have placed herself. Leslie had, and knew that he had, no right whatever to meddle with the movements of the suspicious parties, except that he might have obtained some description of Columbus' right by discovery. However, the reasons being what they might, the fact was patent—they were now in full chase of a will-of-the-wisp ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Leo. Would Luther had followed my advice and abstained from those hostile and seditious actions!... They will not rest until they have quite subverted the study of languages and the good learning.... Out of the hatred against these and the stupidity of monks did this tragedy first arise.... I do not meddle with it. For the rest, a bishopric is waiting for me if I choose to write ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... thou parasite, why dost thou obstruct us so? Thou sayest whatever thou wishest. Insult us not. We know thy mind. Go and learn sitting at the feet of the old. Keen up the reputation that thou hast won. Meddle not with the affairs of other men. Do not imagine that thou art our chief. Tell us not harsh words always, O Vidura. We do not ask thee what is for our good. Cease, irritate not those that have already borne too much at thy hands. There ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... did now appeare easie and facill: but marke I pray you diligently to what end the furious force of his inordinate desire came. On a day Lepolemus went to the chase with Thrasillus, to hunt for Goates, for his wife Charites desired him earnestly to meddle with no other beasts, which were of more fierce and wilde nature. When they were come within the chase to a great thicket fortressed about with bryers and thornes, they compassed round with their Dogs and beset every ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... inexorable, forbids it. Such little entity as I possess would cease to be; it was all but lost when I saved your life—and again when I told you that you were the beloved of Julia Royce. It would not do for us Martians to meddle with earthly things; the fat would soon be in the fire, I can ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Cecily fled to her seat and wept, nor did Mr. Perkins meddle with her more that day. She bore her burden of humiliation bitterly for several days, until she was suddenly comforted by a realization that Cyrus had ceased to persecute her. He wrote no more letters, he gazed no longer in rapt adoration, he brought ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... there abide. And my wife saw ye andiron on ye table. Also I saw ye pott turn over, and throw down all ye water. Againe we see a tray with wool leap up and downe, and throw ye wool out, and saw nobody meddle with it. Again a tub's hoop fly off, and nobody near it. Againe ye woolen wheele upside downe, and stood upon its end, and a spade set on it. This myself, my wife, and Stephen Greenleaf saw. Againe my tools fell down on ye ground, and before my ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... the spot where the Caudron had been left. Tom's mind was eased of the secret fears he had entertained when he saw the machine was still where they had left it. So far as he could tell no one had been near to meddle with it. ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... hurt the owner; he therefore begged of him to forgive me, as he said he never had any complaint of me before, for the many years that I had been with him. After repeated entreaties, Mr. Read said I might go to hell, and that he would not meddle with me; on which my captain came immediately to me at his lodging, and, telling me how pleasantly matters had gone on, he desired me to go on board. Some of my other friends then asked him if he had got the constable's warrant from them; the captain said, No. On this I was ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... her do it," said Mr. Dinsmore, taking a seat by his daughter's side; "I've warned her more than once not to meddle with match-making." And he shook his head ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... your pardon for speaking as I did, mademoiselle. You know the good intentions that make me meddle, just now, in matters which, you no doubt think, have nothing to do with me. But allow me to tell you what I have seen—and I have seen more than you suspect, Christine—or what I thought I saw, for, to tell you the truth, I have sometimes been ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... him, if he had ever practised physic? 'Yes, and please your honour (said he) among brute beasts; but I never meddle with rational creatures.' 'I know not whether you rank in that class the audience you was haranguing in the court at St. James's, but I should be glad to know what kind of powders you was distributing; and ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... one hundred-and-four years, who took a prominent part in the General Election, has just died. This should be a lesson to people who meddle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... scolding and advising me for weeks? Is there a detail of my private or public life that you don't meddle with—as it pleases you? Half a dozen times a day when I'm with you, you make me feel myself a fool or a brute. And then I go home and write you abject letters—and apologize—and explain. Do you think I'd do it for any other woman in the world? Do you dare to say you don't ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to morrow you shall be turn'd out of your place for't; we meddle with no spirit o'th' Buttery, they taste too small for us; keep me a Pie in Folio, I beseech thee, and thou shalt see how learnedly I'le translate him. Shall's have good ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... abolitionism; no love for the North, but they have plenty for Louisiana.... They will fight for her in 1861 as they fought in 1814-'15.... If they have made no demonstration it is because they have no right to meddle with politics, but not because they are not well disposed. All they ask is to have a chance, and they will be worthy sons of Louisiana."[40] Oral testimony gathered by the present writer from old residents in various quarters of the South supports ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... boys knew that they were doing wrong. They had been told, often and often, not to meddle with things that did not belong to them. As Frank was so much older than George, he was the more to blame; but George was old enough to know better, or why did he put his little foot so gently on the stairs, and go out on tiptoe ...
— Pretty Tales for the Nursery • Isabel Thompson
... that to thee or thy wife either?' he answered rudely. 'Look to thy own business and meddle not with mine.' ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... with his customary attention, and declared that the proper name was the margay, a fact Fritz did not dispute, only requesting that Jack might not meddle with the skin, as he wished to preserve it for a belt. I recommended them to skin it immediately, and give the flesh to the dogs. Jack, at the same time, determined to skin his porcupine, to make dog-collars. Part of its flesh went into the soup-kettle, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... interrogator, and thought of the priests and the inquisition. "No, no," thought he, "that won't do; a name I must give, but it shall be one that you dare not meddle with. A midshipman you might get hold of, but it's more than the whole island dare to touch a post-captain of one of his Majesty's frigates." So Jack took the paper and wrote Captain Henry Wilson, of his Majesty's ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... words the Pope of Dimchurch began:—"Oscar! you are to understand distinctly, if you please, that I maintain my protest against this impious attempt to meddle with my afflicted daughter's sight.—Mrs. Finch! you are to understand that I excuse your unseemly pursuit of two strange surgeons, in consideration of the state that I find you in at this moment. After your last confinement but eight you became, I remember, hysterically irresponsible. Hold ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... periscope. "When you have been at this work as long as I have," he replied, "you will find it healthier not to meddle with Armed Merchant Cruisers. They are all eyes and they shoot straight. No, for the time being our glorious work is done, and we shall now depart from a locality that is quickly becoming unhealthy." He glanced at the depth gauge and thence to the faces ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... no wish to meddle with the belief of his new friends. Here, however, it was a matter of humanity and common sense. He could not let the young girl's life be ruined. He said: "My child, le bon Dieu never asks the unreasonable. Is not God kinder than you; and will he demand of you and Francois ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... to man's estate I shall be very proud and great, And tell the other girls and boys, Not to meddle ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... work it,' he said, 'is to get hold of a woman farm-owner; some one who hasn't any men folks to advise her or meddle with her property. Ten to one she won't have heard of the oil boom, or if she has, it's easy enough to pose as a government expert and tell her her land is worthless for oil. We'll offer her a good price for it for straight farming, and we'll have ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... another quarter, as the gentleman himself admits. I would leave that institution to the exclusive consideration and management of the States more peculiarly interested in it, just as long as they can keep within their own bounds. So far, I admit that Congress has no power to meddle with it. As long as they do not step out of their own bounds, and do not put the question to the people of the United States, whose peace, welfare and happiness are all at stake, so long I will agree to leave them to themselves. But when a member from a free State brings forward certain ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... The police after them? Bartley Fallen must have injured Jack so. They wouldn't meddle in a fight that was only ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... readily, 'you are a lady having gifts that are much in favour in these days. Be careful to use those gifts and no others. Meddle in nothing that does not concern you. So you may make a great marriage with some lord in favour. But meddle in ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... "Sir Lionel, will ye slay your brother?" "Why," said Sir Lionel, "will ye stay me? If ye interfere in this I will slay you, and him after." Then he ran upon Sir Bohort, and would have smitten him; but Sir Colgrevance ran between them, and said, "If ye persist to do so any more, we two shall meddle together." Then Sir Lionel defied him, and gave him a great stroke through the helm. Then he drew his sword, for he was a passing good knight, and defended himself right manfully. So long endured the battle, that Sir Bohort ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... to me that the converse of that which is usually found in that place ought to be substituted. Even the apostles, as we have seen, found it necessary to rebuke the disposition prevalent in their time to meddle with the affairs, and to make inquisition into the conduct of others. But it should be recollected, that the condition of Christians and the state of society then were widely different from the same things with us. Christianity was ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... should be back before evening. In order to go lighter, I determined to leave my tent standing as it was, and all the things which I had purchased of the tinker, just as they were. "I need not be apprehensive on their account," said I to myself; "nobody will come here to meddle with them—the great recommendation of this place is its perfect solitude—I dare say that I could live here six months without seeing a single human visage. I will now harness my little gry and be off to ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... the authority of the Tale-Lama is unbounded, as that of a divinity deigning to reign on earth must naturally be over his worshippers. But as he often transmigrates into the body of a mere child, and that, moreover, his very divinity makes it derogatory in him to meddle with worldly affairs, he is supplied with a grosser colleague, who, under the name of Nomekhan, or spiritual emperor, transacts all the business of the state. He is nominated for life by the Tale-Lama, and in his turn chooses four kalons, or ministers, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... being a ward-worker, these and those other reformers who write papers about national corruption when they don't know how their own wards are swung, probably aren't so useful as they might be. The exquisite who says that politics is 'too dirty a business for a gentleman to meddle with' is like the woman who lived in the parlour and complained that the rest of her family kept the other rooms so dirty that she ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... but weak denial. The instrument in question was one, she averred, which the duke had DESIRED her to execute, but which she had declined at all costs to meddle with. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the omnipotent Commission of the General Assembly, and by the full force of prayers and sermons. The letter-writer, Baillie, now deemed "that it were for the good of the world that churchmen did meddle with ecclesiastical affairs only." The Engagers insisted on establishing presbytery in England, which neither satisfied the Kirk nor the Cavaliers and Independents. Nothing more futile could have ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... denial there's no criticism and what would a journal be without a column of criticism?' Without criticism it would be nothing but one 'hosannah.' But nothing but hosannah is not enough for life, the hosannah must be tried in the crucible of doubt and so on, in the same style. But I don't meddle in that, I didn't create it, I am not answerable for it. Well, they've chosen their scapegoat, they've made me write the column of criticism and so life was made possible. We understand that comedy; ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Italian men and women and things and habits are true, vivid, and accurate. Those which I wrote on English subjects are unquestionably bad. I had been living the best part of a life-time out of England; I knew but little comparatively of English life, and I had no business to meddle with such subjects. But besides all this, I was always writing in periodical publications of all sorts, English and American, to such an extent that I should think the bulk of it, if brought together, would exceed that of all the many volumes ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... horror, at least, was lifted from my mind; I could look with calm of spirit on that great bright creature, God's ocean; and as I set off homeward up the rough sides of Aros, nothing remained of my concern beyond a deep determination to meddle no more with the spoils of wrecked vessels or the treasures ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anything and regret it with terrible suffering ever after. One such lesson you have had in early manhood. I hope you may not rush on blindly to another. Until you come to me, however," he added with dignity, "I shall not meddle again." ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... middle of the operation, in came Bull Bazett, with his head down, and roaring like the last trumpet. Dines and all his merry men hid behind trees in the paddock, and skipped. Dines then got upon a horse, plied his spurs, and cleared for Apia. The next time he is asked to meddle with our cows, he will probably want to know the reason why. Meanwhile, there was the cow, with the board over her eyes, left tied by a pretty long rope to a small tree in the paddock, and who was to milk her? She roared,—I was going to say like a bull, but it was Bazett who did that, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she answered; "they are not working here. They are on top of the bluff, trying to dig down to you. They were afraid to meddle with the ice here for fear that more of it might come down and crush you and the men, too. Oh, there has been a dreadful excitement since it was found that you were ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton
... the river, he fancied he beheld a black object swimming towards him. Taking it for an otter, with which voracious animal the Calder, a stream swarming with trout, abounded, and knowing the creature would not meddle with them unless first attacked, he paid little attention to it; but he was soon made sensible of his error. His arm was suddenly seized by a large black hound, whose sharp fangs met in his flesh. Unable to repress a cry of ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a sordid, narrow-minded, and somewhat arrogant man; bustling rather than active; prone to meddle with matters of which he was profoundly ignorant, and absurdly unwilling ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... robe of yellow barred with black, more like one of the great cats from which she took her name than a human being. "Spare me," she gasped, "spare me, I don't want to die. I swear that I will never meddle ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... my poor boy, you are bred for a parson," says my lord, taking Esmond by the hand very kindly; "and it were a great pity that you should meddle in the matter." ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... for it. During a trip which he made to Rome in 981, he had entered into kindly personal relations with the Emperor Otho II., king of Germany, the most important of France's neighbors, and the most disposed to meddle in her affairs. In France, Hugh Capet had formed a close friendship with Adalberon, archbishop of Rheims, the most notable and most able of the French prelates. The event showed the value of such ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... religion; but masters also seem to have given up all family government, and all care or concern for the morals and manners, as well as for the religion of their servants, thinking themselves under no obligation to meddle with those things, or to think any thing about them, so that their business be but done, and their shop ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... I quit Calais,' a travel-writer would say, 'it would not be amiss to give some account of it.'—Now I think it very much amiss—that a man cannot go quietly through a town and let it alone, when it does not meddle with him, but that he must be turning about and drawing his pen at every kennel he crosses over, merely o' my conscience for the sake of drawing it; because, if we may judge from what has been wrote of these things, by all who have wrote and gallop'd—or who have gallop'd and ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... matter of fact, but a traditionalist, proud of the glory of her family, attached to the ancient Roman ideas, desirous only of seeing her son develop into a new Germanicus, a second Drusus. Solely the necessity of helping Nero had led her to meddle with politics. But not in vain had Cato declaimed so loudly in Rome against women who pretend to govern states; not in vain had Augustus's domination been at least partly founded on the great antifeminist legend of Antony and Cleopatra, which represented the ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... support the—certainly somewhat costly—apparatus of a joint-stock company, the joint-stock company is undisputed master of the field, so that there remains to the private undertaking, as its domain, nothing more than the dwarf concerns with which our free society does not meddle. It cannot be said that this is due to the larger money power of the combined capital, for even relatively small undertakings, whose total capital is many times less than that of a great many private millionaires, prefer, I may say choose exclusively, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... in England, many of my friends would fain have dissuaded me from my expedition, urging me to devote myself to special zooelogical studies, and not to meddle with general geological problems of so speculative a character. "Punch" himself did not disdain to give me a gentle hint as to the folly of my undertaking, terming my journey into Scotland in search of moraines a sporting-expedition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... you." [Deuter, c.ii.] The same people who had successfully repelled the approach of the Israelites from the strong western frontier, was alarmed now that they had come round upon the weak side of the country. But Israel was ordered "not to meddle" with the children of Esau, but "to pass through their coast" and to "buy meat and water from them for money," in the same manner as the caravan of Mekka is now supplied by the people of the same mountains, who meet the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... put me to a pause, and to a kind of a full stop; and I began, by little and little, to be off my design, and to conclude I had taken wrong measures in my resolution to attack the savages; and that it was not my business to meddle with them, unless they first attacked me; and this it was my business, if possible, to prevent; but that if I were discovered and attacked by them, I knew my duty. On the other hand, I argued with myself, that this really was the way not to deliver myself, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... pressure, Hide accepted full payment of his mortgage, and made over the title of the property to Cuthbert Burbage. Thus Brayne's widow was legally excluded from any share in the ownership of the Theatre. Myles deposed, in 1592, that henceforth Burbage "would not suffer her to meddle in the premises, but ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... supervision from the adjutant-general's department is all that can be required. Thus is all the jealousy between military and medical authority got rid of. The Governor's authority must be supreme, like that of the commandant of a fortress, or the commander of a ship. He will not want to meddle in the doctors' professional business; and in all else he is to be paramount,—being himself responsible to the War-Office. The office, as thus declared, is equivalent to three of the nine old ones, namely, the Commandant, the Adjutant-General, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... landing of Mr Slidell, whose presence here would have no more effect on the policy of your Majesty with regard to America than the presence of the three other Southern Deputies who have been here for many months. Mr Adams assured Viscount Palmerston that the American steamer had orders not to meddle with any vessel under any foreign flag; that it came to intercept the Nashville, the Confederate ship in which it was thought the Southern Envoys might be coming; and not having met with her was going back to the American ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... obeying you in keeping that accursed promise? God knows I have made many blunders, but I think the most senseless was that promise; the most short-sighted, that belief. What right had I to fetter my tongue, or try to govern love? Shall I ever learn to do my own work aright, and not meddle with the Lord's? Sylvia, take this presumptuous and domineering devil out of me in time, lest I blunder as blindly after you are mine as I have before. Now let me finish before Mark comes to find us. I went away, you know, singing the farewell I dared not speak, and for nine months kept myself ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... gasped, then dropped into a chair. "He might have come himself, to be sure," she muttered. "I have more than enough to do that is disagreeable in my own womanly sphere without being required to meddle ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... waiter girls are treacherous things to meddle with. Neither can be depended upon and generally both have unsavory reputations. The only thing pretty about the girls is ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... takes upon itself to meddle with such things, a learned professor may explain that a certain musical note is composed of vibrations—so many thousand per second—which are communicated to particles of matter in suspension in the air and carried ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... now, don't be dismal, and blame yourself for every trouble under the sun. Sit down and talk it over, and see what can be done. Poor old girl, I forgave you the notes, and say I was wrong to meddle with Bopp. I got you into the scrape, and I'll get you out if the sky don't fall, or Bopp blow his brains out, like a second ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... understand why my father should continue to feel vexed about this arrangement of ours," she said seriously. "We do not interfere with his domestic affairs, why should he meddle with ours? It is not at all his business; do you think it is?" This taking it for granted that the arrangement was as satisfactory to him as it was to her, and appealing to him in good faith against himself and his own interests as it were, touched Colonel ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... do or not, my dear, is my own business. Furthermore, I do not like to have any one meddle in my arrangements. ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... neglect it; the Latin grammar, however, is a subject on which some of the younger members of the community feel strongly, so I have now written "agricolas". I have also parted with the word "infortuniam" (though not without regret), but have not dared to meddle with other ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... firmly, "I will drive Madame de Chevreuse out of my kingdom—and with her all who meddle with its ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from Christian Rosencreutz, their founder; and to answer the latter charge, they repeated that they knew not what thirst was, and had higher pleasures than those of the palate. They did not desire to meddle with the politics or religion of any man or set of men, although they could not help denying the supremacy of the pope, and looking upon him as a tyrant. Many slanders, they said, had been repeated respecting ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... on the flat. And this Ward, share out the rice—broke open barn. We people? Anything like a silver, bury right there in that garden! Right to Brookgreen garden, what Hontington got now. All Ward thing bury there. Them old time people kill you—you meddle them thing. Cry out, 'Massa Ting!' You better ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... had been made by the said Richard, and Eleanor his wife, under the powers of their settlement. Luckily they had not been employed in the matter, and possessed not so much as a draft or a letter of instructions; and now it was no concern of theirs to make, or meddle, or even move. Neither did they know that any question could arise about it; for they were a highly antiquated firm, of most rigid respectability, being legal advisers to the Chapter of York, and clerks of the Prerogative Court, and able to charge twice as much ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... "He was a man Who stole the livery of the court of heaven To serve the devil in; in Virtue's guise, Devoured the widow's house and orphan's bread; In holy phrase, transacted villanies That common sinners durst not meddle with." ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... the stool in leaving the piano, two idle nervous young men like yourselves would from curiosity and ennui have examined the embroidery, disarranged the vase of flowers, picked up the stool, and closed the piano. But no hand dared to meddle with this holy disorder under pretext of arranging it. These evidences, still fresh and undisturbed, attest a respect that belongs only ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... not been so terribly earnest, she fed him with pine nuts and crab apples. The master took that opportunity to point out to her the noxious and deadly qualities of the monkshood, whose dark blossoms he saw in her lap, and extorted from her a promise not to meddle with it as long as she remained his pupil. This done—as the master had tested her integrity before—he rested satisfied, and the strange feeling which had overcome him on seeing them ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... ghostly fancy. Old superstitions of the coast recurred to me,—old vague warnings of peril in the time of the passage of Souls. I reflected that were any evil to befall me out there in the night,—meddling, or seeming to meddle, with the lights of the Dead,—I should myself furnish the subject of some future weird legend.... I whispered the Buddhist formula of farewell—to the lights,—and made speed ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... ought not too much to be ashamed to bear that sometime, which Apollo, god of learning, himself was not ashamed always to bear. And because ye would have a man wait upon the Muses, and not at all meddle with shooting: I marvel that you do not remember how that the nine Muses their self, as soon as they were born, were put to nurse to a lady called Euphemis, which had a son named Erotus, with whom the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... is that I intend to keep it. I've had you sent out, but you have been too stupid or too obstinate to take the hint. Now I have to warn you in person. I shall send you out once more, but this time you must promise me not to meddle ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... some horrible tragedy. You heard him speak of killing his wife and her lover just now, as if it were a very slight matter. Very. well; I know him; he will do as he says without flinching. These ruddy-faced people are very devils, if you meddle with their family affairs! He is capable of murdering you in some corner of his park, and of burying you at the foot of some tree and then of forcing Madame de Bergenheim to eat your heart fricasseed in champagne, as they say Raoul de ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... labouring virtuously, to obtain everlasting fame in this world? And, of a truth, so extraordinary and sublime a gift as that possessed by Fra Giovanni, should scarcely be conferred on any but a man of most holy life, since it is certain that all who take upon them to meddle with sacred and ecclesiastical subjects, should be men of holy and ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... useful, sahib. He is on a message now. He is a fool who likes to meddle where he thinks none notice him. Such are the sort who cost least and work the longest hours. Who, for instance, sahib, is to balk Kirby sahib when he grows suspicious and begins to search in earnest for his Ranjoor Singh? He knew that Ranjoor ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... see these yellow counters? I am going to make a hole in the stable underneath the cows' manger and bury them; see that you do not meddle with them, or it will ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... think of any other woman but his beloved Miss Fotheringay; and the Captain, looking up at his foils which were hung as a trophy on the wall of the room where Pen and he used to fence, grimly said, he would not advoise any man to meddle rashly with the affections of his darling child; and would never believe his gallant young Arthur, whom he treated as his son, whom he called his son, would ever be guilty of conduct so revolting to every idaya of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little noise in the world, it would hardly have engaged the attention of working naturalists as it has done. We have no idea even of opening the question as to what work the Darwinian theory has incited, and in what way the work done has reacted upon the theory; and least of all do we like to meddle with the polemical literature of the subject, already so voluminous that the German bibliographers and booksellers make a separate class of it. But two or three treatises before us, of a minor or incidental sort, suggest a remark or two upon the attitude of mind toward evolutionary ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... spied on anybody again. He had learned that it is better not to meddle in other people's private affairs. So, after all, perhaps it was a good thing that he tried, just once, to catch Freddie ...
— The Tale of Frisky Squirrel • Arthur Scott Bailey
... me go in there again!" she pleaded. "I will be good. I'll never meddle with the things in the chest any more. There are mice in there, hundreds of 'em; they'll run all over me; they'll eat me up. Oh, don't make me go ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the devill did indeed stand by him and doe the office as hee dreamed that hee was struck speechless for a time and when hee came to himself hee threw his tobacco in the fire and his pipes at the walls; resolving never to meddle more with it: soe much money as was formerly wasted by the week in to serving ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... wild-animal species is a leap in the dark. On general principles it is dangerous to meddle with the laws of Nature, and attempt to improve upon the code of the wilderness. Our best wisdom in such matters may easily prove to be short-sighted folly. The trouble lies in the fact that concerning transplantation ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... ran the Lucerner fast on the heels of the Schwyzer, who tripped, and both went headlong into a ditch. Feklitus was the only one who kept his ground. He knew who he was; Fortunatus, the only son of Mr. Bickel. No one would dare to meddle with him. He knew, too, that he was by no means nimble, and the sudden appearance of the men in uniform had given him a strange feeling of heaviness in his legs. He had no mind to stay alone, however, and so he seized the shoemaker's boy by the collar, and held ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... having taken the liberty to interfere in the discussion in Antoinette's behalf, declaring that Counts Larinski are not to be distrusted, and that men of science are incapable of comprehending delicacy of sentiment, he gave full vent to his wrath, telling the worthy demoiselle to meddle with what concerned her. For the first time in his life he was seriously angry. Antoinette caressed him into good-humour, promised that she would put on the best possible face to Maitre Noirot, that she would pay religious attention to his counsels, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... ships, and the country, men and victuals.' Later, letters were sent demanding that a large sum should be raised 'to set a fleet at sea ... we having but six or seven days to raise the money, and to return it to London; but our county refused to meddle therein.' John Northcote was Sheriff just at this time, and was most probably held responsible for the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... your eyes, lad, and speak! They'll zay I murdered ye, and if I don't get aboard ship and zail away to foreign abroad, they'll hang me, and the crows'll come and pick out my eyes.—I zay.—I zay lad, don't ye be a vool. It was on'y a drop o' watter ye zwallowed. Do ye come to, and I'll never meddle with the zammon again.—I zay, ye aren't dead now. Don't ye be a vool. It aren't worth dying for, lad. Coom, coom, coom, open your eyes and zit up like a man. You're a gentleman, and ought to know better. I aren't no scholard, ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... over them; and when the more zealous Magdalen or Paula took all the trouble, and left nothing for her to do but to copy their notes, and write the letters, she grew cross. "It was for Hubert, and she did not want any one else to meddle! So stupid! If he had only taken Pratt and Pavis's offer, there would not have ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the corn, if they ever had any, all thrashed and hidden. No amount of money can purchase any service from them. Poor dark creatures; not loving Austria much, but loving some others even less, it would appear. Of Bigoted Papist Creed, for one thing; that is a great point. We do not meddle with their worship more or less; but we are Heretics, and they hate us as the Night. Which is a dreadful difficulty you always have in Bohemia: nowhere but in the Circle of Konigsgraz, where there are Hussites (far to the rear of us at this time), will ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... agent, as well as sole owner. There were no mills beside his in the neighborhood; to that fact she ascribed the reason of his having no difficulties in Rosville, and no enmities; for she knew he had no wish to make friends. The Rosville people, having no business in common with him, had no right to meddle, and could find but small excuse for comment. They spent, she said, five or six thousand a year; most of it went in horses, she was convinced, and she believed his flowers cost him a great deal too. "You must know, Cassandra, that his heart is with his ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... representation of the colonies in Parliament. Perhaps I might be inclined to entertain some such thought; but a great flood stops me in my course. Opposuit Natura. I cannot remove the eternal barriers of the creation. The thing, in that mode, I do not know to be possible. As I meddle with no theory, I do not absolutely assert the impracticability of such a representation; but I do not see my way to it; and those who have been more confident have not been more successful. However, the arm of public benevolence is not shortened; and there are often several means ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... brutes. [unmannerly] 'An neist my yowie, silly thing, [next] Gude keep thee frae a tether string! O may thou ne'er forgather up [make friends] Wi' ony blastit moorland tup; But ay keep mind to moop an' mell, [nibble, meddle] Wi' sheep o' credit like thysel! 'And now, my bairns, wi' my last breath I lea'e my blessin' wi' you baith; An' when you think upo' your mither, Mind to be kind to ane anither. 'Now, honest Hughoc, dinna ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... to joke? Who gave you the right to do such a thing? Who gave you power over people? How dare you meddle with what to them is right? How dare you interfere with ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... one of the youths, "post a guard over this flying machine. Don't let anybody meddle with it. And have all the noncoms and techs report here, on the double." He turned and shouted up at the truncated ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... embossed according to the old traditional pattern,—you as well as another. Where the material is hard, they put on more power,—where it is soft, more care; wherefore I caution you here, as I would in a mill at Lowell or Lawrence,—Don't meddle with the shafts,—don't go too near the wheel,—in short, keep clear of the machinery. And Hulia does so; for, at the last attack of Padre Doyaguez, she suddenly turns upon him and says, "Sir, you are a Doctrinary and a Propagandist." And the good Father suffers her to depart in peace. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... did not understand the governing of principalities, he appointed me Assistant Prince, with a salary. This seemed like a very good plan, but it did not work. The Dowager soon showed such a disposition to meddle with everything that was going on that my position gradually became so intolerable that I determined to retire to a hermit's cell, to which my ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... So we will not meddle with hens' nests, robins' nests, and all the nests, big and little, that we find about our homes, for they are the "potatoes" of a subject like this, but will try and find some nests that are a little out ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... afeard o' no Purdee ez ever stepped," she said to herself, defining her position. "But I'm fur peace. An' ef the Purdees will leave we-uns be, I ain't a-goin' ter meddle along ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of his councell, the pope granted the king certeine priuileges and customes, which his predecessours had vsed and enioied: but as for the inuestitures of bishops, he would not haue him in any wise to meddle withall: [Sidenote: Polydor.] yet did he confirme those bishops whom the king had alreadie created, least the refusall should be occasion to ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (3 of 12) - Henrie I. • Raphael Holinshed
... as before, my nearness to her seemed for a moment to meddle with my heart and check it; then, as though to gain the beats they lost, every little pulse began ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... softly. "Always vengeful and vindictive, and always because you must ever mess and meddle with other men's concerns," he retorted. "And yet I say ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... soul of the European coalition against the French ascendency. The clue, without which it was perilous to enter the vast and intricate maze of Continental politics, was in his hands. His English counsellors, therefore, however able and active, seldom, during his reign, ventured to meddle with that part of the public business which he had taken as his peculiar ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was himself in the habit of making experiments in painting and etching, though he deplored both the time and money so spent, and repeatedly resolved not to meddle any more with them; but he could not keep the resolution. His mind was so curious about all possible processes and technicalities, and his desire of perfection so great, that not only did he experiment in all the known processes, but invented new ones. Entries in the note-book ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed with my children, that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. Much more if I found it in bed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound myself by a solemn compact not to meddle with his children under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman alone. But if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... between Gibson and Clare would be! I don't know when I have been so much pleased. You may despise the trade of match-maker, my lady, but I am very proud of it. After this, I shall go on looking out for suitable cases among the middle-aged people of my acquaintance. I shan't meddle with young folks, they are so apt to be fanciful; but I have been so successful in this, that I do think it is a ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... had become abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, the church where he performed the miracle when he was sick of the fever. He was very ambitious to meddle in affairs of state, but his bad name had weakened his influence with Edmund, and it seemed likely to do the same with well-intentioned Edred. He desired to create a public impression again that ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... partially to favour any of the gladiators, or fencers, as either the Parmularii, or the Secutores. Moreover, to endure labour; nor to need many things; when I have anything to do, to do it myself rather than by others; not to meddle with many businesses; and not easily to ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... the Divine hand which thus conspicuously and signally appeared, put him ashore at Providence, and left him there. A physician being desired to undertake his cure, hearing how he came to lose his sight, refused to meddle with him. This account I lately received from credible persons, who knew and have often seen the man whom the devil (according to his own wicked wish) made blind, through the dreadful ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... decorous for your taste. The fifteen years have made me older and graver. In you I can detect no such becoming change. Your levities and audacities are like the loves and comforts prayed for by Desdemona: they increase, even as your days do grow. No mere pioneering journal dares meddle with them now: the stately Times itself is alone sufficiently above suspicion to act as your chaperone; and even the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not produced every day, since after each such event its gravity is compromised, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... unsolved. That great hiatus needs filling up. I, therefore, whether erroneously or not, in reviewing a German historical work of some pretensions, where this problem emerges, rejected the Portman Square doctor altogether, and traced the term to an old Oxford statute—one of the many which meddle with dress, and which charges it as a point of conscience upon loyal scholastic students that they shall wear cerulean socks. Such socks, therefore, indicated scholasticism: worn by females, they would indicate a self-dedication to what for them would be regarded as pedantic ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... passion.] How dare you! How dare you meddle with my affairs—mine and Mr. Mackworth's! How ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... hill-sides, on the most distant and northern islands—as far north as any of our explorers have gone. The first birds Sverdrup met as he was coming south, in the early spring, were wild geese. These birds are not disturbed on their breeding grounds. The Eskimo do not meddle with them. In the same way caribou are found feeding about the shores of Hudson bay and strait. Like the geese, they feed on berries about the hill sides. I have shot them at the mouth of Churchill river, and near cape Digges ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... of wicked people from hurting you; the blessed Bible is in your hands; when you become men and women you will have full liberty to earn your living, to go, to come, to seek pleasure or profit in any way that you may choose, so long as you do not meddle with the rights of other people; in one word, you are free children! Thank God! thank God! my children, for this precious gift. Count it dearer than life. Ask the great God who made you free to teach you to prefer death to the loss ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... stupefied amazement at the severed bonds before he rushed back up the slope. He ran at full speed to the place where U Saw was placidly chewing betel and waiting the upshot of the affair. The Ruby King was fearfully incensed at the idea that anyone had dared to meddle with the prisoners, and both he and the half-caste breathed the most furious threats of torture and death against all concerned in the affair. That they would re-capture Jack and his father they did not doubt for an instant. The ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... in such a time as this the only way to fight against the devil is to attack him. He has got it too much his own way to meddle with us if we don't meddle with him. But the very devil has feelings, and if you prick him will roar...whereby you, at all events, gain the not-every-day-of-the-week-to-be-attained benefit of finding out where he is. Unless, indeed, as I suspect, the old rascal plays ventriloquist (as big grasshoppers ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... an upshooting but also a down-growing branch. We find ourselves, at any rate, still a considerable distance from the turning point, where the history of society begins to descend, and we cannot expect the Hegelian philosophy to meddle with a subject which at that time science had not yet placed upon the order of ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... boys still shouted, and some of them carried their hostility so far as to throw sticks and stones at the little party; but as long as they kept at a respectful distance, Noddy did not deem it wise to meddle with them, though he kept one eye on them, and stood ready to punish those who ventured ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... as a most certain expedient to prevent many afflictions, and to be delivered from them: meddle as little with the world, and the honors, places and advantages of them, as thou canst. And extricate thyself from them as much, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... been glad to flew above 'em, but the Ring and the vile laws lay holt of her onbeknown to her and dragged her down. And there she is all bruised and broken-hearted by 'em. She didn't meddle with the political Ring, but the Ring meddled with her. How can she fly when the weight of this infamous traffic is ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... of Sylvia's retreat; and when Siward went on sketching she had been content. Now she could not tell whether he had deliberately and skillfully taken his conge to follow Sylvia, or whether, in his quest for his cigarettes, chance might meddle, as usual. Even if he returned, she could not know with certainty how much of a part hazard had played on the landing above, where she already heard the distant sounds of Sylvia's voice mingling with Siward's, then a light footfall or ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... to expect a severe censure from Great Britain do not appear to be so anxious for the event as the friends and well-wishers to the authority of the Government." The Patriots intended no rebellion, and they experienced no apprehension. They put forth no absurd claims to meddle with things that were common and national, and they asked simply to be let alone as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... chance, I assure you. As I don't like folks to meddle with my affairs, I never meddle with theirs. As I have just said, it was entirely the work of chance. One April afternoon I came to invite you to a drive in the Bois. I was ushered into this very room where we are sitting now, and found you writing. I said I would ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... that awful fiddle!" "Hit 'im in the eye with a bit o' biscuit!" or "Grease his bow!" Then a deeper bass voice, evidently Scotch, and just as evidently a junior surgeon's, saying, "Let the laddie practise.—Fiddle away, my boy; I'll thrash all hands if they meddle with ye." ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... this, Marie!" said the Lady Catharine, sternly. "After this have better wisdom, and do not meddle in things ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... "Old person, do not meddle. This papa knows what he is about. The little folks understand very well that a 'biography' is a story of a life; that to 'criticise' is to find fault; and that ...
— The Nursery, February 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... suppose anyone will say that in this great German event Prussian ambition had no share, or that force and conquest did not act side by side with the impulse of national sentiment. But I do not now meddle with what has been done in Germany; that has nothing in common with the present pretensions of Prussia to Alsace and Lorraine. Have these provinces given any manifestation, any appearance, of a desire to be included in the German unity? Is not the Prussian policy in this openly and exclusively ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... physical causes are constant, it follows that the turning of the rod cannot be the result of a physical cause. The only other explanation is an intelligent cause—either the will of an impostor, or the action of a spirit. Good spirits would not meddle with such matters; therefore either the Devil or an impostor causes the motion of the rod, if it does move at all. This logic of Malebranche's is not agreeable to believers in the twig; but there the controversy ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... eye shut as long as they can, and then go off pretty leisurely to pass the word along that they have heard oars or have seen signals, especially if they have got a hot-headed boatswain in charge of their station, a sort of chap who would want to go down to meddle with a hundred men, with only five or six at his back. A man with a wife and some children, perhaps, don't relish the thought of going into a bad scrimmage like that if he can keep out of it; why ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... the fallen trees by means of a slow fire to make their canoes. Their villages were not permanent. They migrated within certain bounds, as they planted. A village might comprise as many as fifty or sixty round houses. The chiefs had absolute power of life and death. Priests did not meddle ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... the foul arts of beautifying, and cry out in loud rude voices in every assembly and gathering. They strut about in vain-glorious conceit, and flaunt their gaudy apparel in indecent boldness. They claim what does not belong to them and meddle with what does not concern them. They do not blush to cloud the precious jewel of modesty with the selfish airs of passion. Nothing is said which they do not hear, nothing occurs which they do not see. They become bold, unblushing ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... this very humbly; and yet there was a note of grim resolution in his voice—which the doctor did not fail to note. "But, Samuel!" he protested. "Why—why should you meddle ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... grandpap," she said quietly, "an' if it wasn't for grandma I wouldn't come back. You've been bullyin' an' rough- ridin' over men-folks and women-folks all your life, but you can't do it no more with ME. An' you're not goin' to meddle in MY business any more. You know I'm a good girl—why didn't you go after the folks who've been talkin' instead o' pitchin' into Gray? You know he'd die before he'd harm a hair o' my head or allow you or anybody else to say anything against my good name. An' I tell you to your ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... and his first idea was to arrange the matter. This was a sensible course, and he ought at once to have put the matter into the hands of his friend Perker, with full powers to treat. But no. Mr. Pickwick's vanity and indiscretion made him meddle in the business behind his solicitor's back, as it where, and with damaging results to himself—a warning to all such amateurs. It must be said that Dodson and Fogg's behaviour at the extraordinary visit which he paid them was marked ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... influence of the court of Rome upon their envoy failed before the seductive power, mixed with fear, which Napoleon had exercised upon Cardinal Caprara since his arrival. The French bishops were not less troubled than the Pope. "Has the emperor the right to meddle in those matters?" wrote Aviau, Bishop of Bordeaux, to one of his friends; "who has given him the mission? To him the things of earth, to us the things of heaven. Soon, if we let him, he will lay hands on the censer, and perhaps afterwards wish ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... stopped short in his tracks and peered through the darkness. At first he believed that he must be mistaken. But no, it shone steadily before him, and he knew that some one was there. The thought made him angry, and he hurried forward, determined to make an example of the one who had dared to meddle ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... Mr. William, peace;—silentium, my graceless pupil. Urge the foaming steed, and strike terror into the rapid stag, but meddle not with ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... looking very grave, "don't you know, Hephzibah, it is wrong to meddle with anything ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... woman for having a Bastard Childe ... the Negroe said she Intised him and promised him to marry him: she being examined, Confest the same: the Court ordered that she shall receive Twenty one lashes on her bare Backe ... and the Court ordered the negroe never more to meddle with any white woman more ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... the way. The children began to follow An Ching; but Ku Nai-nai, who certainly appeared to have got out of bed the wrong side that morning (only you can't get off a kang except at one side), would not allow Nelly in the cook-house. 'No foreigners shall meddle with my food,' she said; whereat Nelly was very glad, for she had only offered to go and help on An ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper
... byldynge, ne yet of them ben fayne: It longeth to a lorde a Prynce or a Kynge That lacke no treasoure theyr werkes to mayntayne To set theyr myndes on excellent buyldynge Therfore who so euer wyll meddle with this thynge Or any other, before let hym be wyse That his myght and ryches ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... desire, like the lawyers and the rest, to make money. I would willingly have given them half of my income—and any one would have done it in my place, understanding what they do—if they had consented not to meddle in my conjugal life, and to keep themselves at a distance. I have compiled no statistics, but I know scores of cases—in reality, they are innumerable—where they have killed, now a child in its mother's ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... yard and talking to another at a window, and a third had opened a door belonging to the office. In the middle of the yard lay a small leather purse with two keys hanging at it, with money in it, but nobody would meddle with it. I asked how long it had lain there; the man at the window said it had lain almost an hour, but that they had not meddled with it, because they did not know but the person who dropped it might come ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... feudatory, born into a hereditary caste of soldiers, regards war as the highest vocation for a man of honour, is impatient of priestly arrogance, and believes in his heart that the Church ought not to meddle with politics. It would be a mistake to think of the two privileged classes as always at strife with one another and their social inferiors. But the great wars of Pope and Emperor, the fourteenth-century revolts of French and English peasants, are not events ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... these people, so to speak, a right to meddle and dabble in her heart? Was she to be wept over by Sister Angela—to confess her sins to Father Bowles—still worse, to Father Leadham? As she asked herself the question, she shrank in sudden passion from the whole world of ideas concerned—from all those ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was a little Tailor, who made clothes for many a worse man to wear, and who lived all alone in a little house with no one to darn his stockings for him, and no one to meddle with his coming and going, for he ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... Thus I would guide as I pleased the minds and hearts of my people. I would join morality to my authority by an indissoluble chain, and I would proclaim that one could not exist without the other, so that if any audacious individual attempted to meddle with a tabooed question, society, which cannot exist without morality, would feel the very earth tremble under its feet, and would turn its ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... Tribunal, the severity of whose proceedings under him he had condemned, and sentenced to the guillotine; a reflection of his in prison has been recorded: "Oh, it were better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle with governing of men." "No weakness, Danton," he said to himself on the scaffold, as his heart began to sink within him as he thought of his wife. His last words were to Samson the headsman: "Thou wilt show my head to the people, it is worth showing"; words worthy of the brother ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Now, thet han't so, and they couldn't ef they would, 'cause it's agin the Constitution—and they stand on the Constitution a durned sight solider nor we do. Didn't thar big gun—Daniel Webster—didn't he make mince-meat o' South-Carolina Hayne on that ar subject? But I tell you they han't a mind to meddle with our niggers; they're a goin' ter let us go ter h—l our own way—and we're goin' thar mighty fast, or I ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... to understand," she said, "and now I'll have to tell you again. It was because I was trying so hard not to meddle that I did. I sent that little note to you just to get a chance to tell you not to mind my seeing you there with those others—not to let it spoil your party. I couldn't bear to have you come to me to-day, or to-morrow or whenever it was, feeling—well, ashamed you know, and ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... sharp myself.' Now he had a good deal of gold in the house: so he said to Catherine, 'What pretty yellow buttons these are! I shall put them into a box and bury them in the garden; but take care that you never go near or meddle with them.' 'No, Frederick,' said she, 'that I never will.' As soon as he was gone, there came by some pedlars with earthenware plates and dishes, and they asked her whether she would buy. 'Oh dear me, I should like to buy very much, but I have no money: if ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... order as required, and while the bath was preparing she arranged all the gifts in the coffer. Then closing the lid she said to Odysseus: "Make all fast with thine own hands, that none may meddle with thy goods as thou liest asleep on thy passage across the sea." Odysseus made fast the cord, securing it with an intricate and cunning knot, which he had learnt from the great sorceress Circe; and when he had finished he was ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... is often killed and torn to pieces by a drove of peccaries, that he has been imprudent enough to attack. Indeed, this fierce creature will not often meddle with the peccaries when he sees them in large numbers. He attacks only single ones; but their "grunting," which can be heard to the distance of nearly a mile, summons the rest, and he is surrounded before he is aware of it, and seized by as many as ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... crime of those who make a fraudulent use of the public money. But as it was not in my power to meddle with the public money, no part of which passed through my hands, I am at loss to conceive how I can be charged with peculation! The Due de Rovigo is not the author, but merely the echo, of this calumny; but the accusation ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... saying, "Ho, Fatimeh! Ho, Khedijeh! Ho, Herifeh! Ho, Senineh!" Whereupon all those who were in the place of women and neighbours flocked to me and fell a-laughing at me and saying, "O blockhead, what ailed thee to meddle with gallantry?" Then one of them came and looked in my face and laughed, and another said, "By Allah, thou mightest have known that she lied, from the time she said she loved thee and was enamoured of thee? What is there in thee to love?" And a third said, ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave. Ver. If he will not stand when he is bidden he is none of the prince's subjects. Dog. True, and they are to meddle with none but the prince's subjects.—You shall also make no noise in the streets: for, for the watch to babble and talk, is most tolerable, and not to be endured. 2 Watch. We will rather sleep ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... I'm satisfied ter tend 'em. So fur es frayin' an' fightin' goes"—his voice mounted suddenly and the half-whimsical humour died instantly in his eyes—"I've got some of my own ter study erbout—an' I don't have ter meddle with other folkses' quarrels." ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... can take every precaution; but suppose, on the other hand, I kill you. Shall I look to the Duchess to assist me? Will not the finger of suspicion be pointed at her? Shall she say to her gardener when all Paris is hunting for you, 'Mind that you do not meddle with the piece of land at the end of ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... money." If they are in need of cash, they may draw upon his credit with the Spedalingo of S. Maria Novella. The constitutional liability to panic which must be recognised in Michelangelo emerges at the close of the letter. "As to public events, do not meddle with them either by deed or word. Act as though the plague were raging. Be the first to fly." The Buonarroti did not take his advice, but remained at Florence, enduring agonies of terror. It was a time when disaffection ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... out, sir," said the midshipman, and he was holding up the spear-shaft where he stood facing the injured man; "but it would be dangerous to meddle ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Mr. Wilson. "We better not meddle with that matter of disfranchisement," said he. "There are but few of these persons here, so the prohibition will practically not amount to any thing. As we are to accomplish a great object, to establish universal suffrage, we should let alone all propositions ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Lord, open to us." But He answered and said, "Verily I say unto you, I know you not." They find themselves shut out. And let me say this is their final state. One of the fearful things with some of these new theories concerning this last parable is that they meddle with these last words addressed to the foolish virgins, as if they have another chance. No, no, the door was shut and when the door opens again He comes forth not as the Bridegroom, but as the King of kings and the Lord ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... it!" cried her aunt, in agitation. "I wouldn't have you meddle with it—But there! it's locked. I al'ays forgit that. I feel as if the things could git out an' walk. Here! you let it alone, an' byme-by we'll open it. Se' down here on the lounge. There, now! I guess I can tell ye. It was sister ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow emphasis, "will break your neck if you meddle with wot ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... in the coup d'etat, and I do not regret it. It is a principle with me that a stranger should not meddle with the internal affairs of a country. The prince understood this discretion, and did not forget the young man who had been of such good omen ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... that respectable people dread scandal, and they profit by this knowledge. They are sometimes bold and unscrupulous in their way of conducting their business, and at other times endeavor to palm themselves off as injured innocents. They rarely meddle with women, for the difficulties in their way are greater; but, as they know that almost any story about a man will be believed, they fasten themselves like leeches upon the male sex. Young men about to make rich marriages ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... punhial, no cabbage upon two pot-sticks, like some she knew, that were ready enough to give boy a harsh word when they ought to look nearer home, and—may-be—but she said nothing—as God forbid that she'd make or meddle with any neighbor's character; but still, may-be, they'd find enough to blame at home, if they'd open their eyes to their own failings, as well as they do to ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... I mean, if everyone decided against me, nothing should induce me to let that Vaughan into Joe's house to meddle with his patients." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are hungering and thirsting for love, for a man to take care of them, for the right to wifehood and the thrice blessed right to motherhood. In the Press the parrot cry of men echoes ceaselessly: 'Women shouldn't meddle in politics; women shouldn't do this or that—let them mind their homes and their children.' But the restless women who do these things have generally no homes or children to mind; what is the use of preaching the sacredness of motherhood when ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
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