"Petulant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place in the Marquesas or Samoa in a few years, and die in comfort. During the night the mosquitoes worried him incessantly, until one of the coloured ladies, who slept on the ground in the next room, hearing his petulant exclamations, brought him a dirty piece of rag, soaked in kerosene, and told him to anoint his hair, face and hands with it. He did so, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... crisis in her petulant obstinacy came, when she wouldn't sit still to have her hair combed, and it looked like a "hurrah's nest," her brother Bob said. All her naughtiness came right out then. She rolled one eye entirely up in her head, and left it there, and stared so wild with ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... Summoning all my resolution, I repaired without my uncle's knowledge to the poet's house at an early hour, and after much difficulty was admitted to his room. He was still in bed. Every body has heard of Byron's peevishness, when disturbed or intruded on. He demanded my business in a petulant and offensive tone. I replied, respectfully, that on the preceding day I loaned him a silver pencil,—strongly emphasizing and repeating the word silver,—which, I was grieved to say, he forgot to return. Byron reflected ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... who have been bred in Arms preserve to the most extreme and feeble old Age a certain Daring in their Aspect: In like manner, they who have pass'd their Time in Gallantry and Adventure, keep up, as well as they can, the Appearance of it, and carry a petulant Inclination to their last Moments. Let this serve for a Preface to a Relation I am going to give you of an old Beau in Town, that has not only been amorous, and a Follower of Women in general, but also, in Spite of the Admonition ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... children, for she missed their cheerful society, but she could not be spared. Miss Phillips was in exceedingly good-humour at this time, and did not exact so much from Elsie as she had expected; but Mrs. Phillips missed her husband, and was rather petulant and capricious. She had been considerably kinder to Elsie since the death of her little girl. This first sorrow had done her good; but now, in her husband's absence, a good deal of the old spirit returned, particularly as she was much offended at the little attention which Harriett ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... of them—even where none exist. If we are expecting wounds, we shall receive them even when no one intends to wound us. Self-love has a great imagination. It can see a great many evils where none exist. It is like a petulant and spoiled child. I remember one child of whom it was said, "If you just crook your finger at him, he will cry." Thinking that this was an exaggeration, I tried it, and the boy cried. There are some people six feet tall who are hurt just that easily. They are truly "lovers of their own ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... come to his assistance before many days; this state of affairs could not exist much longer. Mine uncle examined the watch with kindly eyes; with a pathetic shake of his head, a pitiful lifting of his bushy eyebrows, a commiserating shrug of his fat shoulders, and a petulant pursing of his plump lips as much as to say, "Well, it is a pity, but we must make the best of it, you know"—he told Clitheroe he would advance him ten dollars on the watch. For this the boy was to pay one dollar per week, and ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... cared in the least for me. Some of the best-loved people in the world seem to have had very little love to give away! I have a sort of feeling that the people who evoke most affection are the people who have something of the child always in them—something petulant, wilful, self-absorbed, claiming sympathy and attention. It is a certain innocence and freshness that we love, I think; the quality that seems to say, 'Oh, do make me happy'; and I think that caring for people generally means ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... None of you stop to consider my side of it. Oh, yes; there is one person who does. Mother understands. She doesn't think I ought to marry Tom, just to please him. She realizes that my work means more to me than marriage." Grace's tone had again become unconsciously petulant. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... dashes by, the pedestrian is able to catch a glimpse of some jewelled and turbaned sultana, of dazzling beauty, attended by her maid, who does not always possess a sinecure, for the mistress is often haughty, proud, and petulant, very hard to please, and exacts great deference from her inferiors. Many of them live in regal splendour, and everything that wealth and pampered luxury can bestow is theirs, as long as their personal charms remain; but when their beauty has ceased to gratify the passions of their masters, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... wars with Sapor in the east;—how Julian sorrowfully bade them go, judging well by Gallus his brother's experience (whom Constantius had treated in the same way as a first step towards cutting off his head) what the next thing should be;—but how they, (bless their Celtic and Petulant and Herulian and Dutch hearts!) told him very plainly that that kind of thing would not wash with them: "Come!" said they; "no nonsense of this sort; be you our emperor, and condemn that old lady your cousin Constantius!—or we kill you right now." Into his bed-room in ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... halting sentence about her white sash: "But you said—you said you'd dance with me if I got my sash ..." or some such words, but only Miss Le Pettit caught all the muttered syllables, and she never spoke of them, save with a petulant reluctance to Mr. Constantine ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... stones but the dry flints he found close to the wall would strike sparks; but, careless, improvident, petulant child of nature that he was, he exhausted the supply, and one day, too indolent to search his hunting-tracts to regain the necessary two, he endeavored to draw fire from a pair that he dug from the ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... peculiarities of many kinds of men, which culminated at length, in no fair forms of humanity nor beneficent institutions, but in the foremost sugar-plantation of the world, whose cane-rows were planted and nourished by the first of crimes, whose juice was expressed by over-hasty avarice and petulant ambition that could not be satisfied unless the crime preserved features as colossal as the passion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... hereabouts they fill the air—still circled and wheeled within range of sight, uttering from time to time sharp, petulant cries; and far in the distance there was just visible a shadowy line that showed where ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... grudge, you know, gemmen, is soon inflamed to a fresh rupture. It was thought Mr. Darnel came on purpose to show his resentment. They differed about a bet upon Miss Cleverlegs, and, in the course of the dispute, Mr. Darnel called him a petulant boy. The young squire, who was as hasty as gunpowder, told him he was man enough to chastise him for his insolence; and would do it on the spot, if he thought it would not interrupt the diversion. In all probability they would have come to points immediately, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... heard," said a petulant critic, "of anchovies dissolved in sauce; but never of an angel dissolved in hallelujahs." But this raillery Dryden rebuffs with a quotation ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... and lean, and when on foot was rather inclined to stoop. His eyes were ominous and his expression somewhat petulant except when startlingly illuminated by one of his frequent smiles. Clark had "a income"—just enough to keep himself in ease and his car in gasolene—and he had spent the two years since he graduated from Georgia Tech in ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... any sermons, thank you," from a petulant, tired Franky. In the stress of their work the poor child's hour for retiring ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... with a petulant shrug of the shoulders, as much as to say that she was no longer under obligations to me for preventing her capture by the party that had raided the tavern. The big Irishman, who had evidently recognized ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... side. He would, of course, have much preferred to agree with her—to have embraced any view which had the attraction of her advocacy; but it now gave him genuine pleasure to find his opposition exciting her to petulance. She was not petulant with Solomon, but left her father to tilt with him after his ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... out 't all, Peg," she said, with a petulant, youthful smile. "I just won't do it! Lafe ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... consciousness manifested itself in a hazy and quite detached perception that I was being violently shaken by the shoulder; while a voice, pitched in aggrieved and petulant tones—which I presently recognised as those of the lad, Julius—exhorted me to "Wake up!" At first these exhortations produced no particular effect upon me. I was aware of them, but that was all; they had no definite ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... in Red Cross work spent weary hours each day in a filthy room in a noisy wine-shop, waiting for fresh trouble to break loose. The dreariness of it made B—— petulant and T—— mournfully silent, and finally left me melancholy. But sturdy Andrew MacEwan, the Scotchman with the forty-inch barrel chest, would reach out for his big can of naval tobacco, slipped to him by the sailors at Dunkirk ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... paintbox. Then through his body and his soul it had attacked his brain. It had sent him night-sweats and tears and unfounded dreads. It had split his intense normality into credulity and suspicion. Out of the coarse material of his enthusiasm it had cut dozens of meek but petulant obsessions; his energy was shrunk to the bad temper of a spoiled child, and for his will to power was substituted a fatuous puerile desire for a land of harps and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... overlook that slip of yours! You was out of the way of every man in the world; you was on your own range, watering at your own wells—the only case like that on record. And the second dark night some petulant and highly anonymous cowboys run off your herder and stampeded ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... of that one hundred and thirty miles of harsh coast, through the thirty-seven years he had managed to survive the winds and seas and frosts of it; and the more he dwelt upon his straitened circumstances and increasing age the more petulant he grew. ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... candid, is a very high degree of merit in any case; but those qualities deserve still greater praise, when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... fashion. But the effect of her grave little face and severe expression, with this opulent gold, and her red lips and round blue eyes, was very piquant. Even powder, earrings, and "clubbing" her hair did not rob Julia of the appearance of a sweet, wilful, and petulant child. Besides the powder and earrings, she indulged in cologne, in open-work silk stockings and high heels, in chains and rings and bracelets; she wore little corsets, at fourteen, and laced ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... silent; it was her only weapon when he became petulant. He hated silence, and generally returned to the conversation with more suavity. Perhaps, in his great experience, he really appreciated his wife's wonderful patience with his moods, and it is certain that he was exceedingly fond ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... she was gone, Craik Tomlin dashed down the wine like a petulant boy, and cursed deeply and fiercely. And not until then did Venner and Pearse awake to the true artistry of the woman; for here, instead of making of Tomlin a raging foe, willing to plot with all the power of his alert brain for their ultimate ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... turned away he drew out an extremely thin gold watch. The position of the hour hand brought a petulant frown to his white forehead. He hastened to mount his pony. Short as had been the rest, the wiry little animal had regained his wind and strength. Stung by the spurs, he plunged up the side of the ridge and loped off along its level top, parallel ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... was sitting in a field, some two miles from the town, where the few trees it contained were disposed as if they were continually setting to partners, in some arboreous quadrille. The surrounding fields were tipped at all angles, as if in petulant discontent of one-time flatness. With an effort she could discern, Jill's tail wagging delightedly from a hole in a ditch, where she was hunting a rabbit. The voice, the sights, the sounds of nature, all served to obliterate the effect of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... from the back of his chair where he had clasped his hands behind his head, and finished his own high-ball. Nature in the beginning of things for him had been more kind than to his petulant friend. He was scarcely more than a boy—twenty-five, perhaps, from the looks of him—but physically a big man. He might have weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, and he was maybe an inch over six feet. But evidently where nature ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... emissaries, who had been sent forth, returned with the news that no one had seen Druro since eleven o'clock the night before, when he had gone off in a car with some mining men. The widow hid her annoyance under a pretty, petulant smile ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... ever claimed their prescriptive right of holding us lingering in their chains; and Lord Greville would do well to remember that his services are too important to his country to be held on the caprices of a silly girl's affected coyness. But be it so—since you are so petulant a lover, be prepared when you join her Majesty's circle to-night, to ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... now." Worth's laconic answer sent the blood of healthy anger into her face, made her eyes shine. And it brought from Ina Vandeman a petulant, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... Gregory Hall, with a petulant expression, "I don't want to be questioned. I'm not on the witness-stand, and, as I've told you, I'm uncomfortable already about these so-called 'clues' that seem to implicate Miss Lloyd. So, if ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... the Coombe Hills, on the extreme southern edge of Berkshire, and not far removed from the great highway leading from Bath to London, lies the farmery where this restless, petulant, suffering, earnest, clear-sighted Tull put down the burden of life, a hundred and twenty years ago. The house is unfortunately largely modernized, but many of the out-buildings remain unchanged; and not a man thereabout, or in any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... successes (see page 187). These are not German traits, but it may have been the German blood he inherited from his mother and the example of his friends, fellow-workers, and helpers, which enabled him to get the better of such petulant and gloomy outbursts, and return to the day of small things with the will ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... of Marie Antoinette!' said the invalid, raising a petulant hand, and letting it fall again, inert. 'All the silly memorials of her they sell here!—and the sentimental talk about her! Arthur, of course, now—with ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... must necessarily be humble. I would also have him apply his anticosmetic wash to the painted face of female vanity, and his rod, which draws blood at every stroke, to the hard back of insolent folly or petulant wit. But Addison should be employed to comfort those whose delicate minds are dejected with too painful a sense of some infirmities in their nature. To them he should hold his fair and charitable mirror, which would bring to their sight their hidden excellences, and put them in a temper fit ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... Pestilential pesta, pestiga. Pestle pistilo. Pet dorloti. Petal florfolieto. Petard petardo. Petition petegi. Petition petskribo. Petrify sxtonigi. Petroleum petrolo. Petticoat subjupo. Pettish malgxentila. Petty malgranda. Petulance petoleco. Petulant petola. Pew pregxbenko. Pewter stano. Phantom apero, fantomo. Pharmacist farmaciisto. Pharmacy (place) farmaciejo, apoteko. Pharmacy (science) farmacio. Pharos lumturo. Pharynx faringo. Phase fazo. Pheasant fazano. Pheasantry ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... western Counties, some Summers past, judge of our national Wisdom and Oeconomy? Would he not start even at our Humanity, on seeing the best arable Grounds in the Kingdom, in immense Tracts, wantonly enjoyed by the Cattle of a few petulant Individuals; and at the same Juncture, our high Ways and Streets crowded with Shoals of mendicant fellow-creatures! reduced, through Want of proper Sustenance, to the utmost Distress? Would not ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... but not very eagerly. An impulse seized her to ask him to forgive all her petulant speeches and waywardness, but when she tried to do it she could not find her voice. Perhaps he read her thought in her tearful eyes and changeful face, and grew a little remorseful as he remembered how often he had vexed her during the first months of their acquaintance. At any ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... a little, petulant murmur when he tried to set her down. She still clung to him. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the torn line of Gafsa palms that confronted us on the other side of the river-bed, we might have been in the veriest wilderness. Although the wind was lulled, petulant little pillars of sand still arose here and there among the boulders, and sank down again, as if exhausted; the descending sun had emerged, a lurid disk, framed in a sulphureous halo that melted imperceptibly into the ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... morning, and now began the holiday of both governess and pupil. They loved one another so well that the prospect of six weeks' close companionship was irksome to neither; but Emilie had not a holiday of it altogether. Miss Edith was exacting and petulant at times, even with those she loved, and she loved none better than Emilie. Fred, the tormenting brother of whom Edith had spoken in her list of troubles in our first chapter, was undeniably troublesome; and the three ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... in the kitchen, but Louis was too frightened to face them. He was too shy to go downstairs to carry up water or coal for Marcella, and she had to do it herself; in the undermined state of his nerves it was torture to him to face people, and he became petulant if asked to do what he called "menial tasks." Marcella understood him: Mrs. King had no hesitation in ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... not find in her eyes any of that acclaimed glad love-light which eager lovers seek. On the contrary, Miss Kilgour made just a bit of a face at him and was distinctly petulant. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... grand reviews and grand diplomatic audiences. I never saw him more condescending, more agreeable, or, at least, less offensive, than on the day of his last levee, before he set out to be inaugurated a King of Italy; nor worse tempered, more petulant, agitated, abrupt, and rude than at his first grand audience after his arrival from Milan, when this ceremony had been performed. I am not the only one who has made this remark; he did not disguise either his good or ill-humour; and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... on which Bates was to go home. He had had a week's petulant struggle with his malady since he last passed through the door of Trenholme's house, but now he had conquered it for the hour, and even his host perceived that it was necessary for him to make his journey before the weather ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... would take, over and above a discharge for all the trouble we have been at, to take his business out of our hands and give it to somebody else. It is impossible to collect money on that or any other claim here now; and although you know I am not a very petulant man, I declare I am almost out of patience with Mr. Everett's importunity. It seems like he not only writes all the letters he can himself, but gets everybody else in Louisville and vicinity to be constantly writing to us about his claim. I have always said that Mr. Everett ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... loves, if she be willing, he says to her, 'I will stand in that place. Please go thither at night.' Then after her arrival he enjoys her, and subsequently asks her of her father in marriage. But it was different with a girl who had been petulant, one who had refused to listen to the suitor at first. He might be inclined to take his revenge. After lying with her, he might say, 'As you struck me and hurt me, I will not marry you. Though you ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... happens that a Representative only becomes somebody from his position in the Assembly. He is therefore perpetually haunted by a craving to acquire importance there, and he feels a petulant desire to be constantly obtruding his opinions upon the House. His own vanity is not the only stimulant which urges him on in this course, but that of his constituents, and the continual necessity of propitiating them. Amongst aristocratic nations a member of the legislature ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... men and the times. Yet his narrative is too often defective, trifling, and improbable. Till something better shall be found, his learned and spiritual interpreter (Ockley, in his History of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 21-342) will not deserve the petulant animadversion of Reiske, (Prodidagmata ad Magji Chalifae Tabulas, p. 236.) I am sorry to think that the labors of Ockley were consummated in a jail, (see his two prefaces to the 1st A.D. 1708, to the 2d, 1718, with the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... result in God's hands. With a miser's care she husbanded her strength, ate the most nourishing food they could afford, and rested every moment her duties permitted. The economy they were now compelled to practice amounted almost to daily privation. Belle and the children were often a little petulant over this change, Mrs. Jocelyn apathetic, but Mildred was inflexible. "We must not run in debt one penny," she would ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... a common attitude of mind towards fancied blessings, how does God deal with it? For a long time He may in compassion withhold the fatal gift. He may in pity disregard our petulant clamour. And He may in many ways bring home to our minds that the thing we crave is in several respects unsuitable. We may become conscious under His discipline that without it we are less entangled with the world and with temptation; that we can live ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... motions of the stars, and binds the whole universe, high and low, into one system: and we may have arrived at the blessed wish to conform with this law rather than to strive and kick against the pricks and waste our short time in petulant rebellion. So far, so good: but how are we to know the law? How, with the best will in the world, are we to distinguish order from disorder? What assurance have we, after striving to bring ourselves into obedience, that we have succeeded? We may agree, for ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... than he supposed, and diverging from the point of direction of his own party with every step. Time and again had Devers, still fuming with nervous tension and mingled wrath and pain,—hungry and savage, too, it must be borne in mind,—given vent to some petulant expression because of the non-arrival of the young officer whom he saw fit to hold responsible for the loss of his men; and when at last Mr. Davies neared them, riding diagonally towards the troop ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... priests, and deacons, to which they had subscribed; but he and his brethren conceived, that without a royal license, they had not authority to attempt, enact, promulge, or execute any canon, which should concern either doctrine or discipline. The lower house answered this declaration in very petulant terms; and the dispute subsisted when the parliament was prorogued. But these contests produced divisions through the whole body of the clergy, who ranged themselves in different factions, distinguished by the names of high-church ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... always brute strength. There was no moral strength whatever in the restless fidgeting—the savage winding and unwinding of his left foot around the saber scabbard, or the attitude, leaning forward over the table, of petulant pugnacity. And the cruel voice was as weak as the hand was strong with which he rapped on ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... own good breeding," says Chesterfield, "is the best security against other people's ill manners. It carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duke of Marlborough, or a civil ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... affections of his troops only by leading them to victory. He furnished a striking illustration of the necessity of a healthy body for a sound intellect. Many years of dyspepsia had made his temper sour and petulant; and he was intolerant to a degree of neglect of duty, or what he esteemed to be such, by his officers. A striking instance of this occurred during my visit. At dinner, surrounded by his numerous staff, I inquired for one ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... more! If I try to sleep on this river's brink for the night, the frost and dew and wind will kill me; and if I climb this hill to yonder thicket, I fear a savage beast will eat me while I slumber." It is well to be careful, O Ulysses, in these wild solitudes; now let the petulant outburst just given, be preparatory to an act of will which will settle the problem. "He rose and went to the wood near by; he crept under two bushes that grew from the same place, one the wild and the other the tame olive." There in a heap of leaves—man's first bed—he slept under the intertwined ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Givre. Owen, even then, both physically and morally, furnished her with the oddest of commentaries on his father's mien and mind. He would never, the family sighingly recognized, be nearly as handsome as Mr. Leath; but his rather charmingly unbalanced face, with its brooding forehead and petulant boyish smile, suggested to Anna what his father's countenance might have been could one have pictured its neat features disordered by a rattling breeze. She even pushed the analogy farther, and descried in her step-son's mind a quaintly-twisted reflection ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... very much annoyed, and said it was disgraceful, and that Harold was always getting into scrapes, and would ruin him with all the county people, just as he was beginning to make way with them—a petulant kind of ingratitude which we had all learnt to tolerate as "old Eu's way," and Dora announced that if he was put in prison, she ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to recognize this fact, against her wish and will, Constance came to a better understanding with herself, and she confessed to herself, with cheeks aflame at the recollection, that her petulant outbreak, and shameful accusation against Doctor Heath, was but the mutinous struggle of the head against the heart's acknowledged master. Too late came this self confession. Sybil Lamotte's letter ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... hated you," she was even petulant and plaintively resentful, "I thought I could let it go on. I watched, and watched, and bore it. But the strain was too great. I broke down. I think I broke down one night, when something began to beat like ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... effort, at least, must be to keep to it for life. An easy short cut to freedom would tempt too many from the harder but nobler way of compromise, conciliation, and self-subordination. If one is weak and erring, or petulant and unkind, the other must patiently and lovingly seek to help, to educate, to uplift; seventy times seven times is not too often for forgiveness; and many a marriage that seemed hopelessly wrecked has been saved by magnanimity and tactful affection. There is a fine disciplinary ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... blind with one eye, but his remaining organ of vision sparkled with vivacity. His rosy countenance was gay, smiling, joyous, splendidly crowned with thick chestnut hair, which curled like a wax doll's. His address was cordial to familiarity, and his expansive and petulant manners harmonized well with his general appearance. In a second, Rodin had taken his measure of the Italian emissary; and as he knew the practice of his Company, and the ways of Rome, he felt by no means comfortable ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... so, Madge; but I am sorry that I cannot entertain your very convenient sort of opinion," returned Mrs. Verne, in a half angry and petulant mood; then rising from her seat, took up a piece of crewel embroidery, saying, "I suppose if I have to turn out and earn my living I had better begin at once," and suiting the action to the word, was soon busily engaged in making some pretty ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... glanced shyly at each other, and shyly avoided or as shyly returned and met each other's glances more than several times. She had a slender oval face. Her brown eyes were beautiful. Her nose was a dream, as was her sweet-lipped, petulant-hinting mouth. She wore a tam-o'-shanter, and I thought her brown hair the prettiest shade of brown I had ever seen. And from that single experience of half an hour I have ever since been convinced of the reality of love at ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... sitting, and I don't want a life-sized portrait of myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the music-stool, in a wilful, petulant manner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. "I beg your pardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had anyone ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... may honestly inform a just prince how far his prerogative extends, so I may be allowed to tell your lordship, who by an undisputed title are the king of poets, what an extent of power you have, and how lawfully you may exercise it over the petulant scribblers of this age. As Lord Chamberlain, I know, you are absolute by your office in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of the stage. You can banish from thence scurrility and profaneness, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... and the big man laughed, heartily. "Is that a crime? But most of all I care to have one little foolish, petulant ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... he studied a method of removing these discords and reconciling the determined opposition of the tones. He finally discovered that his first inspiration, which was to animate the fire of the weave by setting it off against some dark object, was erroneous. In fact, this rug was too new, too petulant and gaudy. The colors were not sufficiently subdued. He must reverse the process, dull the tones, and extinguish them by the contrast of a striking object, which would eclipse all else and cast a golden light on the pale silver. Thus stated, the problem was ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... blackened with the smoke of the battle, it is unworthy of two mighty empires to carry on an ignoble war of words. If peace is their wish, let them manifest the great and enlightened sentiment in all its purity, and disdain to irritate each other by acts of petulant and ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... such hysterics that we have to send her with her mouth full into the next room, to be pounded on the back to stop her from choking. My friend Givemfits is "down on" almost everything but tea, and I think one reason of his nervous, sharp, petulant way is that he takes too much of this beverage. He thinks the world is very soon coming to an end, and says, "The sooner the better, confound it!" He is a literary man, a newspaper writer, a book critic, and so on; but if he were a minister, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... mean' of Horace, and the worship of virtue that redeems the obscurities of Persius. There is a still greater gulf between the high scorn manifested by Persius for all that is base and ignoble, and the fierce, almost petulant, indignation of Juvenal, that often seems to rend for the mere delight of rending, and is at times disfigured by such grossness of language that many an unsympathetic reader has wondered whether the indignation was genuine. Neither Horace nor Juvenal ever ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... spinster, through no want of trying to remedy the defect, expert at bridge, razor-edged of tongue, but still youthful enough to allow the lid of Pandora's casket to lift on occasions, also to be described by those who feared the razor-edge as petulant instead of peevish, and cendree instead of sandy, passed the tedious moments of waiting in a running commentary upon the idiosyncrasies and oddities of the people and refreshments of the past hours, with a verve which she fondly believed to be a combination of sarcasm and cynicism, but which, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... not light his cigar, however, when the other left him; took off his hat to let the wind blow through his hair, the petulant heat dying out of his face, giving place to a rigid settling, at last, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... you, Mrs Gertrude and Mrs Anne shall not be in brown kersey," said Mrs Louvaine, in her usual petulant tone. "And if Aubrey don him not in satin and velvet, my ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... in arms, 'Damsel, the quest is mine. Lead, and I follow.' She thereat, as one That smells a foul-fleshed agaric in the holt, And deems it carrion of some woodland thing, Or shrew, or weasel, nipt her slender nose With petulant thumb and finger, shrilling, 'Hence! Avoid, thou smellest all of kitchen-grease. And look who comes behind,' for there was Kay. 'Knowest thou not me? thy master? I am Kay. We lack thee by ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... makes the silly goats guffaw at such a rate when I recite my 'Ode to a Dying Sparrow'," he said in a petulant tone to Nealie, one day when his audience had been more than usually convulsed. "It must be shocking bad form to double up in public as they did; a photograph of them would have served as an up-to-date advertisement of the latest thing in gramaphones, ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... Alexander, Mrs. Almy's own slave. He is, like Rosalia, of mahogany color, with a broad forehead and intelligent eyes. His proud, impatient nature is little suited to his position, and every day brings some new account of his petulant outbreaks. To-day he quarrelled with the new cook, and drew a knife upon him. Mrs. Almy threatens continually to sell him, and at this the hearts of some of us grow very sick,—for she always says that his spirit must be broken, that only the severest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... warmest friends and the most enlightened and able men whom Ireland ever knew—by Walter Hussey Burgh—by Henry Flood, and by the brilliant phalanx of constitutional lawyers who at that time graced the popular cause—men "to whom compared" the most proud and petulant of her present persecutors "are but the insects of a summer's day." These gentlemen had been the long-tried friends of the country—they had been found pure in principle, and in intellect superior to their contemporaries. Where, therefore, was ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... and the household on the Knap became again serene under the composing influences of daily routine. A desultory, very desultory correspondence, dragged on between Sally Hall and Darton, who, not quite knowing how to take her petulant words on the night of her brother's death, had continued passive thus long. Helena and her children remained at the dairy-house, almost of necessity, and Darton therefore deemed ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... a massive figure, beyond the age of a sea-going engineer, but still as light on his feet as a girl. "Where's she gone?" He pushed open one of the little glass screens, and put his petulant face, with its pale eyes set like aquamarines in bronze, into an opening too small to frame it. "Can you see ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... the eleventh paper-knife came—from his mother's friend, the Duchess of Veauleglise. The Duke was overwhelmed with joy at the sight of it, and his delighted comments drove Germaine to the last extremity of exasperation. The result was that she begged him, with petulant asperity, to ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... face, ignored the Youngish Girl's inviting hand, and with a sudden little chuckling sigh of contentment, climbed up clumsily into the empty place beside the Young Electrician, rummaged bustlingly around with its hands and feet for an instant, in a petulant effort to make a comfortable nest for itself, and then snuggled down at last, lolling half-way across the Young Electrician's perfectly strange knees, and drowsed off to sleep with all the delicious, friendly, unconcerned sang-froid of a tired puppy. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... and its environs; this agitation, like to that of the blood which in the paroxysms of a violent passion rushes to the heart; this feverish expectation, this frantic excitement,—kept, however, within the limits of order; these exclamations, petulant without insolence; this deep anxiety which gives a quivering to pleasure: all this together formed a species of moral magnetism; one must succumb to its force or hasten ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Gregory's spirit that, forgetting his wound, his fever, and the death which he had believed impending, he leapt from his couch, and throwing wide the door, bellowed lustily for Stephen. In frightened haste came his henchman to answer the petulant summons, and in obedience to Gregory's commands he went off again as quickly in quest ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... and continued gazing, while only the little smile, tilting the corners of her lips, betrayed that she had heard the petulant speech. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... does nothing to make life happier; but that wit which is adapted to her condition, the art of taking advantage of our position and controlling us through our own strength. Words cannot tell how beneficial this is to man, what a charm it gives to the society of men and women, how it checks the petulant child and restrains the brutal husband; without it the home would be a scene of strife; with it, it is the abode of happiness. I know that this power is abused by the sly and the spiteful; but what is there that is not liable to abuse? Do ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... invited to Rome by Julius II. in 1504 to aid in erecting the unapproachable monument which the Pope projected raising for himself. Then commenced a series of contentions and struggles between the imperious and petulant Pope and the haughty, uncompromising painter, in which the latter certainly had the best of it. At one time in the course of the quarrel, Michael Angelo departed from Rome without permission or apology, and stoutly refused to return, though followed hotly by no less than five different ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... girl with sudden ebullitions, Flashes of fun, and little bursts of song; Petulant, pains, and fleeting pale contritions, Mute little moods of misery and wrong. Only a girl of Nature's rarest making, Wistful and sweet—and with a ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... instinct made her believe Veronique's testimony rather than her cousin's assurances, it was all 'cramming words into her ear against the stomach of her sense,' and she turned away from them with a piteous, petulant hopelessness: 'Could they not even let her alone to ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a petulant exclamation which was rising to her lips. She was conscious of a curious desire to win her queer young ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... his hand, but she refused it angrily. She stood, biting her lip, tapping her foot, her head averted, upon the kerb; her attitude of pique was amusingly familiar to him; often it had gained for her the gratification of some petulant desire; but now all that he wanted was to hurry back to the ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... Raffle became very petulant, feeling that a bargain was being made with him. This young man would only consent to become his private secretary upon certain terms! "Well, go in to FitzHoward now. I can't lose all my day in ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... The one tried to die more fitly; the other to call his lady fair in more seductive accents. The petulant outburst of the master taught them more than many a ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... There was nothing of the shrinking or pouting, or even of the petulant, in her character. Her father ate nothing at all. He dawdled with his soup, turned his fish over and sent it away, and sniffed contemptuously at everything else that was placed before him. He made his dinner of coffee and cognac, and seemed to be greatly ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... little, with nothing apparently following, the girl's expectancy faded; her expression grew petulant once more, and she drew sharply away from McGeorge, exactly as if he had forced a kiss on her and she was insulted by the indignity. Lord! he thought, with an inward sinking, what she'll do to me now will ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... is so full of joys. The alluring sea, This morning clear and placid, may, ere night, Toss like a petulant child, and when the light Of a new morning dawns sweep grand and free A mighty power. If fierce, or mild, or bright, With every tide flows ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... they are here this winter!" Miles exclaimed in a petulant tone. "Just see what a rush we had to save the stores from your cache the ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... later prove unjust. Oddly enough, that instinctive aversion was shared by her closest friend and neighbor, Mrs. Blake; but, as yet, the extent of their condemnation had found vent only in the half whimsical, half petulant expression on part of the younger lady—Blake's beautiful wife, "I wish her name weren't—so near like mine," for "Nan" had been her pet name almost from babyhood. Vaguely conscious were they both, these lords of creation, Messrs. Blake and Ray, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... than to Alfonso, or Giovanni Tornabuoni. Mantegna's portrait of Gonzaga, though made later, shows a rather different type, less displeasing than the bronze. In the bust we have what is probably the portrait of a coarse and clumsy person; he is petulant in the mouth, weak in the chin, gross in the thick and heavy jaw. The bronze is extremely rough, and shows no signs of the nervous and individual touches which we find in Donatello's terra-cotta. Both the busts are unfinished; in the absence of chasing and hammering ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... character as Basset was in existence. If he did not appear in the village it was an accidental circumstance, it being only at irregular intervals that he ever made his appearance there. Thus, then, passed a week longer; the petulant constable on the watch, and the steady malignity of Davenport gradually becoming impatient for gratification. But the little drama had a course of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... but then she made it a strict rule never to read any criticism, so that, of course, it had no restraining effect upon her. Wordsworth seems to have read his critics, but though they did their utmost to restrain or silence him, he paid no heed. "Too petulant to be passive to a genuine poet," ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... deemed it a very excellent bill; and the woolsack, to which it had elevated him, a very desirable seat. People did occasionally see that Hazlitt was in the right—that he was rather a man of speech than of action; that he was somewhat too imprudent for a leader, somewhat too petulant for a partisan; and that he wanted in a considerable degree the principle ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... restless and feverish. He at once remembered what had passed. Bull's words haunted him; he could not forget them; they burnt within him like the flame of a moral fever. He was moody and petulant, and for a time could hardly conceal his aversion to Bull. Ah Eric! moodiness and petulance cannot save you, but prayerfulness would; one word, Eric, at the throne of grace—one prayer before you go down among ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... wagon with a real seat that she had seen in a thick catalogue sent her mother by a store in a distant city. So she never moved till late in the afternoon, when the gentle breeze strengthened to a sharp wind that, with a petulant gust, whirled her sailor across the rows and ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... the stroke given to protection was not tremendous, but as the history of half a century has shown, it was adequate and sufficient, and Lord Derby at once resigned. He did not take his defeat well. 'Strange to say,' Mr. Gladstone wrote to his wife, 'Lord Derby has been making a most petulant and intemperate speech in the House of Lords on his resignation; such that Newcastle was obliged to rise after him and contradict the charge of combination; while nothing could be better in temper, feeling, and judgment than Disraeli's farewell.' ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... George; I must go to Greece because I do not love George; it is more important that I should look up gods in the dictionary than that I should help my mother; every one else is behaving very badly." She only felt irritable and petulant, and anxious to do what she was not expected to do, and in this spirit ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... sentenced to a lifer, and, the mask of John Ward being torn from him, he was sent to Sheffield to stand his trial as Charles Peace. The leap from the train is already recorded; and at his last appearance in the dock he rolled upon the floor, a petulant and broken man. When once the last doom was pronounced, he forgot both fiddle and crowbar; he surrendered himself to those exercises of piety from which he had never wavered. The foolish have denounced him for a hypocrite, not knowing that the artist may have a life apart from ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... 'neath her frown the errant earth in winter seems Prostrate to lie, and petulant of mood; Restrained in icy fetters all the babbling streams, Like naughty babes who're learning ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... emotions, elevates us to the most dignified views of humanity, being, in the words of Plato, "the imitation of the most beautiful and most excellent life;" Comedy, on the other hand, by its jocose and depreciatory view of all things, calls forth the most petulant hilarity. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... general spirit and temper of the religious press with reference to science and scientific men, there is much to criticize and condemn. It is often snappish, petulant, ill-humored, unfair, and sometimes malicious in the extreme. Such opprobrious terms as infidelity, irreligion, rationalizing tendencies, naturalism, contempt for the Scriptures, etc., are freely used. Scientific men are called infidel pretenders, and are ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... began with a commonplace "Let their celestial concerts all unite," before the end he was pouring forth glorious and living stuff like the last twenty-seven bars. So the pace at which he had to write in the intervals of bullying or coaxing prima donnas or still more petulant male sopranos was not wholly a misfortune; if it sometimes compelled him to set down mere musical arithmetic, or rubbish like "Honour and arms," and "Go, baffled coward," it sometimes drew his grandest music out of him. The dramatic oratorio is a hybrid form of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman |
