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noun
Sour  n.  A sour or acid substance; whatever produces a painful effect.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sour" Quotes from Famous Books



... to the Angel," von Liegnitz said calmly, "I will be a very sour kraut. But right now, I'm ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... noticed an unpleasant smell, and near the mouth of the den he got a sudden whiff that almost gagged him—a sour, acid, carrion stink like a buzzard's nest. He moved back a little. The hole was wide and fairly high, two or three feet, but too dark to see back into. Still, he had a sense of something stirring there ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams

... was made for it, I think—so I made friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose. I think they are perfect gentlemen. All these days we have had such good times, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... not a tithe as great as those of many of the princes of our ancient English nobility, who could not speak a word of our language, and whom we chose to represent as a sort of German boor, feeding on train-oil and sour-crout, with a bevy of mistresses in a barn, should come to reign over the proudest and most polished people in the world. Were we, the conquerors of the Grand Monarch, to submit to that ignoble domination? What did ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... with a mock air of indignation. "See what it is," he said, "to take a traitor to one's heart." He ran his laughing eyes over the little knot of us, and went on, "Sweet ladies, and you, sour gentleman, I have news ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... liked to stop and blow up some of these fine places. But the Government terms had been complied with and the columns moved slowly by, eyeing the forts, which were covered with the white and blue clad figures of their defenders, with a sour disdain. ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... fiddlesticks, Phyllis, don't let any old sour idea like that ball up your naturally sweet temper. You and Roxy are just women folks and had better keep out of men's business, like this wrangle between Doug and Mr. Forsythe. Trot along and do your stocking-darning and pie-fixing together as per ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess

... wert thou to the taste, 445 Being nurse and feeder of the other four; Would they not wish the feast might ever last, And bid Suspicion double-lock the door, Lest Jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest, Should, by his stealing in, disturb ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare

... from her to the sergeant before he joined her. Then, with one of his sour smiles directed towards the former, ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... the blackened clay pipe from his mouth and puffed a blue spiral into the dead, sultry air. A sour expression gathered about ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... the best, and was as pious as she was deft, never omitting to throw the Sabbath dough in the fire. Not that her prowess as a cook had much opportunity, for our principal fare was corn-bread, mixed with bran and sour cabbage and red beets, which lay stored on the floor in tubs. Here we all lived together—my grandfather, my parents, my brother and sister; not so unhappy, especially on Sabbaths and festivals, when we ate fish cooked with butter in the evening, and meat at dinnertime, washed down with ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... aspect of affairs. In addition to having to spend the evening by himself, the cook sent him a very moderate dinner, smoked soup, sodden fish, scraggy cutlets, and sour pudding. Mr. Plummey, too, seemed to have put all the company bottle-ends together for him. This would not do. If Sponge could have satisfied himself that his host would not be better in a day or two, he would have thought seriously of leaving; but as he could not bring ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... to hook on the tubs, save soap and time. Provide, also, a clothes-bag, in which to boil clothes; an indigo-bag, of double flannel; a starch-strainer, of coarse linen; a bottle of ox-gall for calicoes; a supply of starch, neither sour nor musty; several dozens of clothes-pins, which are cleft sticks, used to fasten clothes on the line; a bottle of dissolved gum Arabic; two clothes-baskets; and a brass or copper kettle, for boiling clothes, as iron is apt to rust. A closet, for keeping all these things, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... thing wine!" said Saphir Ali, carefully wiping the glasses; "surely Mahomet must have met with sour dregs in Aravete, when he forbade the juice of the grape to true believers! Why, really these drops are as sweet as if the angels themselves, in their joy, had wept their tears into bottles. Ho! quaff another glass, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... Wisdom and heroism had vanished from out of the minds of leaders. The spirit of citizenship had gone from those who should have upheld the social union in brotherly accord. The dream of human perfectibility which nerved men like Condorcet, was to Rousseau a sour and fantastic mockery. The utmost that men could do was to turn their eyes to the past, to obliterate the interval, to try to walk for a space in the track of the ancient societies. They would hardly succeed, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... substance and the interior ones accidents, and so on; but taken really, we mean the complex action of co-agents on our senses, and accident as only an agent acting on us. Thus we say, the beer has turned sour: sour is the accident of the substance beer. But, in fact, a new agent, oxygen, has united itself with other agents in the joint composition, the essence of which new comer is to be sour: at all events, Taylor's ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... he was in, and had been for the last two weeks; also that she was sick of him, and she'd thank M. Vandeloup to clear him out—all of which amused Vandeloup mightily, though he still continued to smile coolly on the sour-faced damsel before him. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... he said, "I never saw his equal; but I like him not. What carries he in his heart to be so sour? He is like a man bewitched. I know not if there be such a thing as to be sold to the devil, as the stories say; but if there be, on my word, I think Wilhelm has made some such bargain. A man could not look worse if he ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson

... "In Hindustan we are accustomed to consider 'curry' to be derived from, tarkari, a general term for esculent vegetables, but it is probably the English version of the Kanara and Malayalam kadi; pronounced with a hard r, 'kari' or 'kuri,' which means sour milk with rice boiled, which was originally used for such compounds as curry at the present day. The Karnata majkke-kari is a dish of rice, sour milk, spices, red pepper, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... promises of advantages to come which induced Athens to make the infamous Peace, and quotes the famous remark whereby the traitor gang raised a laugh while in the act of selling their country. "Demosthenes is naturally a sour and peevish fellow, for he drinks water." Drawing their attention to this origin of all their trouble, he asks them to remember their names—at the same time remarking that even if a man deserved to die, punishment should be suspended ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... have Major Weir; for although even his house is now demolished, old Edinburgh cannot clear herself of his unholy memory. He and his sister lived together in an odour of sour piety. She was a marvelous spinster; he had a rare gift of supplication, and was known among devout admirers by the name of Angelical Thomas. "He was a tall, black man, and ordinarily looked down to the ground; a grim countenance, and a big nose. His garb was still a cloak, and somewhat dark, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... suddenly; never make a young girl whom you do not know the queen of your heart—the fountain of your illusions and your dreams. The waking will be unpleasant; pray Heaven you may never wake as I have with a mind which is becoming sour—a heart which is learning to distrust whatever is most fair in human nature. Let us dismiss the subject now. I am glad I felt this impulse to open my heart to you, a stranger, though a friend. We often whisper into a strange ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... was uttered in alternate bursts of loud abruptness and languishing drawl. Sudden, grotesque playfulness was succeeded by equally sudden and grotesque bashfulness; now an eager intrepidity of wild enthusiasm, defying all decorum, and then a sour, severe reserve, full of angry and terrified suspicion of imaginary improprieties. Tittering shyness, all giggle-goggle and blush; stony and stolid stupidity, impenetrable to a ray of perception; awkward, angular postures and gestures, and jerking saltatory motions; Brobdingnag strides and straddles, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... criticized her language, in return for her criticism upon his radishes, "I don't think you can call a radish hot—it is cold, I think: I know what is meant by tasting sweet, or sour, or bitter." ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... time the party names of Whig and Tory came into vogue. Insurgent Presbyterians in Scotland had been called "Whigs," a Scotch word meaning whey, or sour milk. The nickname was now applied to Shaftesbury's adherents, opponents of the court, who wished to exclude the Duke of York from the throne on account of his being a Catholic. Tories, also ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... my health was good, I had plenty of money, which I spent freely; in fine, I was happy. I loved to say so in defiance of those sour moralists who pretend that there is no true happiness on this earth. It is the expression on this earth which makes me laugh; as if it were possible to go anywhere else in search of happiness. 'Mors ultima linea rerum est'. Yes, death is the end of all, for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Miss Sarah thin, I'd have you to know she's not. Her arms are beautiful and round, and so is she, and it's the grapes that are sour, ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... singular exception, and this was connected with his daughter Joanna. The rest of the family were commonplace, prosperous young people, honest enough hearts, but too shallow to be affected by the father's misfortune. The father's sour grapes had not set these children's teeth on edge. Joanna—Jack, or Joe, as they called her in sport—whom they all, without any idea of selfishness or injustice, associated with the Laird, as one member of the family is occasionally ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... passed by she had thought how good it was that she had become his wife—the young white man's wife, rather than the wife of Breaking Rock, son of White Buffalo, the chief, who had four hundred horses and a face that would have made winter and sour days for her. Now and then Breaking Rock came and stood before the lodge, a distance off, and stayed there hour after hour, and once or twice he came when her man was with her; but nothing could be done, for earth and air and space were common to them all, and ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... chiefly cultivate is a kind of millet: a small quantity of Indian corn and some pumpkins are likewise grown; but a species of sugar-cane is produced in great abundance, and of this they are extremely fond. Their diet, however, is chiefly milk in a sour curdled state. They dislike swine's flesh, keep no poultry, are averse to fish, but indulge in eating the flesh of their cattle, which they do in a very disgusting way. Although naturally brave and warlike, they prefer an indolent pastoral ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... but nevertheless rocking ceaselessly a wooden cradle that hung from a black bar in the ceiling. In this cradle lay her son, aged one or two, and once and again he cried for half an hour or so, protesting, I suppose, against our invasion. There was a smell in the kitchen of sour bread, mice, and bad water. The heat was terrible but the old lady told us that the grandchild was ill and would certainly die were the window opened. The candle we blew out but there remained a little burning lamp under the picture of the Virgin immediately over the old ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... acids, in addition, is neutralised by the mineral salts which are absorbed by the roots. These acids, however, are not so thoroughly neutralised in a cooler climate, and as a result the wine has often a sour, crude taste. The warmer the climate the more alcohol the wine will contain; indeed, it may become too strong. On the contrary, the cooler the climate the more of acid there will be, and it may possess in consequence a crude, sharp taste. But these ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... could sense the sour feel of fear. It acted as a carrier for a mixture of hatred, envy, and contemptuous hauteur. Naran whistled softly. There was more, too. He wished he dared try a probe, but with all that arsenal of psionic ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole

... said the contractor. "I'll be over middle o' the week some time, Mr. Packer." He unfastened his horse, while John Packer went to the un-sheltered wood-pile and began to chop hard at some sour, heavy-looking pieces of red-oak wood. He stole a look at the window, but the two troubled faces ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... Cucurbita Melopepo.—The inhabitants of North America boil the squash or melon gourds when about the size of small oranges, and eat them with their meat. The pulp is used with sour apples to make pies. In scarcity it is a good substitute ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... would be dangerous to try bribery," O'Sullivan remarked. "Our turnkey is a sour-faced rascal. I am convinced that, if we were to try to bribe him, he would denounce us at once. Not from any principle, you know, but because he would think that it would pay him better to do so, and so obtain promotion and reward, rather than to ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty

... my leave of Willemott and his wife, with respect as well as regard; convinced that there was no pretended indifference to worldly advantages; that it was not, that the grapes were sour, but that he had learned the whole art of happiness, by being contented with what he had, and by "cutting his coat ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... had none of your Chinese feet, nor waspy, unhealthy waists, which those may admire who will. No: Dora's foot was a good stout one; you could see her ankle (if her robe was short enough) without the aid of a microscope; and that envious little, sour, skinny Amalia von Mangelwurzel used to hold up her four fingers and say (the two girls were most intimate friends of course), "Dear Dorothea's vaist is so much dicker as dis." And so I have no ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the Chagres pushing off into the jungled land. We descended to the beach of the outer bay and swam in the salt sea, and the policeman, scorning the launch party, squatted a long hour in the shade of a tree above in tropical patience. Then with "sour" oranges for thirst and nothing for hunger—for Lorenzo has no restaurant—we turned to paddle our way homeward up the Chagres, that bears the salt taste of the sea clear to the Spillway. Whence one verse only ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... understand that we were to be shot down if we made any attempt to escape. The rest of these pirates, I conceived, must be in full cry after the spoils, for I heard the sound of the doors being opened and the noise of voices exchanging calls and sour oaths. Presently the door was thrust aside, and the Princess and Mademoiselle were ushered in unceremoniously by the foul-faced Pierce. They were resolved to box us up in our prison until they had settled on a ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... till now, leaped up into flame—"and yet, can you tell me what I could have done differently? I've lived the kind of life they preach about—a life of noble sacrifice. It hasn't ennobled me. It's made me petty—mean—sour. It's withered me up. Look at the difference between us! Look at you with your big free spaciousness—your power of loving and attracting love! Why, you even love me, now, in spite of all I've said this morning. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... invariably be washed and placed in a basin of cold water the night before they are required for use, and should remain in soak about ten or twelve hours. If left longer than this during hot weather they are apt to turn sour. ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich

... are morbid longings for unusual articles of food, as sour apples, vinegar, charcoal, clay, slate pencils, etc. These longings, however, should not be satisfied, as they do not represent the demand of nature for these substances. They belong to the same class of changes which are shown by a marked difference in the disposition ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... pleased with the thegn's devotion to Harold, and who, knowing the great weight which Vebba (homely as he seemed) carried in his important county, was politically anxious that the Earl should humour so sturdy a friend,—"Thou shalt not sour thy wife's kiss, man. For look you, as you ride back you will pass by a large old house, with broken columns ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... at me in that sour way, Richard. I am going to ask you a question about something which ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins

... dog. "Folks at home as just read the newspaper accounts of the war don't know anything of what us fellows have to put up with. All they think we do is to rush forward, kill the enemy, and cover ourselves with glory. I'll wager some of 'em would put on a mighty sour face if they had to tramp ten or twenty miles in the mud and wet, carry a gun and other luggage, and hardly knowing when the next meal was going to turn up and what it ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... the loss of liquid manures in stables, have robbed many farms. These are adverse influences upon clover seedings, but the most important handicap to clover is soil acidity. There is sad waste when high-priced clover seed is put into land so sour that clover bacteria cannot thrive, and there is ten-fold more waste in letting land fail to obtain the organic matter and nitrogen clover should supply. When land-owners refuse to let their soils remain deficient ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... and said people "didn't know their own minds," and "wanted to move the earth." Then he eyed Elizabeth, and she smiled. He let a grim glimmer of what might have been a sour smile years ago peep out for an instant, and—he ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... been like the same woman since she heard the news of his death," resumed Dance after a pause. "It seemed to sour her and harden her, and make her altogether different. There had been a great deal of unhappiness at home for some years before he went away. He and his father, Sir John—he that now lies so quiet upstairs—had a terrible quarrel just after Master Charles went into the army, and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... some cases, Mongols wishing to buy books had no money, but were willing to give goods instead; and thus it happened that I sometimes made my way home at night with a miscellaneous collection of cheese, sour-curd, butter and millet cake and sheep's fat, representing the produce of part of the ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... offered me was deliciously cool and refreshing; being composed of water strongly dashed with a crude, sour sort of wine. I swallowed it at a gulp, and was about to put a few interrogations to my new friend, when, from the bunk adjoining my own, there arose a feeble cry that I identified as the voice of ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... almost all other kinds, "is peculiarly fitted for DRY LIGHT soils where many sorts drop their fruit," whereas on rich heavy soils the fruit is often insipid. (10/76. Downing 'Fruit Trees' page 278.) My father could never succeed in making the Wine-Sour yield even a moderate crop in a sandy orchard near Shrewsbury, whilst in some parts of the same county and in its native Yorkshire it bears abundantly: one of my relations also repeatedly tried in vain to grow this variety in a ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... the size of their lips, and breaking out, often enough, their upper front teeth. We had seen, and eaten too, the sweet sop {25a}—a passable fruit, or rather congeries of fruits, looking like a green and purple strawberry, of the bigness of an orange. It is the cousin of the prickly sour-sop; {25b} of the really delicious, but to me unknown, Chirimoya; {25c} and of the custard apple, {25d} containing a pulp which (as those who remember the delectable pages of Tom Cringle know) bears a startling ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... bad wings That pester all the places beyond God,— These at the door, with lust to embody themselves, Wait for the naked journey of man's life To seize it into ache, ravenously. They never leave, down all its patient way, To meddle with its waters, till they be sour As venom, salt as weeping, foully ailing With foreign evil,—all the sort of desires Whoring the shuddering life unto their lust. Behold man's river now; it has travelled far From that divine loathing, and it is made One with the two main fiends, the Dark and ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... though often spread through and carried by liquids, are in fact rarely dissolved in water. The dissolved particles which act upon the nerves of taste can be distinguished by man into four groups—sweet, sour, bitter, and saline. But no such classification of "smells" is possible. As a rule mankind confuses the "taste" of things with their accompanying "smell." The finer flavours of food and drink not included in the four classes of tastes are really due to odoriferous particles present ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... perennial—if not in actual fact, at least in the greengrocer's shop. On the days when dessert is a name given to a handful of chocolates and a little preserved ginger, when macdoine de fruits is the title bestowed on two prunes and a piece of rhubarb, then the orange, however sour, comes nobly to the rescue; and on those other days of plenty when cherries and strawberries and raspberries and gooseberries riot together upon the table, the orange, sweeter than ever, is still there to hold its own. Bread and butter, beef and mutton, eggs and bacon, are not more necessary ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... is the casual frootes of what I accidental hears an' what I sees. It's only now an' then, as I observes former, that Injuns invades Wolfville; an' when they does, we-all scowls 'em outen camp—sort o' makes a sour front, so as to break 'em early of habits of visitin' us. We shore don't hone none to have 'em ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... been properly worked, and the butter was the best you could get anywhere round. There was the pasture land still, and a good lot of cows, but since the Greenways had come there the supply of butter was poor, and sometimes the whole quantity sent to market was so carelessly made that it was sour. Whose fault was it? Mrs Greenways would have said that Molly, the one overworked maid servant, was to blame; but other people thought differently, and Mrs White was as usual outspoken in her opinions to her sister-in-law: "It 'ull never be any different as ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... which severed the intimacy between them. Madame de Flahaut, much older than Charlotte, and of a sour and determined character, had gained an influence which partook on Charlotte's part a little of fear. She was afraid of her, but ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... the contest of Tom and Bella for a newly-purchased paper of sour cherries, and helplessly forecasting in his remoter mind the probable consequences, "there were both brides and minstrelsy at the hotel, if I had only had the eyes to see and the ears to hear. In this world, my dear, we are always of our own time, and we live amid contemporary things. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... thrown spitefully over her shoulders, disclosing a sinewy and sassafras-colored neck above, and the small end of a gold chain in front, and, reader, you have the august Mrs. Swiggs, looking as if she diets on chivalry and sour krout. She is indeed a nice embodiment of several of those qualities which the State clings tenaciously to, and calls its own, for she lives on the labor of eleven aged negroes, five of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... more cheerful than he had been for years. Scales had fallen from his eyes since that talk; he had regained his true bearings; he began to see the verities of life. How he had wasted his time! Why had he been so sour? why had he indulged his spleen? why had he taken such a jaundiced view of life? He would put aside all jealousies; he would have no enmities; he would be broader-minded—oh, so much broader-minded; ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... say he's so sour. He'll not dance, nor sing idle songs, nor play quoits and bowls, but loveth better to sit at home and read; so they ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt

... ran up one of the apple-trees and began to eat an apple; it looked very good, for it had a bright red cheek, but it was hard and sour, not being ripe. "I do not like these big, sour berries," said she, making wry faces as she tried to get the bad taste out of her mouth by wiping her tongue on her fore-paw. Nimble had found some ripe currants; so he only laughed at poor Velvet ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... Siberia, called Alactaga, and a kind of Kangaroo-rat (probably the same) is mentioned as very abundant on the Mongolian Steppe. There is also the Zieselmaus of Pallas, a Dormouse, I believe, which he says the Kalmaks, even of distinction, count a delicacy, especially cooked in sour milk. "They eat not only the flesh of all their different kinds of cattle, including horses and camels, but also that of many wild animals which other nations eschew, e.g. marmots and zieselmice, beavers, badgers, otters, and lynxes, leaving none untouched except the dog and weasel ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... went to the window, with a purely literary thought of village charm—hollyhocks and lanes and apple-cheeked cottagers. What she saw was the side of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church—a plain clapboard wall of a sour liver color; the ash-pile back of the church; an unpainted stable; and an alley in which a Ford delivery-wagon had been stranded. This was the terraced garden below her boudoir; this was to be her ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... attributed to your charity, and not to his own deplorable madness? If we repent of our good actions, what, I pray you, is left for our faults and follies? It is not the beneficence of the laws, it is the unnatural temper which beneficence can fret and sour, that is to be lamented. It is this temper which, by all rational means, ought to be sweetened and corrected. If froward men should refuse this cure, can they vitiate anything but themselves? Does evil so react upon good, as ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... oriental, and he did not know what to do with a cold, proud thing, who looked most hard when most wretched, who had understanding enough to see his blunders, and remains of conscience enough to make her sour. Poor Demetrius! He had the worst of the bargain! And now-" She turned the leaf of the manuscript, and showed, with a date ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy, and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian Laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution! At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... without any material incident. I had observed, with concern, that the second mate, whose name was Peleg Oswald, was a sour, ferocious, quarrelsome man; and that although I was kindly treated by the captain, whose name was Peters, and by the chief mate, whose name was Methusalem Solomon, I never could conciliate the good ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... knock was answered—answered by a very sour and peevish woman next door, who thrust her head out of the window, and exclaimed in a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... her father," said he; but Gudrid said, "I shall go if you do." Thorstan's face fell, and Eric Red burst into a great shout of laughter. "Oh, sour face," he cried out, "let us hear what you have to ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett

... people who would paint the sky a dingy brown if they could, and smudge the glory of the summer sunsets. I do not love such people, and I hope you don't, reader. I verily believe their blood is green and sour, and that they do not see this lovely world of ours as you and I do, through rose-tinted glasses, but that to them it must appear an ugly olive green, as it would to us if we gazed upon it through a piece of bottle glass. No; we shall keep ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... was neither gracious nor lovely, but nothing softer than its iron hand could have done its necessary work. The Puritan character was narrow, intolerant, and exasperating. The forefathers were very "sour" in the estimation of Morton and his merry company at Mount Wollaston. But for all that, Bradstreet and Carver and Winthrop were better forefathers than the gay Morton, and the Puritan spirit is doubtless the moral influence of modern civilization, ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... Bessie, who knew all about it, to show him the way in which he should go. Naturally of an energetic and hard-working temperament, he very soon fell more or less into the swing of the thing, and at the end of six weeks began to talk quite learnedly of cattle and ostriches and sweet and sour veldt. About once a week or so Bessie used to put him through a regular examination as to his progress; also she gave him lessons in Dutch and Zulu, both of which tongues she spoke to perfection; so it will ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... consumption. It had never even occurred to him to think that the horses were made but to ride and to work. Cows of course gave milk for the sake of the dairy; cream rose on milk for ease in skimming; when churned, it turned sour, that the family might have fresh buttermilk. Hides were for shoes. The skin on sheep, it was put there ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... family, which vainly attempted to escape the sacrilegious pollution. The situation of these unhappy victims is described in the verses of a Chinese princess, who laments that she had been condemned by her parents to a distant exile, under a Barbarian husband; who complains that sour milk was her only drink, raw flesh her only food, a tent her only palace; and who expresses, in a strain of pathetic simplicity, the natural wish, that she were transformed into a bird, to fly back to her dear country; the object of her ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... causes or parties that sue. There be (saith the Scripture) that turn judgment, into wormwood; and surely there be also, that turn it into vinegar; for injustice maketh it bitter, and delays make it sour. The principal duty of a judge, is to suppress force and fraud; whereof force is the more pernicious, when it is open, and fraud, when it is close and disguised. Add thereto contentious suits, which ought to be spewed out, as the surfeit of courts. A judge ought to ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... source we learn, within a week, that Grumkow's back is very strong; the Tobacco-Parliament in full blast again, and Seckendorf's Couriers galloping to Vienna with the best news. Nay his Majesty looks expressly "sour upon Hotham," or does not look at all; will not even speak when he sees him;— for a reason we shall hear. [NOSTI, infra (29th April), p. 191.] can it, be thought that any liberality in use of the bellows or other fire-implements will now ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... with regard to pressing my court is the fact that my lovely Leah is never allowed outside her father's house, save in his company or that of his sister—an old maid of dour mien and sour disposition, who acts the part of a duenna with dog-like tenacity. Over and over again have I tried to approach the lady of my heart, only to be repelled or roughly rebuked for my insolence by her irascible ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Floridians or Georgians. "Hit ain't a farmin' kentry, above there on the sandhills," said our host of the thrifty old farm on Lake Geneva. "It's fine for oranges an' bananas, but the Scrub's better for plantin'. Talk about oranges! Look a' that tree afore you! A sour tree hit were—right smart big, too—but four year ago I sawed it off near the ground and stuck in five buds. That tree is done borne three craps a'ready—fifteen oranges the second year from the bud, a hundred and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... by fire is no less certain: the fire evaporates and disperses all that is innocent and pure, leaving only acrid and sour matter which resists its influence. The effect produced by poisons on animals is still more plain to see: its malignity extends to every part that it reaches, and all that it touches is vitiated; it burns and scorches all the inner parts with a ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... style about their marine institutions. Sailors should be fighting men, but not soldiers or musket-carriers, as they all are in turn in the French navy. He laughs at or objects to every thing; the mustaches of the officers, the system of punishment, the sour wine that replaces rum and water, the soup instead of junk, the pitiful little rolls baked on board, and distributed in lieu of hard biscuit. And whilst praising the build of their ships—the only thing about them he does praise—he ejaculates a hope, which sounds like a doubt, that they will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... a small farmer, not far from Sienna, and grew up in daily contact with vine-dressers and olive-gatherers, living upon the hard Tuscan fare of macaroni and maroon-nuts, with a cutlet of lean mutton once a day, and a pint of sour Tuscan wine. Being tolerably well educated for a peasant-boy, he imbibed a desire for the profession of an actor, and ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... hardly in a body's pow'r To keep at times frae being sour, To see how things are shar'd— How best o' chiels are whiles in want, While coofs on countless thousands rant, And kenna how ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... The sour look on the man's face passed away. Vince's countenance, and his free-and-easy way, seemed to find favour, ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... that, unless a pilot is well acquainted with the passage, a boat will be capsized in the whirlpools. Human life can be sustained upon very little, for Finn managed to live for months upon a marshy ground six miles in extent, partially covered with prickly pears, sour grapes, and mushrooms. Birds he would occasionally kill with sticks; several times he surprised tortoises coming on shore to deposit their eggs, and once, when much pressed by hunger, he gave battle to a huge alligator. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... their ignorant opposition to my best endeavours to serve them. Every innovation whatever on board a ship, though ever so much to the advantage of seamen, is sure to meet with their highest disapprobation. Both portable soup, and sour krout, were, at first, condemned as stuff unfit for human beings. Few commanders have introduced into their ships more novelties, as useful varieties of food and drink, than I have done. Indeed, few commanders have ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... portion of the acid is volatilized, but the larger part enters into chemical combination with the gliadin, forming an acid proteid. When the alcoholic fermentation of bread making becomes less active, acid fermentations begin, and sour dough results. It is not definitely known what specific organic acids are developed in bread making. Lactic and butyric acids are known to be formed, and for purposes of calculation, the total acidity is expressed in terms of ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... she,—'twas my mother that said this, my dears," modestly interpolated Mrs Dorothy,—"and I dare say thou wilt be the Town talk in a week. 'Tis pity there is no better world to have thee into!—and thy father as sour and Puritanical as any till of late, save the mark!—but there, 'we must swim with the tide,' saith she. ''Tis a long lane that has no turning.' Ah me! but the lane had turned ere ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... painted the ponds and marshes with yellow gleams. The ripeness of summer lay upon the land, and yet there was nothing in the country Basil Ransom traversed that seemed susceptible of maturity; nothing but the apples in the little tough, dense orchards, which gave a suggestion of sour fruition here and there, and the tall, bright goldenrod at the bottom of the bare stone dykes. There were no fields of yellow grain; only here and there a crop of brown hay. But there was a kind of soft scrubbiness in the landscape, and a sweetness begotten of low horizons, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... arrived, with his face turned to the west, and placed the pickaxe in a brass dish which was set before him. In this he proceeded to wash the axe, with four solemn and several washings. First, in water; secondly, in a mixture of sugar and water; thirdly, in sour milk; and fourthly, in spirit. These four ablutions being finished, the fakir replaced in the brass dish the pickaxe together with a cocoa-nut, some cloves, white sandal-wood, and sugar. Then kindling a fire of dried cow-dung ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... clearness of prospect so well set forth by Mansie Wauch. Yet sometimes, when such a vivid view comes, it remains for days and is a painful companion of your solilude. Don't you remember, clerical reader of thirty-two, having seen a good deal of an old parson, rather sour in aspect, rather shabby-looking, sadly pinched for means, and with powers dwarfed by the sore struggle with the world to maintain his family and to keep up a respectable appearance upon his limited resources; perhaps with his mind made petty and his temper spoiled ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... confined space, must have sounded loud, and there were several people in the billiard-room, separated from him only by a lath-and-plaster partition. But directly Banghurst's butler opened the door and smelt the sour smell of the smoke, he knew, he says, what had happened. For the servants at least of Banghurst's household had guessed something of what was ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... BLISTERING FLY) AND MODERN POTATO BUG.—Symptoms: Sickening odor of the breath, sour taste, with burning heat in the throat, stomach, and bowels; frequent vomiting, often bloody; copious bloody stools, great pain in the stomach, with burning sensation in the bladder and difficulty to urinate, followed with terrible convulsions, delirium and death.—Treatment excite vomiting by ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... a "sour-dough." He had seen the pranks that Alaskan winters play with men and women, he had watched the alteration in minds and morals made by the Arctic isolation, and he had considered himself proof against the malice that rides the north wind—the mischief that comes with the winter ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... as she pressed her pretty lips to the lattice-work. "The men die like sheep in the hospital, and get sour bread tossed to them as if they were pigs, and are thrashed if they pawn their muskets for a stoup of drink when their throats are as dry as the desert—and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... is beginning breakfast, sir," said Grant, as Max came down; and he drew back with a tray full of hot viands, his sour, stony face relaxing into a grin as the shrinking figure of the young guest ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... attempting to heal one schism, we may cause another? All those things which the Puritans regard as the blemishes of the Church are by a large part of the population reckoned among her attractions. May she not, in ceasing to give scandal to a few sour precisians, cease also to influence the hearts of many who now delight in her ordinances? Is it not to be apprehended that, for every proselyte whom she allures from the meeting house, ten of her old disciples may turn away from her maimed rites and dismantled temples, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... imputed to me. But I know how true it is that a tree must produce its fruit—that a crab-tree will bring forth crab apples, and that a man of meagre and acid mind, who writes a pamphlet or makes a speech, must make a meagre and acid pamphlet or a poor and sour speech. Let things, then, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... they expressed their joy by the warmth of their thanks to the doctor. Johnson regretted somewhat the skins, which were burned and useless; but his regret did not sour his temper. They spent the day in repairing the house, which was somewhat injured by the explosion. They took away the blocks heaped up by the animals, and the walls were made secure. They worked briskly, encouraged by the cheery songs ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... the Difference between a Rickey and a Sour and was trying to pretend to let on to be fond of the Smoky Taste in that Imported Article which has done so much to ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... is a difference between things, and there is no use trying to make out they're all alike. Sour isn't sweet, and hard ain't soft. What's the use of talking as if it was? I always like to look at ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... plodding patience. They will rise on one day at almost any fly (but the sniggler), however ill-presented to them. On a dozen other days no fly and no skill will avail to tempt them. The salmon is a brainless brute and the grapes are sour! ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... merit, it was well provided with good wide shelves, upon which everything that could possibly spoil was stowed; and here I was lucky enough to find an abundance of food—such as it was—and several bottles of the thin, sour wine which Dominguez and his crew drank instead of coffee. I ate and drank there in the pantry, standing up to my knees in water, and when I had finished, went to work with a bucket and rope to bail the water out of the lazarette, standing out on deck, on the lee ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... kitchen. As a rule the dwellings of workmen and mechanics smell of varnish, tar, hides, smoke, according to the occupation of the tenant; the dwellings of persons of noble or official class who have come to poverty may be known by a peculiar rancid, sour smell. This disgusting smell enveloped Anna Akimovna on all sides, and as yet she was only on the threshold. A man in a black coat, no doubt Tchalikov himself, was sitting in a corner at the table with his back to the door, and with him were ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... as a perfect preservative of meat. This juice put into an earthen vessel with a little water and Chili pepper is said to keep meat, that is immersed in it, good for a great length of time; even for years. No iron or steel must touch the mixture, or it will become sour. This "Pepper-pot," of which we first heard from the late Archbishop Whately, is a most economical meat-safe in a hot climate; any beef, mutton, pork, or fowl that may be left at dinner, if put into the mixture and a little fresh cassereep added, keeps perfectly, though otherwise ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... spare me, all the rest I'll bear, as should a man; 'twill do me good, And teach me what no better fortune could, Humility, and sympathy with others' ills. ———————Ye destinies, I love you much; ye flatter not my pride. Your mien, 'tis true, is wrinkled, hard, and sour; Your words are harsh and stern; and sterner still Your purposes to me. Yet I forgive Whatever you have done, or mean to do. Beneath some baleful planet born, I've found, In all this world, no friend with fostering hand To ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... at an angle from his body—almost a right angle; and in some struggle he had got his nostril sliced. That gave him an odd, mesquin expression, lying there with his mouth open and his yawning nostril, as if he wanted to sneeze. The room smelt stale and sour; the thick air gathered in a misty halo round the candle, and a fat shroud of tallow drooped over the edges ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... hooks on a whole bunch of money when he gets down town, so I turn him over to you. 'Fifty thou. to be paid him by Atwood, Strange & Atwood. You know of them—Mining Engineers and Experts, 25 Broad. Let him get the boodle and hand him a sour one. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... porcupine. All the dogs attended, but even their clamor—and they began to discuss the shortcomings of porcupines before they left cantonments—could not take us out of ourselves. A large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the stunted camel-thorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of trooping devils. The smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little aimless winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the southward brought the scent of dried ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... the ruff, and a wrinkle of the skull-cap; and these frowned upon the two children as if death had not made them a whit more genial than they were in life. But the children were of a temper to be more encouraged by the good-natured smiles of the puffy cherubs, than frightened or disturbed by the sour Puritans. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... moment? I do not know. I can only say that nothing in the world seems to me more unlikely. Thus it is that these young bright envelops touch my heart even more than do their dusty and sallowed seniors. Sour resignation is less touching than impatience for what will not be, than the eagerness that has to wane and wither. Soured beyond measure these old envelops are. They are not nearly so nice as they should be to the young ones. They lose no chance of sneering ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm

... he can think of little else. When there is formation of much gas it is always necessary to reduce the food intake, and to give special attention to the mastication of all starch-containing aliments. Also, if starches and sour fruits have been combined habitually, this combination should be given up. Starch digests in an alkaline medium, and if it is taken with much acid by those whose digestive powers are weak, the result is ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... imitate all these movements. He contrived to bend over his food almost horizontally, but, alas! he could not remain long in this position. The natural weight of his powerful limbs overcame him, he lost his balance and nearly tumbled head foremost, dropping his spectacles into a dish of sour milk and garlic. After this unsuccessful experience the brave American gave up all further attempts to become "Hinduized," ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... not of the common herd, but of a spiritual aristocracy. Its stern condemnation of all mirth and pastime, as things in their nature sinful, of which we have so many evidences in Bunyan's own writings; its repression of all that makes life brighter and more joyous, and the sour sanctimoniousness which frowned upon innocent relaxation, had rendered its yoke unbearable to ordinary human nature, and men took the earliest opportunity of throwing the yoke off and trampling it under foot. They hailed with ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... sense," said Pen, as he made for the shelf upon which the little wooden vessel stood. "Here, Punch," he said, "you mustn't drink this. It has turned sour." ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... measure of prudence to dispense with his services. Give him time, and he was generally equal to the demands of suburban customers; hurry or interrupt him, and he showed himself anything but the man for a crisis. Face and demeanour were against him. He had exceedingly plain features, and a persistently sour expression; even his smile suggested sarcasm. He could not tune his voice to the tradesman note, and on the slightest provocation he became, quite unintentionally, offensive. Such a man had no chance whatever in this flowery and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... to cook and keep house," smiled Pollyanna, with a pensive sigh. "I just love to beat eggs and sugar, and hear the soda gurgle its little tune in the cup of sour milk. I'm happy if I've got a day's baking before me. But there isn't any money in that—except in somebody else's kitchen, of course. And I—I don't exactly love it ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter



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