"Shrew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and when a man has that there's never any knowing where it will break out, or what dance it will lead him, especially when it comes to this love-making business. You are just as likely as not to lose your head over some little fool or shrew for the sake of her outward favour and make yourself miserable for life. When you pick you a wife please remember that I shall reserve the right to pass a candid ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Pecksniff, the two daughters of the "architect and land surveyor." Charity is thin, ill-natured, and a shrew, eventually jilted by a weak young man, who really loves her sister. Mercy Pecksniff, usually called "Merry," is pretty and true-hearted; though flippant and foolish as a girl, she becomes greatly toned ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... wishing to win Dorothy Ratcliffe's favour. I would to Heaven he may do so, and then I shall at any rate have peace and quiet, and be free from hearing my mother lay plans of what she will do when I bring Dorothy as mistress of Hillside. Marry Dorothy, forsooth! I pity any man who is tied to that shrew for life.' ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... faith, we'll re-enact a modern edition of 'The Taming of the Shrew.' Y'u'll find me, sweet, as apt at the part as old Petruchio." He paced complacently up the room and back, and ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... the place of sanctuary and disposed the nuns round the bar, with the reverend mother in the centre of them, having a little aureole round her head from the glamour of the pewter pots. The others crowded in anyhow and said in a dreadful chorus, like Katherine in "The Taming of the Shrew," "We want our supper!" ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... and industrious, was a terrible termagant and shrew. Her daughter Panfila, on the contrary, was so lazy and thoughtless, that once, when the old woman burnt herself badly because her daughter was listening to some lads singing outside, instead of helping her mother with the boiling lye for washing, the enraged Mother Holofernes shouted to her ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... old fellow was very benevolent, and the punt was free to one or two who knew all about it. There is an old story about the stick that would not beat the dog, and the dog would not bite the pig, and so on; and so I am quite sure that ill-natured cur could never have lived with that 'yang-yang' shrew, nor could any one else but he have turned the gear of the hatch, nor have endured the dog and the woman, and the constant miasma from the stagnant waters. No one else could have shot anything with that cumbrous weapon, and no one else could row that punt straight. He used to row it quite ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... good, and she did not see his lips pucker as for a long whistle. But he did not whistle. He replied very humbly; and so sweetly that Murguia quailed for the little shrew. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... of thoughtless mortals, we should find that every good is checked off by an evil; and that however we may apparently revel scot-free for a season, the time will come when we must ruefully pay off the reckoning. Fortune, in fact, is a pestilent shrew, and, withal, an inexorable creditor; and though for a time she may be all smiles and courtesies, and indulge us in long credits, yet sooner or later she brings up her arrears with a vengeance, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... night, but he could express very little. Many of his defects sprang from his not having been on the stage as a child. He was stiff with self-consciousness; his eyes were dull and his face heavy. The piece we played was Garrick's boiled-down version of "The Taming of the Shrew," and he, as Petruchio, appreciated the humor and everything else far more than I did, as Katherine; yet he played badly, nearly as badly as I did; and how much more to blame I was, for I was at this time much more easy and skillful from a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... ornament, is bold and vigorous in style, and, when devoted to satire, is keen and vehement. The ballad of "Watty and Meg," though exception may be taken to the moral, is an admirable picture of human nature, and one of the most graphic narratives of the "taming of a shrew" in the language. Allan Cunningham writes: "It has been excelled by none in lively, graphic fidelity of touch: whatever was present to his eye and manifest to his ear, he could paint with a life and a humour which Burns seems alone to excel."[41] In private life, Wilson was a model of benevolence ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... to have his daughter remain, but the shrew was determined to be rid of her, and gave him no peace. At last, when he could gainsay her no longer, he placed his daughter in a sledge and drove her to the open fields. Here he left her, with nothing to shield her from ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... her point of view had been changing; a group of white foxgloves, like ghost-flames, that she had seen in a coppice, the creeping of a bright eyed shrew mouse through last year's leaves at her feet, the hundreds of little rabbits with curved-in backs that ran with their curious rocking action over the dewy fields at evening—all these things gave her a shock of pleasure so keen it surprised her. Till now she ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... has two plots. In one of them, Petruchio woos and tames the shrew Katharina; in the other, Katharina's sister Bianca is wooed by lovers in disguise. The two plots have little connection with each other. That which relates to Petruchio and Katharina is certainly by Shakespeare. The other seems to be by a dull man who ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... infallibility. My own vision, by the way, is reasonably good, if I may say so; at any rate I am not stone-blind. Yet here have I been perambulating the Public Garden for an indefinite period, without seeing the first trace of a field-mouse or a shrew. I should have been in excellent company had I begun long ago to maintain that no such animals exist within our precincts. But the other day a butcher-bird made us a flying call, and almost the first thing he did was to catch one of these same furry dainties ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... sexes alike, which are now restricted to the female. It is so even with 'girl', which was once a young person of either sex{212}; while other words in this list, such for instance as 'hoyden'{213} (Milton, prose), 'shrew' (Chaucer), 'coquet' (Phillips, New World of Words), 'witch' (Wiclif), 'termagant' (Bale), 'scold', 'jade', 'slut' (Gower), must be regarded in their present exclusive appropriation to the female sex as evidences of men's rudeness, and not of ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the rest of the family from any share in it. Consequently I am made use of, and the fortune is placed in my hands with instructions to hasten to lay it at the feet of this 'fair lady.' Nothing seems easier or more natural. But suppose the 'fair lady' should be ugly, hunchbacked, a shrew, or a troublesome coquette. In this case, you know, with my ideas about women and marriage, I should feel myself bound to refuse ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... spare, his victims become an annoying problem in identification when they're found. He leaves nothing but well-gnawed bones. And by 'time to spare', I mean twenty or thirty minutes. The damned monster has a very efficient digestive tract, if nothing else. He eats like a shrew." ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a black stripe on each cheek. This made the third species of marsupial rat I had so far obtained— but the number of these animals is very considerable in Brazil, where they take the place of the shrews of Europe; shrew mice and, indeed, the whole of the insectivorous order of mammals, being entirely absent from Tropical America. One kind of these rat-like opossums is aquatic, and has webbed feet. The terrestrial species ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... "That thing is hooded; I could hear but that floweth The great hood below its mouth:" then the bird made reply. "If they know not, more's the pity, for the little shrew-mouse knoweth, And the kite knows, and the eagle, and the glead ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... she was miraculously meek and dumb; all the scold was quelled within her; the word "blood" was the Petruchio that tamed that shrew; she could see a plenty of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... swain discarded calls thee shrew; Would'st thou, girl, prove the charge untrue, Marry the fool who long hath wooed, And all will swear thou ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... notwithstanding the magnificence of its public edifices, we found more than the usual amount of Galician filth and misery. The posada was one of the most wretched description, and to mend the matter, the hostess was a most intolerable scold and shrew. Antonio having found fault with the quality of some provision which she produced, she cursed him most immoderately in the country language, which was the only one she spoke, and threatened, if he attempted to breed any disturbance in her house, to turn the horses, himself, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Accordingly, as early as the year 526, he appears in a high military command.[11] Like Marlborough, to whom he bears some resemblance in personal character, he strengthened his position at court by marrying the Lady Antonina, the beautiful favourite of the Empress Theodora, though she was as fierce a shrew as the Duchess Sarah, and wherewithal not so modest, if we give credit to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... makes it, invitus amabo! as the man said who married the shrew." Bigot laughed mockingly. "We must make the best of it, Des Meloises! and let me tell you privately, I mean to make a good thing of it for ourselves whichever ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... shaft well shot! it galls thee. Would to heaven That it had pierced thy heart, and thou hadst died! So had the Trojans respite from their toils 465 Enjoy'd, who, now, shudder at sight of thee Like she-goats when the lion is at hand. To whom, undaunted, Diomede replied. Archer shrew-tongued! spie-maiden! man of curls![14] Shouldst thou in arms attempt me face to face, 470 Thy bow and arrows should avail thee nought. Vain boaster! thou hast scratch'd my foot—no more— And I regard it as I might the stroke ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... there were only three or four, I think, beside Mr. Glennie and Ratsey and the half-dozen of us boys, who crossed the swampy meadows strewn with drowned shrew-mice and moles. Even my aunt was not at church, being prevented by a migraine, but a surprise waited those who did go, for there in a pew by himself sat Elzevir Block. The people stared at him as they came in, for no one had ever known him go to church before; some saying in the village that he ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... its radical sense shrew-ed, malicious, like a shrew. Comp. M. N. D. ii. 1, "That shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow." Chaucer has the verb shrew to curse; the current ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... so-called "vulgar people" is unrestricted display of uncontrolled emotions. No one should ever be made to feel like withdrawing in embarrassment from the over-exposed privacy of others. The shrew who publicly berates her husband is no worse than the engaged pair who snuggle in public. Every one supposes that lovers kiss each other, but people of good taste wince at being forced to play audience at love ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... MacGowan and Grace MacGowan Cooke, L. C. Page & Co., is a new version of the taming of a shrew, though in the case of Diana Chaters, the cure is effected without ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... dinner, Alvina went out. She entered the shop, where sheets of lead and tins of paint and putty stood about, varied by sheets of glass and fancy paper. Lottie Witham, Arthur's wife, appeared. She was a woman of thirty-five, a bit of a shrew, with social ambitions and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... and awful it is to behold; for betwixt those forces it filleth all the mountain ghyll, and there is no foothold for man, nay for goat, save at a hundred foot or more above the water, and that evil and perilous; and is the running of a winter millstream to the beetles and shrew-mice that haunt the greensward beside it, so is the running of that flood to the sons of Adam and the beasts that serve them: and none has been so bold as to strive to cast ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... guard, singing a perfect ecstasy of love to his silent little mate, that sits upon the nest if no danger threatens; but both rush with passionate malice upon the first intruder, for it must be admitted that Jenny wren is a sad shrew. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... indicated by the cow's horns; which are so placed as to become his own. The hopes of the family, with a cockade in his hat, and riding upon papa's cane, seems much dissatisfied with female sway. A face with more of the shrew in embryo than that of the girl, it is scarcely possible to conceive. Upon such a character the most casual observer pronounces with the decision of ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... a woman called Thordis—and a shrew she was—who lived at Spakonufell (Spaequean's-fell), in Skagastrand. She, having foresight of Cormac's goings, came that very day to Muli, and answered this matter on his behalf, saying, "Never give him yon false woman. She ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... abroad penniless. Soon after he married, almost as early and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare. He told Drummond curtly that "his wife was a shrew, yet honest"; for some years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs among Jonson's 'Epigrams', "On my first daughter," and "On my first son," attest the warmth of the poet's family ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... remparo, digo. Mount supreniri. Mount monteto. Mountain monto. Mountaineer montano. Mountainous monta. Mountain-range montaro. Mountebank jxonglisto. Mourn malgxoji, ploregi. Mournful funebra. Mourning (dress) funebra vesto. Mouse muso. Mouse, shrew soriko. Mouse-trap muskaptilo. Moustache lipharoj. Mouth busxo. Mouth (of river) enfluo. Movable movebla. Move movi. Move (furniture) translogxigxi. Move in (dwelling) enlogxi. Move out (dwelling) ellogxigxi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... vestments, had no tenderness, no embrace for him,—only a mockery and a prophecy, a cold and cynical prediction that I should soon tire of his shrill voice. Yes, Cheri, your sweet silver trills, your rippling June-brook warbles, were to him only a shrew's scolding. I took the bird wrathfully, his name had been Cherry, and rechristened him on the spot Cheri, in anticipation of the new life that was to dawn upon him, no longer despised Cherry, but ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Xantippe, the wife of Socrates, was a shrew, and had she lived in New England in Cotton Mather's time would have been a candidate for the ducking-stool. Socrates said he married her for discipline. A man in East Aurora, however, has recently made it plain to himself that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... —A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... everything. In making me a slave, and making yourself a laughing-stock. Its not fair. You get me the name of being a shrew with your meek ways, always talking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. And just because I look a big strong woman, and because I'm good-hearted and a bit hasty, and because you're always driving me to do things I'm sorry for afterwards, people say "Poor ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... foole, thar't a foole, bee rulde by mine host, shew thy self a brave man, of the true seede of Troy, a gallant Agamemnon; tha'st a shrew to thy wife, if shee crosse thy brave humors, kicke thy ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... Chaucer was unhappy as a husband, we must at the same time decline, because the husband was a poet, and one of the most genial of poets, to cast all the blame upon the wife, and to write her down a shrew. It is unfortunate, no doubt, but it is likewise inevitable, that at so great a distance of time the rights and wrongs of a conjugal disagreement or estrangement cannot with safety be adjusted. Yet again, because we refuse to blame Philippa, we are not obliged ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... the Shrew."—I cannot help thinking that Christopher Sly merely means that he is fourteenpence on the score for sheer ale,—nothing but ale; neither bread nor meat, horse housing, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... sees that the land is mine, he will pay; or if he does not pay, he will go—and tilled acres and a cabin will not harm me. Valencia, if he marries the daughter of Carlos (as the senora says will come to pass), will be glad to have a cabin to live in apart from the mother of his wife, who is a shrew and will be disquieting in any man's household. Therefore, Senor Hunter, you may order the peons to assist the big hombre and his beautiful senora, that they may soon have a hut to shelter them from the rains. It is not good to see so gentle a woman endure hardship within my boundary. Many tules, ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... Lord, you use this dalliance to excuse Your breach of promise to the Porcupine: I should have chid you for not bringing it, But, like a shrew, you ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... fashion, exactly reproducing the threatening action of an angry scorpion. Now, as a matter of fact, the devil's coach-horse is quite harmless, but I have often seen, not only little boys and girls, but also chickens, small birds, and shrew-mice, evidently alarmed at his minatory attitude. So, too, the bumble-bee flies, which are inoffensive insects got up in sedulous imitation of various species of wild bee, flit about and buzz angrily in ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; The while, one leaden got of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis and gentian, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... tentatively assigned to 1595. Meres, writing three years later, attributed to Shakespeare a piece called 'Love's Labour's Won.' This title, which is not otherwise known, may well be applied to 'All's Well.' 'The Taming of The Shrew,' which has also been identified with 'Love's Labour's Won,' has far slighter claim to the designation. The plot of 'All's Well,' like that of 'Romeo and Juliet,' was drawn from Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' (No. xxxviii.) The original source is Boccaccio's 'Decamerone' (giorn. iii. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... ever made studies of the shrew in fiction or in history have never, after all, given us a strictly scientific definition of the creature. They let her exhibit herself in all her drollery or her hatefulness, but they act in somewhat lordly fashion by leaving ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... among the dead;' and was imposingly introduced to me, by a quasi near 'relative,' as being only too happy to learn that she was one half of the eternal unit of which I was the complement. I began to be as lordly and self-satisfied as the bewildered sot in the 'Taming of the Shrew.' After exhausting my small stock of writing paper, I concluded to allow my new friends to spend their loquacity on some old college note books, the handiwork of a relative—every other page being blank. The venerable professors of Columbia College would have ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "The muckle shrew!" quoth Master Jonson. "Why, I'll have this out with him! By Jupiter, I'll read him reason with a vengeance!" With a clink of his rapier he made as if to ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... state. But, the charm was broken. The person of the house was the person of a house full of sordid shames and cares, with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even innocent sleep with sensual brutality and degradation. The doll's dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, worldly; ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... this I hear, O my lord?" she cried, in tone and manner more the European shrew than the submissive Eastern slave. "Is Sakr-el-Bahr to go upon this expedition against ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... survivals or be still found only in the embryo; so that only great knowledge and sagacity can identify them; yet upon ancient traits, though hidden, classification depends. The seal seems nearer allied to the porpoise than to the tiger, the shrew nearer to the mouse than to the hedgehog; and the Tasmanian wolf looks more like a true wolf, the Tasmanian devil more like a badger, than like a kangaroo: yet the seal is nearer akin to the tiger, the shrew to the hedgehog, and the Tasmanian flesh-eaters are marsupial, like ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... The John Lacy whom Charles II. admired so much that he had his picture painted in three of his characters, died in 1681, leaving four comedies and an alteration of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. He was a handsome man: first dancing-master, then quarter-master, then an admired comedian. Henley would hardly have used a blank in referring to a well-known writer who died thirty years before. There was another John Lacy advertising in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... defend myself. I am not clever enough to think of the right things to say. He meant Mr. Ffolliott to understand that I had married him because I thought he was grand and rich, and that I was a disappointed little spiteful shrew. I tried to act as if he was not hurting me, but my hands trembled, and a lump kept rising in my throat. When we returned to the drawing-room, and at last he left us together, I was praying and praying that I might be able to keep ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... money—and if you lost aught she'd vind it, so sure as the church—and a mighty hand to cure burns; and they two villains coom back, after harvest, seventy mile to do it—and when my vather's cows was shrew-struck, she made un be draed under a brimble as growed together at the both ends, she a praying like mad all the time; and they never got nothing but fourteen shilling and a crooked sixpence; for why, the devil carried off all the rest of her money; and I seen um both a-hanging in chains by Wisbeach ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... said Dick, "a life is a life, old shrew, and it is more than ships or liquor. Say you forgive me, for if your life is worth nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my fortune. Come, I have paid for it dearly, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... willfulness. When, in the progress of the ceremony, she was asked if she willingly received Henry of Bourbon for her husband, she pouted, coquettishly tossed her proud head, and was silent. The question was repeated. The spirit of Marguerite was now roused, and all the powers of Europe could not tame the shrew. She fixed her eyes defiantly upon the officiating bishop, and refusing, by look, or word, or gesture, to express the slightest assent, remained as immovable as a statue. Embarrassment and delay ensued. Her royal ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Peter's tyrannous hold upon her thoughts, her life, her very heart's blood. Would her loyalty bear the test of seeing Peter made a fool of by a woman she could dismiss with a shrug—a softly speaking shrew, perhaps, who played a waiting game with her finger on the pulse of Peter's prospects? For there was talk of a partnership with the Wetmores. Or a fool, perhaps, for all her sonneting, for there are men who ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Our modern pet, darling, a term of endearment.] Dr Johnson says that it is a word of endearment from petit, little. See notes on "The Taming of the Shrew," act i. sc. 1. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the Semper Fidelis reunion, until the week before Thanksgiving, when Everett Southard, who was then playing in Shakespearian repertoire in New York, obligingly arranged to give the "Taming of the Shrew" on the day before Thanksgiving, and "King Richard III" on Thanksgiving Day. As Anne did not appear in either play, her Thanksgiving ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... endured after they were parted. Their promises of correspondence were redeemed by Elinor with very long letters at uncertain intervals, and by Marian with shorter epistles notifying all her important movements. Marian, often called upon to defend her cousin from the charge of being a little shrew, was led to dwell upon her better qualities. Elinor found in Marian what she had never found at her own home, a friend, and in her uncle's house a refuge from that of her father, which she hated. She had been Marian's ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... here shall be perils dire and deadly. O bethink thee, lest she change thee into a swine, or black dog, aye, or even a small shrew-mouse—I've heard of such ere now—or blast thee with fire, or loathly ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... his own way—in benevolent objects—as men who set up to be clever are for selfish ones. Mrs. Hartopp was certainly a good woman, but a made good woman. Married to another man, I suspect that she would have been a shrew. Petruchio would never have tamed her, I'll swear. But she, poor lady, had been gradually, but completely, subdued, subjugated, absolutely cowed beneath the weight of her spouse's despotic mildness; for in Hartopp there was ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and on the very second day after the wedding her evil nature began to manifest itself. Thou art well aware, O Prince of True Believers, that by Moslem custom none may look upon the face of his betrothed before the marriage contract? nor after wedlock can he complain should his bride prove a shrew or a fright: he must needs dwell with her in such content as he may and be thankful for his fate, be it fair or unfair. When I saw first the face of my bride and learnt that it was passing comely, I joyed with exceeding joy and gave thanks ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Irish Channel, to graze anew over deposits in which the bones and horns of their remote ancestors had been entombed long ages before, the feat would have been surely far beyond the power of such feeble natives of the soil as the mole, the hedgehog, the shrew, the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... where luck is concerned, and those who believe God's words—that even 'the hairs of our head are all numbered'—will have no faith in 'luck.' In old times the ash was believed to perform wonderful cures of various kinds, and in remote parts of England a little mouse called the shrew-mouse bore a very bad character. If a horse or cow had pains in its limbs, they were said to be caused by a shrew-mouse running over it. Our forefathers provided themselves with what they called a shrew-ash, in order to meet the case. The shrew-ash was nothing ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... and as a review of the work of his predecessors. There is a great deal of information in his books about his own life. He was born at Pergamos in A.D. 130 in the reign of Hadrian. His father was a scholar and his mother somewhat of a shrew. Galen, in his boyhood, learned much from his father's example and instruction, and at the age of 15 was taught by philosophers of the Stoic, Platonist, Peripatetic, and Epicurean schools. He became initiated, writes Dr. Moore, into "the idealism ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... structure which determined the habits of life, and the general place of each being in the economy of nature, would be of very high importance in classification. Nothing can be more false. No one regards the external similarity of a mouse to a shrew, of a dugong to a whale, of a whale to a fish, as of any importance. These resemblances, though so intimately connected with the whole life of the being, are ranked as merely "adaptive or analogical characters;" but to the consideration of these resemblances we shall ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... And, in conclusion, she shall have her rights, If she will cease to rise, and rail, and brawl, And with her clangour keep the world awake. This is the way to kill her wrath with kindness, And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humour.— He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Let him speak out! 'Tis ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... duchess had taken leave of Heinz, and then rode on with him; but as soon as a portion of the road intervened between her and the countess the young Bohemian exclaimed: "We must certainly try to save Sir Heinz from this disagreeable shrew!" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no doubt about the little shrew being thoroughly game, and yet her act was less striking as evidence of her bravery, than as testifying her confidence in the chivalry of the rough men before her. And, indeed, it was comical to see the dumbfoundered and chop-fallen expression on their flushed and excited faces, as they ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... I'll curb her mad and headstrong humor. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak; 'tis charity to show." —"Taming of ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... Oh, Beroe, for shame! they're quite the worst That any head can possibly contain! And then her cheeks of green and yellow hues, The obvious penalty of poisonous envy— Zeus oft complains to me that that same shrew Each night torments him with her nauseous love, And with her jealous whims,—enough, I'm sure, Into Ixion's ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Socrates, noted for her violent temper and scolding propensities. The name is frequently applied to a shrew, or ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... minks and weasels are on the hunt all winter. Our native mice are also active. That pretty stitching upon the coverlet of the winter snow in the woods is made by our white-footed mouse and by the little shrew mouse. The former often has large stores of nuts hidden in some cavity in a tree; what supply of food the latter has, if any, I do not know. In the winter the short-tailed meadow or field mice come out of their retreat ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the worse and not the better parts of both their characters were getting the upper hand; and it was but too possible that after a while the hero might sink into the ruffian, the lady into a slattern and a shrew. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... there were who would not take even that hint. One was a shrew-mouse, thirsting for blood, but who got poison instead, and next morning was found running about with his mouth somewhere concealed behind his ear, if one may be pardoned the expression, in consequence; and the other was a carnivorous beetle, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... dripping with diamond drops. Sometimes it would brawl and fret along a ravine in the matted shade of a forest, filling it with murmurs, and after this termagant career would steal forth into open day with the most placid, demure face imaginable, as I have seen some pestilent shrew of a housewife, after filling her home with uproar and ill-humor, come dimpling out of doors, swimming and curtseying and smiling upon ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou; Braved in my own house by a skein of thread! Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant!" (Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... tempests which ravage a woman's heart springs an ignoble, unworthy resolution, one which every woman, the duchess as well as the shopkeeper's wife, the baroness as well as the stockbroker's lady, the angel as well as the shrew, the indifferent as well as the passionate, at once puts into execution. They imitate the government, every one of them; they resort to espionage. What the State has invented in the public interest, they consider legal, legitimate and permissible, in the interest of their love. This ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... have it so, Ramsden, so don't attempt to dissuade me; we are not married yet, and I must not be thwarted in my short supremacy. Surely you ought not to be displeased at my desire to 'tame a shrew.' I give a fair promise not to fall into an error which I so ardently detest: now, send for the chaise, write a letter to Doctor Beddington, and leave me to ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to th' lass. And, now that I think o' th' lass, comrade, I am not so sure that a scolding wife is not well paid for by a duteous daughter. Nay, I am sure o't. Methinks I would 'a' been wed twice, and each time to a shrew, could I but 'a' had my Keren o' one o' 'em. Ay, even so, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... series of changes and disasters. I was sold to a pastrycook, and broiled by standing over the oven. I grew obstinate and was punished by blows, but for those I cared not. The pastry was burnt, and I was resold to a barber, whose wife was a shrew, and half-killed me; fortunately the barber was accused of shaving a criminal, who had escaped from prison, and one morning was stretched out before his own door, with his head under his arm. His wife and I were both sold ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... find them ready at his hand as Ariel was ready to serve Prospero? Lear, Prospero, Brutus, Cassius, Falstaff, Iago, Macbeth, Hamlet, are as crowning creations as Cleopatra, Miranda, Lady Macbeth, Katharine the Shrew, Imogen, or Cordelia. We know not which to choose, as one who looks through a mountain vista to the sea, declaring each view fairer than the last, yet knowing if he might choose any one for a perpetual possession he could not make decision. We are incapable of choosing between ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... sleep had I, rather I lay that I might watch her (furtively, beneath my arm) where she sat head aloft, cheeks flushed and bosom tempestuous. And (despite her beauty) a very termagant shrew I thought her. Then, all at once, I saw a tear fall and another; and she that had sung undaunted to the tempest and outfaced its fury, sat bitterly weeping like any heart-broke maid, yet giving due heed ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the immortal prototype of farce comedy, this play of the "Taming of the Shrew." In the hands of a lesser author it would have lost its comedy and degenerated purely into farce, restricting itself to more ignoble aims and to a more indulgent public. For farce, after all, is farcical, and the mood for its appreciation is not one which is sympathetic ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Bulleyne says "it keepeth clothes from moths and wormes." This is the great preventive used by cloth manufacturers. "Furthermore," adds Gerard, "taken in wine it is good against the biting of the shrew mouse, and of the sea dragon. It may be applied against the Squincie, or inflammation of the throat, with honey and water: likewise, after the same manner, to dim eyes, and ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... "Pretty little shrew!" he said, in an aside to Marius Longford—"She is really charming,—and I begin to think I want her as much for herself ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... last starring tour under the personal direction of Charles Frohman, Miss Adams combined with a revival of "Quality Street" a clever skit by Barrie called "The Ladies' Shakespeare," the subtitle being, "One Woman's Reading of 'The Taming of the Shrew.'" With an occasional appearance in Barrie's "Rosalind," it rounded out her stellar career ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... have sometimes wondered with what regularity—that is, for a shrew of my impatient temper—I have been able to keep this Journal. The use of the first person being, of course, the very essence of a diary, I conceive it is chiefly vanity, the dear pleasure of writing about the best of good ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... wear her Sabbath face, putting off the mask of the shrew, which hid not from him the angel countenance. To-night he could in very truth call his wife (as the Rabbi in the Talmud did) "not wife, but home." To-night she would be in very truth Simcha—rejoicing. A cheerful warmth glowed at his heart, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Taylors were like Woodcocks for they got their substance by their long bills." Perhaps they understood also the point in this: "A certain lord had a termagant wife, and at the same time a chaplain that was a tolerable poet, whom his lordship desired to write a copy of verses upon a shrew. I can't imagine, said the chaplain, why your lordship should want a copy, who has so good an original." Other witticisms are ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... of the little shrew," he would say. "Neither man nor devil can bend or break her. If I smashed every bone in her carcass, she would die shrieking hell ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... example, as the introduction of a new enemy more deadly even than the great carnivorous dinosaurs. Among such theories the most ingenious is that of the late Professor Cope, who suggested that some of the small, inoffensive, and inconspicuous forms of Jurassic mammals, of the size of the shrew and the hedgehog, contracted the habit of seeking out the nests of these dinosaurs, gnawing through the shells of their eggs, and thus destroying the young. The appearance, or evolution, of any egg-destroying animals, whether reptiles or mammals, which could attack this great race ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... CINEREOUS SHREW.—Two male shrews were trapped on April 7, 1952, among rocks along an old railroad fill, 4 mi. N, 1/2 mi. E of Octavia, Butler County, thus extending the known geographic range of S. c. haydeni approximately 60 miles southward from a line connecting Perch, Rock County, Nebraska, with ...
— Distribution of Some Nebraskan Mammals • J. Knox Jones
... The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money all ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... and looking about him. "Let that pass for a moment. You have the prettiest woodland parlor, child! Tell me, do they treat you well over there?" with a jerk of his thumb toward the glebe house. "Madam the shrew and his reverence the bully, are they kind to you? Though they let you go like a beggar maid,"—he glanced kindly enough at her bare feet and torn gown,—"yet they starve you not, nor beat you, nor deny you aught ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... weazel-faced man, who had been plagued for twenty years by a shrew of a wife, who popped off one day from an overdose of whiskey. He came to beseech me not to bring back his plague to the world; and, pitying the poor man's case, I gave him my promise readily, without ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... single tear for her, and fell to composing an elegy in Latin verses over the rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads mourn and the river-nymphs deplore her. As her father followed the calling of Vulcan, he said that surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright's wife was an ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. He made a long face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and are dead almost before they are born. Esmond could repeat, to his last day, some of the doggerel ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... for him. She had been sitting by the child's bedside, listening to the firing, and waiting for her husband's return without a murmur. Flirt, fribble, and shrew as she was, Julia Vickers had displayed, in times of emergency, that glowing courage which women of her nature at times possess. Though she would yawn over any book above the level of a genteel love story; attempt to fascinate, with ludicrous assumption ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... something or other!" he muttered at last, and walked away from the hotel, filled with wholesale rage and indignation. "The little shrew! Who asked her to take me, I wonder? Or for her opinions on my ways of living? Of all the cheeky monkeys! Pitching into me like that—just because she missed her blessed waltz! Certainly it was rotten of me—I don't say it wasn't. But I forgot. I told her I forgot. Didn't I come ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... presence of this new-comer seemed to fill her with resentment, making of her an irrepressible young shrew who gloated openly in ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... deal from him. There was nothing which Mrs. Carbuncle would not endure from Sir Griffin,—just at present; and, on behalf of Mrs. Carbuncle, even Lizzie was long-suffering. It cannot, however, be said that this Petruchio had as yet tamed his own peculiar shrew. Lucinda was as savage as ever, and would snap and snarl, and almost bite. Sir Griffin would snarl too, and say very bearish things. But when it came to the point of actual quarrelling, he would become sullen, and in his ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... kings!" cried one, "here is an old dotard shrew to have so goodly a crutch! Use the leg that God hath given you, man, and do not bear so heavily ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a delightful coolness as they entered the avenue of tall green oaks. On either side the springs, the mothers of these giant shade trees, flowed on in their eternal course. And when they reached the house of the shrew they came, as chance would have it, upon the two lovers, Sophie and her miller, kissing each other beside the well; for the girl's aunt had just gone down to the lavatory behind the willows of the Viorne. Confused, the couple stood in blushing silence. But the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... shrew," he would say mockingly; "for when the maidens heard my name, and knew for what purpose I had come, they would straightway smile their sweetest, and look their loveliest, and I would have no chance of knowing what manner of ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... to smile, pinning and unpinning, making grimaces and striking attitudes. Many a coy wench was there who knew not how to open her lips to speak, much less to eat, or from very ceremony, how to look under foot; and many a ragged shrew who would contend that she was equal to the best lady in the street, and many an ambling fop who might winnow beans by the wind of ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... nappers. That beau, the musk-Ox, with his long scented hair, And John Bull just arrived on his travels, were there; Messrs. Martin, Hare, Squirrel, the Ermine, and Stoat, And the rock-mountain sheep, with his cousin, the goat; Then the sociable marmot, and tiny shrew mouse, The raccoon and agouti from hollow-tree house. Chinchilla the soft, musk and Canada rats, Hounds, mastiffs, wolves, foxes, and wild tiger cats; Jerboa just roused from his long winter nap, Opossum, with four little babes in her lap. The morse, seal, and otter—amphibious ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... hoarse with anger. I paid no heed to Mr. Swain's warning. "You d—d scoundrel!" I cried, "it was you killed him, and you know it. When you had put me out of the way and he was in your power, you tortured him to death. You forced him to die alone with your sneering face, while your shrew of a wife counted cards downstairs. Grafton Carvel, God knows you better than I, who know you two well. And He will punish you as sure as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... encumbrances of women confusedly huddled in amongst armies, it was at that time decreed and enacted that they should expel and drive out of heaven into Egypt and the confines of Nile that whole crew of goddesses, disguised in the shapes of weasels, polecats, bats, shrew-mice, ferrets, fulmarts, and other such like odd transformations; only Minerva was reserved to participate with Jupiter in the horrific fulminating power, as being the goddess both of war and learning, of arts and arms, of counsel and despatch—a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... There's Mars, all bloody-haired; and Hercules, Whose soul was in his sinews; Pluto, blacker Than his own hell; Vulcan, who shook his horns At every limp he took; great Bacchus rode Upon a barrel; and in a cockle-shell Neptune kept state; then Mercury was a thief; Juno a shrew; Pallas a prude, at best; And Venus walked the clouds in search of lovers; Only great Jove, the lord and thunderer, Sat in the circle of his starry power And frowned 'I will!' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... mouth, to regain her husband's love by silence, had its source in the same farrago; and that there is an odd similitude between my Lord's trick upon Sly the Tinker, in Shakspeare's 'Taming of the Shrew,' and some stuff I have been reading ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... philosophy, for which he had a natural bent. In person he was far from fulfilling the Athenian ideal of beauty, being short of stature, corpulent, with protruding eyes, upturned nose, large mouth, and thick lips. His domestic life was not happy, his wife, Xantippe, being a noted shrew. His failure to provide for the material welfare of his family, though quite natural in a man to whom all material things seemed unessential, must have sorely tried her patience. But Socrates bore her scolding with resignation. Indeed, he seemed to regard it as furnishing ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... Nor do they all from the mines come down. 'Most all of us have in our day— In some sort of shape, some kind of way— Painted the town with the old stuff, Dipped in stocks or made some bluff, Mixed wines, old and new, Got caught in wedlock by a shrew, Stayed out all night, tight, Rolled home in the morning light, With crumpled tie and torn clawhammer, 'N' woke up next day with a katzenjammer, And walked, oh ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... larger than in Europe; the upper part of the body is of a greyish brown, the lower part an ash grey; the legs are covered with a white fur, and the taper tail is one-fifth of the length of the body. A shrew-mouse also was caught. Two or three kinds of large cats are said to have been seen; a mustela, something of the nature of the Lutreola, was shot near the Rio Sacramento. The sea-otter still abounds here, but its hair is brownish, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... is a golden rule worth all in Pythagoras. The ladies of Bubastis, my dear,—a place in Egypt where the cat was worshipped,—always kept rigidly aloof from the gentlemen in Athribis, who adored the shrew-mice. Cats are domestic animals, your shrew-mice are sad gadabouts: you can't find a better model, any Kitty, than the ladies ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... called a man "humorous" he meant that he was changeable and capricious, not that he was given to a facetious turn of thought or to a "sportive" exercise of the imagination. When he talks in "The Taming of the Shrew" of "her mad and head-strong humor" he doesn't mean to imply that Kate is a practical joker. It is interesting to note in passing that the old meaning of the word still lingers in the verb "to humor." A woman still humors her spoiled child and her cantankerous husband ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... with a fool, Frighted, and ang'red worse. Go bid my woman Search for a jewel that too casually Hath left mine arm. It was thy master's. Shrew me, If I would lose it for a revenue Of any king's in Europe. I do think I saw't this morning; confident I am Last night 'twas on mine arm; I kiss'd it. I hope it be not gone to tell my lord That I ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... such a night, Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, Slander her love, and he forgave ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... minx! Fair, I wish that my dear friend, your father, were alive. Well, well, patience does it, and the Lord knows, Unity, he's been patient! Oh, you black-eyed piece, you need a bit and bridle! Here's Edward! Edward, the shrew's tamed at last! Such a wedding as ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... little continuous line between them was made by his dragging tail. The legend is like this, :-:-:-:-:-. Farther on are similar tracks, but alternate instead of opposite, like this,',',','. They were made by the short-tailed shrew. Still farther along a queer little ridge is seen in the snow across the wood road. It is the tunnel of the meadow mouse. Part of its fragile roof has fallen in and you may stoop and look into the little round tunnel which ran ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... the Shrew, by Samuel Hickson Proverbial Sayings and their Origins William Basse and his Poems Folk Lore:—Something else about Salting. Norfolk Weather Proverb, Irish Medical Charms. Death-bed Superstitions Note on Herodotus ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... backwards over the hard years to my childhood, and the sound of my mother's voice. No wonder; I had scarce once heard the mellow sound of a good woman's voice since I ran away to sea five years before, only the hard voices of hard men, and, now and then, the shrill voice of some shrew ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... SHREW is almost the only one of Shakespeare's comedies that has a regular plot, and downright moral. It is full of bustle, animation, and rapidity of action. It shows admirably how self-will is only to be got the better of by stronger ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... that, if the truth was known, I know where the blame would lie—your daughter will not be the shrew and scold to him that my blister was to ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... rat found only in the Cinnamon Gardens at Colombo, Mus Ceylonus, Kelaart; and a mouse which Dr. Kelaart discovered at Trincomalie, M. fulvidiventris, Blyth, both peculiar to Ceylon. Dr. TEMPLETON has noticed a little shrew (Corsira purpurascens, Mag. Nat. Hist. 1855, p. 238) at Neuera-ellia, not ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Scriptures say, all wives should do. But the lust of brandy overcame wifely obedience, and Brinsden, hoping for the best, was constrained to cut a hole in her skull. The next day she was as impudent as ever, until Matthias rose yet more fiercely in his wrath, and the shrew perished. Then was Thomas Pureney's opportunity, and the Sunday following the miscreant's condemnation he delivered unto him and seventeen other malefactors the moving discourse which ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... sdrucciolo, sfavellare, [Greek: sphinx], sgombrare, sgranare, shake, slumber, smell, snipe, space, splendour, spring, squeeze, shrew, step, strength, stramen, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... annoying problem in identification when found, for there would be nothing left but well-gnawed bones. And "time to spare," in this case meant twenty or thirty minutes. The Nipe had, if nothing else, a very efficient digestive tract. He ate like a shrew. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Hall, was a slattern and a minx, Mrs. Score was a far superior shrew; and for the seven years of her apprenticeship the girl was completely at her mistress's mercy. Yet though wondrously stingy, jealous, and violent, while her maid was idle and extravagant, and her husband seemed to abet the girl, Mrs. Score put up with the wench's airs, idleness, and caprices, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was under them, her sufferings made my blood boil with indignation. If Mrs. Fishley had treated Flora kindly, she would have been an angel in my sight, however much she snapped and snarled, and "drove me from pillar to post." The shrew did not treat her kindly, and as the poor child was almost always in the house, she was constantly exposed to the obliquities of ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... of the legend of "Barlaam and Josaphat" was familiar in all the literatures of the Middle Ages. Combined with this in the plot is the tale of Abou Hassan from the "Arabian Nights," the main situations in which are turned to farcical purposes in the Induction to the Shakespearean "Taming of the Shrew." But with Calderon the theme is lifted altogether out of the atmosphere of comedy, and is worked up with poetic sentiment and a touch of mysticism into a symbolic drama of profound ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... and they started for London in the evening; the big, shrew, farmer-looking man being as pleased as a child to have certain signs and passwords confided to him. Brand made light of these things—and, in fact, they were only such as were used among the outsiders; but Molyneux was keenly interested, and already pictured ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... animals, ranging in size from the great, powerful, timid grizzly bear, now almost extinct here, whose Indian name, by the way, is Yosemite, to the tiny shrew of the lowlands, the most frequently seen are the black or brown bear, and the deer, both of which, as compared with their kind in neighborhoods where hunting is permitted, are unterrified if not friendly. Notwithstanding its able protection, the Yosemite will need generations ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... the plains, come and water the earth. Sun, embrace the earth that she may be fruitful. Moon, lion of the north, bear of the west, badger of the south, wolf of the east, eagle of the heavens, shrew of the earth, elder war hero, younger war hero, warriors of the six mountains of the world, intercede with the Cloud People for us that they may water the earth. Medicine bowl, cloud bowl, and water vase give us your hearts, that the earth may be watered. I make ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... of the preceding; "a big, dark, stubborn shrew." She was a sister of Chantegreil, and was therefore the aunt of Miette, who lived with her after her father's ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... years and years of life. And the right, once given, it attracts —attracts! We have both suffered from it. So many rich years out of my life have been squandered by it. And out of his life, so much force, energy—spent in battling with the shrew, the termagant he has now fled from; strength never to be replenished, never to ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... not know how to lie, so, although trembling with terror when he saw the rage of the old shrew, he tried ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... one alive. Last spring I had three young crows, all of which died, not from inattention, but because I did not know how to care for them. Again, I have come across animals that I could not find a name for. For instance, last summer I came across two animals, one that resembled a shrew, another that looked somewhat like a mouse. Now if I had had a book like this proposed one on hand, I would simply have looked up its habits, would have found its name, would have known how to tame ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... could not have forced you. Be off, and God speed you, and bad luck to you, and don't show your face in all this island, or within six leagues of it on any side, under pain of two hundred lashes; be off at once, I say, you shameless, cheating shrew." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... right, everything wrong; and yet, if the truth were known, the girl was worth her weight in gold—she was so unselfish and good-hearted. But her step-mother did not like her, and the poor girl's days were spent in weeping; for it was impossible to live peacefully with the woman. The wicked shrew was determined to get rid of the girl by fair means or foul, and kept saying to her father: 'Send her away, old man; send her away—anywhere so that my eyes sha'n't be plagued any longer by the sight of her, or ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... the English king only gave greater boldness to Olaf Triggvison, who very naturally considered that the monarch who would thus allow an alien foe to settle upon his shores must be a very child in weakness—a man with no more spirit than a shrew mouse. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... termination to an otherwise delightful ball. He is sitting with his charming "Mary", about to ask her to be his bride, when the unfortunate overturning of a glass of red wine into her white satin gown, at the same time overthrows all his dreams of bliss, "for the shrew displaces the angel he adored", and he resigns himself to the life of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... was official, which did not prevent her from being a shrew at home. She founded a hospice—the Marie Therese Infirmary—visited the poor, succoured the sick, superintended creches, gave alms and prayed; at the same time she was harsh towards her husband, her relatives, her friends, and her servants, and was sour-tempered, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... surprise, dropped the meat which he held, and walked over to comfort her. She, however, turned on him like a veritable little shrew. ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... exclaimed old lady Chia. "I always said that that girl wasn't anything like that artful shrew! Well, in that case, she is to be pitied, for she has had to bear the brunt of her anger, and all through no fault of hers!" Calling Hu Po to her, "Go," she added, "and tell P'ing Erh all I enjoin you; 'that I know ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... shoulders; but take my word for it, young unmarried gentlemen, a wife is a very much harder pack to the back than the biggest heifer in Smithfield and, if I can prevent one of you from marrying, the 'Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.' will not be written in vain. Not that my Lady was a scold or a shrew, as some wives are; I could have managed to have cured her of that; but she was of a cowardly, crying, melancholy, maudlin temper, which is to me still more odious: do what one would to please her, she would never be happy or in good-humour. I left her alone ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... clinging to him with hands that trembled. "It's because if I let myself get cross-grained and ugly now, p'r'aps someone else—some day—will be cross-grained and ugly too. And I should never forgive myself for that. I should always feel it was my fault. Fancy if it turned out a shrew like me, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... she is never a lady, But the cursedest quean alive! Tricksey, wincing and jady, Kittle to lead or drive. Greet her—she's hailing a stranger! Meet her—she's busking to leave. Let her alone for a shrew to the bone, And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve! Largesse! Largesse, Fortune! I'll neither follow nor flee. If I don't run after Fortune, Fortune ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... tho' that she poore be; But of her tongue a blabbing shrew is she, And yet she hath a heap ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... from the rest, drinks to his God, Money. Gildon mangled "Measure for Measure" and provided it with "musical entertainments." The Duke of Buckingham divided "Julius Caesar" into two tragedies with choruses. Worsdale reduced "The Taming of the Shrew" to a vaudeville, and Lampe "trimmed 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' into an opera." Garrick adapted "Romeo and Juliet" to the stage of his time, by allowing Juliet to awake before Romeo had died of the poison, "The Tempest" by furnishing it with songs, "The Taming of the ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... masculine shopper arouses a certain combative derision in the feminine onlooker. A cat that spreads one shrew-mouse over the greater part of a long summer afternoon, and then possibly loses him, doubtless feels the same contempt for the terrier who compresses his rat into ten seconds of the strenuous life. I was finishing off a short list of purchases a few ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... remarkably the case with the whales, as might be seen in the skeleton of the gigantic whale lately exhibited in London. Those animals which are much under ground have the globe of the eye also very small, as the mole and shrew: in the former of these instances its existence was long altogether denied, and it is not, in fact, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... Pirkheimer wanted a set of antlers which had belonged to Durer and which he thought the wife should give him after Durer was dead, but Agnes thought otherwise and would not give them up. Then, full of rage, the old man wrote the most outrageous letters about poor Agnes, saying that she was a shrew and had compelled Durer to work himself to death; that she was a miser and had led the artist an awful dance through life. This is the only evidence against her, and that so sane and sensible a man ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... old shrew! Out o' my way!" he exclaimed, with an ugly showing of temper, and moved as if to force an entrance. But Nancy McVeigh had learned life from the standpoint of a man, and, reaching forward, she sent ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer |
