"Vexatious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... case between them, and the historian, who can serve no purpose by trying to think things better or worse than they were, will silence neither. We give our honest praise to the organisers of the food supply for their effectual performance of a very heavy, vexatious, and precarious task, the scale of which we have been brought by inquiry to estimate at its true magnitude. At the same time we will spare such sympathy as the dignity of the matter demands for the sufferers from tough beef, tub butter, smoked puddings, cold potatoes, and congealed gravy, and not ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... IT WAS vexatious to see what a to-do the whole town, and next the whole country, made over the news. Joan of Arc ennobled by the King! People went dizzy with wonder and delight over it. You cannot imagine how she was gaped at, stared at, envied. Why, one would have supposed that some great and fortunate thing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was nearly on a line with the low stern, and when the bark had reached a part of the lake where the waves were rolling with some force, it was found that the vast weight was too much to be lifted by the feeble and broken efforts of these miniature seas. The consequences were, however, more vexatious than alarming. A few wet feet among the less quiet of the passengers, with an occasional slapping of a sheet of water against the gangways, and a consequent drift of spray across the pile of human heads in the centre of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... it was love of persons. The same revulsion of feeling may, however, be carried further. Lucretius says that passion is a torment because its pleasures are not pure, that is, because they are mingled with longing and entangled in vexatious things. Pure pleasure would be without ideas. Many a man has found in some moment of his life an unutterable joy which made all the rest of it seem a farce, as if a corpse should play it was living. Mystics habitually look beneath the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Beaufort till it is put in your mule-cart, on Ladies Island. Then you must be at home when the team arrives and see everything brought into the storeroom. There is a good deal of red tape, too, at Beaufort, the untying and retying of which is a tedious and vexatious operation.[52] They are becoming more strict here in Beaufort in several respects; passes are needed by every one. There is a great deal of running to Hilton Head and Bay Point, which is to be stopped as far ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... with which the collection of duties in this country would be encumbered, if by disunion the States should be placed in a situation, with respect to each other, resembling that of France with respect to her neighbors. The arbitrary and vexatious powers with which the patrols are necessarily armed, would be intolerable in a ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the mere workaday world of manual labor, with its sense-dulling disgust, its vexatious monotony, and its frightful menace against law and justice. While jurists merely studied the language of dead laws, expounding them with effort unceasing, and, one may complain, propounding more, we must have despaired of ever being ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... there was a day's vexatious delay while they awaited the St. John's steamer, but at last it came, and at last they were on board the schooner Gull in St. John's harbor, and at last the Gull was plowing northward past stately icebergs glimmering in the sunshine, and vagrant pans of ice rising and falling ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Social History of England, almost unknown to the rising generation, was the reappearance, in Wales, of "Rebecca and her daughters," a riotous mob, whose grievance was, at first, purely local—they resisted the heavy and vexatious tolls, to which, by the mismanagement and abuses of the turnpike system, they were subjected. Galled by this burden, to which they were rendered more sensitive by reason of their poverty, and hopeless of obtaining any ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... should not be allowed to go then. How vexatious!" I ejaculated. "After all this trouble it will be hard if we are stopped now! We will not be," I cried, with a stamp of the foot. "I have succeeded so far, and if I fail it shall not be for ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... have been seized without notice or warning, in violation of the custom previously prevailing, and have been taken into the colonial ports, their voyages broken up, and the vessels condemned. There is reason to believe that this unfriendly and vexatious treatment was designed to bear harshly upon the hardy fishermen of the United States, with a view to political effect upon this Government. The statutes of the Dominion of Canada assume a still broader and more untenable jurisdiction over the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... on the table with her hand. "How vexatious you are!" she exclaimed. "Well, the next day was the sixteenth; so the festivities of the year were over, and the feast itself was past and gone. I see people busy putting things away, and fussing about still, so how can I make out what will be the end ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... recovered from the fatigue you must have undergone in your long march. The papers you have brought me are indeed, of very great importance, and come at a particular fortunate moment, as they in all probability, will save me from a very vexatious lawsuit, with which I have been threatened." So saying, he rang the bell, and desired the servant to take John into the housekeeper's room, and to see that every possible attention was paid him. John, after having had some refreshments, began to wonder that he did not see Marion again. He asked where ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... said the doctor. "If I am not mistaken, we have accomplished nearly half of our journey in ten days; but, at the rate at which we are going, it would take months to end it; and that is all the more vexatious, that we are threatened ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... the use of the alcoholic solutions of aniline dyes for staining bacteria, and having for some months used solutions in glycerine instead, I have come to much prefer the latter. Evaporation of the solvent is avoided, and in consequence a freedom from vexatious precipitations is secured, and more uniform and reliable results are obtained. There is, moreover, with the alcoholic mixtures a tendency to "creep," or "run," by which one is liable to have stained more than he wishes—fingers, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... not give checks for the pieces, but marked them with the name of their destination; and there was that indefinable something in his manner which hinted his hope that you would remember the porter; but he was so civil that he did not snub the meekest and most vexatious of the passengers, and Basil mutely blessed his servile soul. Few white Americans, he said to himself, would behave so decently in his place; and he could not conceive of the American steamboat clerk who would use the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... powerful prince of the blood of England, to the empty and precarious glory of a foreign dignity. But he had not always firmness sufficient to adhere to this resolution: his vanity and ambition prevailed at last over his prudence and his avarice; and he was engaged in an enterprise no less expensive and vexatious than that of his brother, and not attended with much greater probability of success. The immense opulence of Richard having made the German princes cast their eye on him as a candidate for the empire, he was tempted to expend vast sums of money on his election; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... on the Continent; made a considerable stay in Paris; finally abandoned his native land in 1629, and betook himself to seclusion in Holland in order to live there, unknown and undisturbed, wholly for philosophy and the prosecution of his scientific projects; here, though not without vexatious opposition from the theologians, he lived twenty years, till in 1649, at the invitation of Christina of Sweden, he left for Stockholm, where, the severe climate proving too much for him, he was carried off by pneumonia ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "Vexatious; and yet, I think it is a matter upon which we ought almost to congratulate ourselves. Read those two letters, and give us your ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... enjoyed the delightful privilege of visiting the gods in their own abode, I spared him. And to think that because of an unintentional error this great opportunity to rid the world, and incidentally myself, of much that is vexatious was wholly lost is a matter ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... its nature, Teplitz continues to be, esteemed friend, unfavorable to our coming together. This inconvenience is doubly vexatious to me now that, after your departure from Karlsbad, I deliberately thought over the value of your presence, and wished to continue our interviews. I was especially grieved that your beautiful presentation of the manner in which languages ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the likeness of an ape, would make mouths at him. Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With a variety of such-like vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him whenever Caliban neglected the work which Prospero ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... when the side of the ship went up, it felt almost overhead, and I could see absolutely nothing of the sea, which was vexatious, as that was obviously the point of interest. The rigging on that side was as full of men as a bare garden-tree might be of sparrows, and all along the lee bulwarks they sat and crouched like sea-birds on a line of rock. Suddenly we rolled, down went the leeside, and I with ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... example, when Lord Lister, who has revolutionized modern surgery, largely as a result of such experiments, wished to discover possibly some still better way of operating by further experiments, HE WAS OBLIGED TO GO TO TOULOUSE TO CARRY THEM OUT, as the vexatious restrictions of the law in England practically made it impossible for him to continue there ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... How vexatious! Was there no escape for her? She looked in some trouble at the climbing woods above, at the steep ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that the opinion of my having some abstract right in my favor would not put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be sure that there were no rights which, in their exercise under certain circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs and the most vexatious of ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... purity of the planks, and it is therefore not to be wondered at if I again administered a sound and hearty rating to the culprit, this time in the presence and hearing of all hands. It was all the more vexatious to me that, instead of expressing any contrition for his carelessness, Joe persistently maintained the surly demeanour he had exhibited more or less throughout ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... Monsieur Verlaque's death worried him very much. It affected his situation in the markets. He might lose his berth, or perhaps be formally appointed inspector. In either case he foresaw vexatious complications which might arouse the suspicions of the police. He would have been delighted if the insurrection could have broken out the very next day, so that he might at once have tossed the laced cap of his inspectorship ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... admission, and suspicion was aroused as to the treatment to which she was subjected, with (as the event proved) only too much reason, and not, as sometimes happens at the present time, without just occasion, and, indeed, on the most frivolous and vexatious pretences. The knowledge that such is the case ought to make us very careful how we sit in judgment on our predecessors in regard to any charge brought against them. There is, however, undeniable evidence, proof which cannot be evaded, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... on the articles of high treason against Lord Kimbolton, Pym, Hampden, Hollis, Haslerigg, and Strode.—Swift. It proved a long and vexatious affair. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... who had invested his own son Louis with the mark of Brandenburg, enabled him to gain military experience and distinction. A victory gained by him in August 1332 was mainly instrumental in freeing Pomerania for a time from the vexatious claim of Brandenburg to supremacy over the duchy, which moreover he extended by conquest. Barnim assisted the emperor Charles IV. in his struggle with the family of Wittelsbach. He died on the 24th of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... retired to his castle of pleasure at Mehun-sur-Yevre, where he could best conceal from prying eyes the idle occupations and degrading enjoyments which filled the time of the hero of other's swords. He had just concluded a peace with Savoy, and had rejected, as vexatious, the petitions of his subjects of Gascony, who were writhing under the exactions of his ministers. He felt that all was now at his feet; and he would not permit his loved ease and quiet to be disturbed by appeals to his justice and humanity. The people of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... fulness of life, she seemed to me little more than a child; and she fell with apparent willingness into that position, accepting naturally its privileges and exemptions. She alone was never in the way, never vexatious or exacting. Content with the notice that naturally fell to her share, she obtained the more. Never intruding between Eveena and myself, she alone was not wholly unwelcome to share our accidental privacy when, in the peristyle or the grounds, the others left us temporarily alone. On such ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... De Off., lib. i., ca. xlii.: "Primum improbantur ii quaestus, qui in odia hominum incurrunt: ut portitorum ut f[oe]neratorum." The Portitores were inferior collectors of certain dues, stationed at seaports, who are supposed to have been extremely vexatious in their ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... it up, resign, make Peers, or what? Nothing can be more silly than the amendment, although it may be questioned whether it signifies very materially; but the light in which Ministers see it is this: are they to submit night after night to the vexatious insolence of the Tories, who are constantly on the watch to find some vulnerable point, and without intending or daring to throw over their great measures, to mangle their details as much as they can venture to do, and hold the Government in a sort of subjugation and in a state ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... an ox. With keen delight and an appetite to match they were just about to eat up the egg between them, when an unbidden guest appeared in the shape of Master Reynard the fox. This was a most awkward and vexatious visitation. How was the egg to be saved from the jaws of him? To wrap it up carefully and carry it away by the fore paws, or to roll it, or to drag it, were methods as impossible as they were hazardous. But Necessity, that ingenious mother, ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... all, this principle applies to cases where honours are concerned. He to whom they come as the result of importunate petition owes[51] no gratitude for his success to any save himself. On the other hand, he who receives honours without descending to vexatious canvassing is obliged to the givers for two reasons; he has not asked and yet he has received. The thanks, therefore, which I owe you are double or rather manifold, and my lips shall proclaim them at all times ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... was the more vexatious as Cargrim knew that the ex-sailor had seen Mother Jael, and shrewdly suspected that he had obtained from the beldam valuable information likely to incriminate the bishop. Whether his newly-found evidence did so or not, Baltic gravely declined to say, and Cargrim was furious at being left in ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... stole her, At dead of night; that cursed hour you chose To rifle me of all my heart held dear. May all your joys in her prove false, like mine! A sterile fortune, and a barren bed, Attend you both: continual discord make Your days and nights bitter and grievous still: May the hard hand of a vexatious need Oppress and grind you; till at last you find The curse of ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... the barrier, he discovered that he had no railway ticket, a very ordinary and vexatious experience which travelers before now have endured. He searched in every pocket, including the pocket of the light ulster he wore, but without success. He was vexed, but he laughed because he had a strong ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... satisfy my hunger, and I wondered when and where a halt was to be called and rations parcelled out. It is a vexatious feeling for the young to feel the pangs of hunger, and I was not used to a long fast. My feelings were relieved by Whistling Jim, who informed me that he had placed a very substantial ration in my holsters; and ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... for a gentleman to exert his talents, by maintaining good order in his neighbourhood; by punishing the dissolute and idle; by protecting the peaceable and industrious; and, above all, by healing petty differences and preventing vexatious prosecutions. But, in order to attain these desirable ends, it is necessary that the magistrate should understand his business; and have not only the will, but the power also, (under which must be included the knowlege) of administring legal and effectual justice. ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... girl! Now really, Lucy, this is extremely ridiculous and vexatious too. Is not my daughter ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a wise look. "They are going to try and mend me straight. I hope they won't make a mistake this time. Mistakes are so vexatious." ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... Strict orders had been issued, that no strangers should be admitted to witness the ceremony of rivetting; and the turnkeys and gaolers, in appearance not yet recovered from the alarm of the preceding evening, refused to listen to either bribe, menace, or solicitation. It was confoundedly vexatious. Whilst expostulating with the turnkey, I caught a glimpse through a barred window of the interior court, athwart which the chains lay extended, whilst in one railed off even from this the convicts were crowded, marching round and round—precaution ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... crowded, evidently, with homeward-bound Americans, mostly women. Gregory tended to think of America and its people with the kindly lightness common to his type. Their samenesses didn't interest him, and their differences were sometimes vexatious. He had a vague feeling that they'd really better have been Colonials and be done with it. Professor Blackburn last night had reproved this insular levity. He was going over with an array of discriminations that Gregory had likened to an explorer's charts and instruments. He intended to investigate ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... universal amnesty, a final and absolute discharge of all arrears of tribute, of all debts, which, under any pretence, the fiscal officers might demand from the people. This wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious, and unprofitable claims, improved and purified the sources of the public revenue; and the subject who could now look back without despair, might labor with hope and gratitude for himself and for his country. II. In the assessment and collection of taxes, Majorian restored the ordinary ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... considered a very mild and pertinent piece of public criticism against a faineant admiral led to imprisonment in the King's Bench Prison, plus a fine of L100. Then came a quarrel with an old friend, Wilkes—not the least vexatious result of that forlorn championship of Bute's government in The Briton. And finally, in part, obviously, as a consequence of all this nervous breakdown, a succession of severe catarrhs, premonitory in his case of consumption, the serious illness of the wife he adored, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Cantrip was right, then must his apology to Mrs. Finn be ample and abject. Perhaps it was this feeling which at the moment was most vexatious to him. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... discernment. Before Mrs. Flowerdew (I have written the delightful name on every corner of my blotting-paper) honoured me with her hand, I brought this power to bear on her incessantly. Under all kinds of vexatious circumstances I have been witness of her unassailable good temper. I have seen her wear a new bonnet in a shower of rain. These clumsy hands of mine have spilled lobster-salad upon her dress. That little wretch of a brother of hers has pulled her back hair down. Her sister Sophonisba has abused her. ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... uncommonly windy that I was almost blown off my pony, and was glad to grasp the mane to prevent its actually happening. Rode round by Brigends. I began the third volume of Count Robert of Paris, which has been on the anvil during all these vexatious circumstances of politics and health. But "the blue heaven bends over all." It may be ended in a fortnight if I keep my scheme. But I will take time enough. This would be on Thursday. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... apologies in a published discourse. To his guests Luther in those days remarked at the table: "Satan, like a furious harlot, rages in the Antinomians, as Melanchthon writes from Frankfort. The devil will do much harm through them and cause infinite and vexatious evils. If they carry their lawless principles into the State as well as the Church, the magistrate will say: I am a Christian, therefore the law does not pertain to me. Even a Christian hangman would repudiate ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... heard within the shuffling slippers and vexatious scraping cough of the detestable master. Marneffe opened the door, but only to put himself into an attitude and point to the stairs, exactly as Hulot had shown him the door of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... that, good woman?" said Aymer de Valence, who was growing every moment more impatient at the loss of time, which was flying fast, in an investigation which had something vexatious in it, and even ridiculous. At the same time, the sight of an armed partisan of the Douglasses, in their own native town, seemed to bode too serious consequences, if it should be suffered to pass without being ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Two Things in the World can be more different, than the Pleasure of the One is from the Torment of the other; yet Nothing is more evident, than that both are derived from and owing to the same craving principle in our nature, the Desire of Food; for when this is entirely lost, it is more vexatious to eat, than it is to let it alone, tho' the whole Body languishes, and we are ready to expire for Want of Sustenance. Hitherto I have spoken of honour in its first literal Sense, in which it is a Technic Word in the Art of Civility, and signifies a Means which Men by Conversing ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... and sudden infliction of pain, even to death. It is a noble triumph of grace when such a test is well borne, and turned by patience into an occasion for God. When Nicholas Ridley, for a long year and a half (1554-5) was committed at Oxford to the vexatious domestic custody of the mayor and his bigoted wife, Edmund and Margaret Irish, it must have been nothing less than a slow torture to one whose fine nature had been used for years to the conditions of civil and ecclesiastical dignity ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... upon us. Paris was blockaded eight hundred years by the deer, and its environs, now so rich, so fertile, did not yield bread enough to support the gamekeepers." [Footnote: The following details from Bonnemere will serve to give a more complete idea of the vexatious and irritating nature of the game laws of France. The officers of the chase went so far as to forbid the pulling up of thistles and weeds, or the mowing of any unenclosed ground before St. John's day (24th June), in order that ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... relation of these two branches had been established nearly ten years before, when President Washington attempted to get an interpretation from the Supreme Court upon the binding clauses of the vexatious treaty with France. He was told that the court was not an advisory body, but a tribunal established to adjudge specific cases brought before it. For this advisory service, the Executive must depend upon his Attorney-General. About the same time, the United States circuit courts protested ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... established in which imports may be stored, re-packed, manufactured and then exported without the payment of duties in the first place, duties for the refund of which the present law makes provision, but only after vexatious delays and expensive red tape. Precautions are taken to prevent smuggling. In the preliminary investigations and recommendations made by the Department of Commerce, New York, San Francisco and New ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... On the 21st we encamped near the village of Kazee, after a march of nine miles along the right bank of the Helmund, which here flows in a south-westerly direction; we could procure no supplies whatever, either for man or beast, which was the more vexatious as we had a very hard day's work in prospect for the morrow, and were anxious to recruit ourselves and cattle before attempting it. We managed well enough in spite of our compulsory fast, and on the 22d we reached Kalloo, a distance of twelve miles, after crossing the steep and ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... occasional call to join in matrimonial bonds sundry pairs of hearts that beat as one, I had much more frequent cause to settle disputes between planters and employees, where neither party was disposed to meet the other halfway. Vexatious and varied as my employments were, and anxious as I might be to do justice, I was liable to be overhauled by headquarters from misrepresentations made by angry and disappointed suitors. One event in my administration of the office, caused quite a sensation for the day. In the ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... something so ludicrous in all this, however vexatious and insulting under the circumstances—the recent death of the husband, and the young widow's unprotected state—that neither of us could forbear laughing at the conclusion of Mrs Irwin's story. It struck me, too, that Renshawe had conceived a real ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... liberty. Thus the two very difficult points, superiority in the presiding state, and freedom in the subordinate, were on the whole sufficiently, that is, practically, reconciled; without agitating those vexatious questions, which in truth rather belong to metaphysics than politics, and which can never be moved without shaking the foundations of the best governments that have ever been constituted by human wisdom. By this measure was let loose that dangerous ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... most vexatious that, in spite of all admonition, the Courier persists in its warlike tone and justification of the interference of the Continental Powers in the internal affairs of Spain, in opposition to all the known views and declarations of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... spring from any form of bitterness. He was rough in his ways sometimes, and could not bear to be contradicted when he was sure that he was right, which generally happened to him. But above all things he had one very great peculiarity, to my mind highly vexatious, because it seemed so unaccountable. Sampson Gundry had a very low opinion of feminine intellect. He never showed this contempt in any unpleasant way, and indeed he never, perhaps, displayed it in any ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... columns, statues, and all the necessary details of a sumptuous sepulchre. He stopped, and asked what it all meant. Then one of the contractors for this transport, wiping the sweat from his forehead, in utter weariness of the vexatious labour, at the last end of his temper, answered: "May the gods destroy all poets, past, present, and future." I inquired what he had to do with poets, and how they had annoyed him. "Just this," he replied, "that this poet, lately deceased, a fool and windy-pated fellow, has ordered a monument ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... "knew Latin pretty well," and, on Ben Jonson's evidence, he knew "less Greek." That he knew ANY Greek is surprising. Apparently he did, to judge from Ben's words. My attitude must, to the Baconians, seem frivolous, vexatious, and evasive. I cannot pretend to know what was Shakspere's precise amount of proficiency in Latin when he was writing the plays. That between his own knowledge, and construes given to him, he might easily get at the meaning of all ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... notwithstanding the cure I thought Mr. Chute had made upon them, are of very little use to me. You have no notion how it mortifies me: when I am wishing to withdraw more and more from a world of which I have had satiety, and which I suppose is as tired of me, how vexatious not to be able to indulge a happiness that depends only on oneself, and consequently the only happiness proper for people past their youth! I have often deluded you with promises of returning to Florence for pleasure, I now threaten you with it for ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... triumph, the Basilian fathers commenced in earnest the task of Church reform, and passed several decrees of a character vexatious to the Pope, particularly one for the total abolition of annates. A second breach was the consequence. Eugenius, under pretence of furthering the negotiation then pending for the reunion of the Greek and Latin branches of the Church, published in 1437 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... involves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year, and other times, in bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the choosing. If, at any time, it comes into my head that a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I made another discovery of an extremely vexatious character; namely, that Le Duc had robbed me. I would have forgiven him if he had not forced me to a public exposure, which I could only have avoided with the loss of my honour. However, I kept him in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the barrier of your teeth? Strange words and harsh! Vexatious words to hear! As if this bow must rob our chiefs of life and breath because you cannot bend it! Why, your good mother did not bear you for a brandisher of bows and arrows. But others among the lordly suitors will bend it ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... yes," muttered Hilary, as he heard the departing steps; "they've locked me up safe enough. Was anything ever so vexatious?" ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... 'This vexatious and unjust practice of tenants against landlords had been too common, and had too long been favoured by the party spirit of juries; who, being chiefly composed of tenants, had made it a common cause, and a principle, if it ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... since 1842 has shown that the Chinese Government has borne with ill grace the restrictions thus imposed upon it, and has embraced every opportunity to evade them in spirit, whilst professing to carry them out in the letter. Trade has been everywhere hampered by vexatious imposts cunningly introduced on all kinds of pretexts, and as pertinaciously persisted in, in spite of pointed remonstrances on the part of foreign representatives. Outrages of a glaring kind have been passed over without redress, or perhaps with a show of redress so ingeniously conceded as to ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... vexatious part of it was that Nikolai also wanted to forbid her to apply to one who was as good as her own child, when there ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... abrupt raids of criticism, crude gossip of philosophy, varied sands and clumps—without bothering ourselves because certain pages do not present themselves to you or me as coming under their own name with entire fitness or amiability. (It is a profound, vexatious never-explicable matter—this of names. I have been exercised deeply about it my ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... mutual agreement between the Imperial Government, the Governments of the Dominions, and the Government of India, the latter should have power to issue passports to Indian subjects which would be recognized and would exempt them from all vexatious ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... course, you have a cheque-book. Horrible things, aren't they?—such a nuisance remembering to fill out those little stubs. Of course, I forgot to bring mine with me—I always do; and equally, of course, a vexatious debt turns up and finds me without an Occidental Bank cheque ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... ophthalmia. In two days the progress of the disorder was such that my eyes were closed up and incapable of supporting the light, and occasioned me such acute anguish that I could get no sleep but by the effect of laudanum. This misfortune at this crisis was peculiarly vexatious and mortifying for me, as it put it out of my power to accompany the Pasha, who departed with the army for Dongola on the 26th, taking his route on the west bank of the river, and leaving the Divan Effendi and a small party of soldiers ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... need of quiet and leisure to get my report straightened out in my mind ready for delivery. The largeness and looseness of my commission left everything to my discretion, with the vexatious result that I had discovered nothing. I had, indeed, carried out my orders. I had been so far west of Derby that I had seen the famous spires of Lichfield cutting into the sky like three lance-heads, and had learned on abundant and trustworthy evidence that the Duke's forces there were ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... to a ritual differing from his own. *x Sometimes indeed the zeal of his enactments induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same Code which prohibits the use of tobacco. *y It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and more puritanical than the laws. In 1649 ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... infinite disparagement to his understanding, which, at another time, he sets no small value upon; tell him that it will blacken his reputation, which he had rather die for than lose; tell him that the pleasure of sin is short and transient, and leaves a vexatious kind of sting behind it, which will very hardly be drawn forth; tell him that this is one of those things for which God will most surely bring him to judgment, which he pretends to believe with a full assurance and persuasion: And yet for all this, he shuts his eyes against ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... has inquired into most things, but has never had a committee on "the Queen". There is no authentic blue-book to say what she does. Such an investigation cannot take place; but if it could, it would probably save her much vexatious routine, and ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... that which consisted in efforts for the suppression of Heresy and Blasphemy. Here was the natural outcome of the Presbyterianism with which the Parliament was charged, and here also the Parliament was very vexatious to the soul ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... probably," suggested the attorney. "It must be very vexatious to see her so much noticed, and be yourself so much neglected—very vexatious, indeed—I ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... no other than an auditor, and he should have a good salary with fees at the cost of culprits. This is essential to produce the desired effect. But this last method would cause greater delay and dangerous annoyances to the natives, because of certain reasons and causes vexatious to them; for the auditor could inspect in one year and summer but one province, and in that would not be doing little. The next year he would have to visit another province, and so on, until he had finished ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... taught sometimes feel that this new physical function is a vexatious hindrance to their happiness. It is often accompanied with pain, and its periodical recurrence interferes with their plans for pleasure, and they in ignorance sometimes say, rebelliously, "O, I hate being ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... will be sufficiently obvious to any one who has had the ordinary share of vexatious experience in the ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... All this naturally was vexatious. Even sunny Clover shed many tears in private over her mortifications. But the girls bore their trouble bravely, and never said one syllable about the matter in the letters home. There were consolations, too, mixed with the annoyances. ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... when I found that she reads the Duchess novels. I think, however, she has the grace to be ashamed of it, for she blushed scarlet when I handed her 'A Modern Circe.' I could have told her that such a blush on such a cheek would almost atone for not being able to read at all, but I refrained. It is vexatious all the same, for, though one doesn't expect to find perfection here below, the 'nut-brown mayde,' externally considered, comes perilously near it. After she had gone I discovered a slip of paper which had blown under some stones. It proved to be an itinerary. I didn't ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Not too conceited nor too restrained, Be not too haughty nor yet too meek, Too tattle-tongued or too loth to speak, Neither too hard nor yet too weak. If too wise you appear, folk too much will claim of you, If too foolish, they still will be making fresh game of you, If too conceited, vexatious they'll dub you, If too unselfish, they only will snub you, If too much of a tattler, you ne'er will be heeded, If too silent, your company ne'er will be needed, If overhard, your pride will be broken asunder, If overweak, the folk will ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... of his clothes and a great part of our photographs was destroyed. Fanny saw the native sailors tossing overboard a blazing trunk; she stopped them in time, and behold, it contained my manuscripts. Thereafter we had three (or two) days fine weather: then got into a gale of wind, with rain and a vexatious sea. As we drew into our anchorage in a bight of Savage Island, a man ashore told me afterwards the sight of the JANET NICOLL made him sick; and indeed it was rough play, though nothing to the night before. All through ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of which they would have none. John Randolph, chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, reported, March 2, 1802, against the entire system of internal duties, in the old words of the Pennsylvania radicals, as vexatious, oppressive, and peculiarly obnoxious; as of the nature of an excise which is hostile to the genius of a free people, and finally because of their tendency to multiply offices and increase the patronage of the executive. The repeal was imperative upon the Republican party. On April 6, 1802, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... in various ways, the relation of master and slave is disturbed by the presence of our army, and he considers it particularly vexatious that this, in part, is done under cover of an act of Congress, while constitutional guarantees are suspended on the plea of military necessity. The truth is that what is done and omitted about slaves is ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... government bigwigs protesting their innocence to high Heaven, and the rest accusing one another of complicity in the hoax. If that was somebody's intention, it was literally a howling success. For a while, it was even feared that there would be questions in Parliament, but eventually, the whole vexatious business was hushed. ...
— He Walked Around the Horses • Henry Beam Piper
... accidentally delayed her. However, half-an-hour passed, then an hour, an hour and a half, and then I knew that something must have detained her; a sick headache, perhaps, or some annoying visitor. That sort of waiting is very vexatious, that ... useless waiting ... very annoying and enervating. At last, I made up my mind to go out, and not knowing what to do, I went to her and found her ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... All that through life has vex'd you, all abuse, Will this kind friend in pure regard produce; And having through your own offences run, Adds (as appendage) what your friends have done, Has any female cousin made a trip To Gretna Green, or more vexatious slip? Has your wife's brother, or your uncle's son, Done aught amiss, or is he thought t'have done? Is there of all your kindred some who lack Vision direct, or have a gibbous back? From your unlucky name may quips and puns Be made by these upbraiding Goths and Huns? To some ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... arrival of that grand epoch. At that period the state of things in the valleys was far from satisfactory. Not to recount, as among the causes, those political disabilities to which reference has been previously made, I will refer to some additional circumstances of a vexatious and depressing character. One was the hindrances to the obtaining the most indispensable religious books, such as Bibles, catechisms, hymn-books. With each parcel of Bibles and New Testaments, the moderator was obliged to sign a ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... times vexatious, but on the French- Prussian frontier they are so arranged as to provoke patriotic feeling. It may seem a foolish fancy for French folks, German subjects of the Kaiser, to prefer French soap and stationery, yet what more natural than the purchase ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... "How vexatious! Only a note! It is too cruel! I shall never, never pardon Mademoiselle Melanie if she disappoints me. But that's easy enough to say, difficult enough to carry into execution. In reality I could not exist without her; ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... as he reflected on the probability that a far shorter and bloodier event might defeat every earthly hope, within the next twenty-four hours. But he dissembled his feelings; recovered even a tone of gayety; and, begging of Paulina to dismiss this vexatious incident from her thoughts, as a matter that after all would probably be remedied by their first communication with the emperor, and before any evil had resulted from it, he accompanied her to the entrance ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... reigning Serbian Prince. The difference in their eyes between the two people was that the Serbs had gained their independence. It was not as great an independence as the Macedonians fancied, for in addition to the vexatious remains of Turkish suzerainty there was the Greek ecclesiastical rule. During the reigns of Kara George and Milo[vs] the Greeks insisted on having their language used for the liturgy in all the Serbian towns, especially in Belgrade; after ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... her own, and the health of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not return to her the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... not affect my appetite, nor the enjoyment of the morning and evening repasts, cold and untempting as they were. The vigorous day's row in the open air, the sweet slumbers that followed it at night in a well-ventilated apartment, a simple, unexciting life, the mental rest from vexatious business cares, all proved superior to any tonic a physician could prescribe, and I became more rugged as I grew accustomed to the duties of an oarsman, and gained several pounds avoirdupois by the time I ended the row of twenty-six hundred miles and landed ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... appointed to leave Turin some two weeks after Trescorre's departure; but the preparations for a young gentleman's travels were in those days a momentous business, and one not to be discharged without vexatious postponements. The travelling-carriage must be purchased and fitted out, the gold-mounted dressing-case selected and engraved with the owner's arms, servants engaged and provided with liveries, and the noble tourist's own ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... very ear, as if they wished to get into your head, among your most secret thoughts. In truth, a fly is the most impertinent and indelicate thing in creation,—the very type and moral of human spirits with whom one occasionally meets, and who, perhaps, after an existence troublesome and vexatious to all with whom they come in contact, have been doomed to reappear in this congenial shape. Here is one intent upon alighting on my nose. In a room, now,—in a human habitation,—I could find in my conscience to put him to death; but here we have intruded upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... with flesh and blood, they had met and acted, and their candidate for consecration was in London urging his claims, before the ministers in the Middle States had any knowledge of what was doing. After a year of costly and vexatious delay in London, finding no progress made and no hope of any, he proceeded to Aberdeen and was consecrated bishop November 14, 1784. It was more than two years longer before the English bishops succeeded in finding a way to do what their unrecognized Scotch ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... vexatious little pipe, she puts the silver tube to my lips with a bow. Courtesy forbids my refusal; but I find ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... are perplexing: bills come back protested—bad news from England—sudden and unlooked-for failures—no one can tell where it will end. We have been obliged to stop our works at Clyde Farm, and there are from ninety to a hundred laborers thrown out of employment. This is peculiarly vexatious to me, as they made out before to earn a living in their own humdrum way, and they now accuse me of having taken the bread from their children's mouths, to promote my own speculations, though, while I employed them, I gave them enormous wages. ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... did not pass away thus without some vexatious cares to ruffle it. The affair of the American ships was not yet over, and he was again pestered with threats of prosecution. "I have written them word," said he, "that I will have nothing to do with them, and they must act as they think proper. Government, I suppose, will do what ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... work of God in the souls of others.—"For thy meat," said the apostle, "destroy not the soul for whom Christ died." He might have added, "and in whom Christ lives." Weak and erring, trying and vexatious, that fellow-believer may be, yet there is a chamber in his nature in which God has already taken up His abode. The conflict between the light and darkness, the Christ-spirit and the self-spirit, may be long and arduous, but the issue is certain. Help, but do not hinder the process. ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... remember it—and she did not live far from me; we were neighbours. You see I knew Gertrude pretty well, and I liked her. There had been some love passages between us, but I had never been her lover; our story had got entangled, and as I went to her I hoped that this vexatious knot was to be picked at last. To be Gertrude's lover would be a pleasure indeed, for though a woman of forty, a natural desire to please, a witty mind, and pretty manners still kept her young; she had all the appearance of youth; and ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... the clear fact that it is your duty to manage your household wisely and prudently, which we have seen cannot be done without business system, of which you must be the head, I assure you that such a system is neither intricate nor vexatious. It does not necessarily entail upon you the least participation in the actual labor of the family. It does not absolutely require your personal presence at the scene of those labors, although the woman who considers it beneath her dignity to go into her kitchen, has no more business ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for him without certain safeguards. Yet I honor a somewhat wide use of the term, and discredit the system of individual election for the right (if I may so call it)—which, I believe, obtains—with its vexatious exactions as to mental and moral fitness, and the very objectionable feature, to my mind, of laying upon the band, as a collective organization, the obligation of assigning to the individual member seeking enfranchisement so much land, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... these bastions were worthless. They were furnished with no stabling for horses. They could not be built near enough to render assistance to each other; the besieger was in danger of being himself besieged in them. In short, from these vexatious methods of warfare the English reaped nothing but disappointment and disgrace. The Sire de Bueil, one of the defenders, perceived this when he was reconnoitring.[843] In fact it was so easy to pass through the enemy's lines that merchants were willing to run the risk of taking ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France |
