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More "Grouch" Quotes from Famous Books



... 'Got a grouch tonight, haven't you? You seem all flittered up about something. What's the trouble? Sore about my not showing up at your apartment? I'll explain that ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... next town every man in the show had a grouch and a Katzenjammer, and their hair was so sore it was murder and suicide combined ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... world's record for the standing broad grin. There isn't a minute of the day that fails to find him glad that he's alive. Nobody ever saw him with a "grouch," or suffering from an attack of the "blues." Nobody ever heard him mention "hard luck" in connection with one of his failures. The worse the breaks of the game, the gloomier the outlook, the wider his grin. ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks

... go to sleep and forget them both, and the trains and the cars and the man in the park and Miss Stein, who still had against her a "grouch." If only she could forget even big, blundering Ursus, who wanted to treat her to oyster stews that he couldn't afford and take her to a dance hall next Sunday! And Sadie, too, who knew such strange and awful things about the world and life, ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... You ought to thank the old grouch for calling you up. He put two secret service men on the train with Flynn? Just like Hite. You'll have to admit that it takes a newspaper man to ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... of stable odors, rice powder and cosmetics; at night she had to accompany her daughter and her granddaughter on walks, and to cafes and theatres, on the hunt and capture of the kid, as it was put by the travelling salesman who suffered from his stomach,—a fellow half humorist and half grouch. When they were in the house Celia and Irene, the daughter and the granddaughter of Dona Violante, kept bickering at all hours; perhaps this continuous state of irritation derived from the close quarters in which they lived; perhaps so much passing as sisters in the eyes of others had convinced ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... limit," said Melissa flatly. "The worst grouch I've ever seen, Mr. Bingle, even if he is your own flesh and blood uncle. He's almost as bad as ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... mean Harold, of course," said Harriet. "He's gone around all winter with a grouch and a face a mile long. What's the matter with ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... right. You've got a grouch. Come with me and walk it off," Neil said uneasily, but he did not press the invitation, and his friend had little more to say. His silence was perhaps the most unusual thing about his behaviour, which ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... been decent," mused Tom, on his way back, after settling the score, "he could have shown us the way through his hay field, and we might have gotten into the Hall on time. The old grouch!" ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman

... get over your grouch," a third adjured him. "You are worse than O'Brien was, the morning after he was shoved in kink. Were you in Cape ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... the Centipede fixed that! Don't you see? This was their seat! They leaned out of this place as I leaned out just now, and they gripped the ankles of any poor devil they had a grouch against. It ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... slower breathing. But not all investigators have got these results; and, anyway, it would be impossible to generalize to the extent of asserting that slow heart beat always gave a pleasant state of feeling, and rapid heart beat an unpleasant; for there is slow heart beat during a "morning grouch", and rapid during joyful expectation. Or, in regard to breathing, try this experiment: hasten your breathing and see whether a feeling of pleasantness results; slacken it and see whether unpleasantness results. The fact is that pleasantness can go with a wide range of organic states, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... to preserve one's dignity when suffering a reprimand in public; but when you are handicapped by a shabby bath-robe, a three days' growth of beard, and a grouch that gives you the expression of a bandit, and the public happens to be the one being on earth whom you are most anxious to please, the situation ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... why they ain't in other places. It minds me iv what happened wanst in me cousin Terence's fam'ly. They was livin' down near Healey's slough in wan iv thim ol' Doherty's houses,—not Doherty that ye know, th' j'iner, a good man whin he don't dhrink. No, 'twas an ol' grouch iv a man be th' name iv Malachi Doherty that used to keep five-day notices in his thrunk, an' ownded his own privit justice iv th' peace. Me cousin Terence was as dacint a man as iver shoed a hor-rse; an his wife was a good woman, too, though I niver took much to ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... that the ton rate had been jumped a couple of cents. And now it had been almost doubled. No wonder he wanted a confab with Marcus T. on the subject. And, from where I stood, it looked like he ought to have it, grouch ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... pityingly. "Go and apologize and make friends again, Terry. You've got a grouch, that's all. These women have the virtue of humanity, with less of its faults than any folks I ever saw. As for patience—they'd have pitched us over the cliffs the first day we lit among 'em, if they ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... he didn't seem to care so much today. Watching practice had brought back the smart, and being liked or disliked seemed a little thing beside the bigger trouble. Still, he thought, if Roy was right perhaps he had better meet fellows half-way. There was no use in being a grouch. As a starter and in order to test the accuracy of Roy's statement, he decided that he would drop in on Carl Bennett, who roomed in Number 3. Bennett was a chap he rather respected and, while they had never been very close ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... a grouch, eh, what? He's getting a bit squiffy, if you ask me," suggested Norvil Thayre to the group centered where the punch-bowl was being administered. Norvil Thayre was not having a grouch. If he had ever had a grouch he had kept his ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... whom I never spoke to—it is strictly against rules for a prisoner to speak with a visitor—and never knowingly saw, though I understand she was wont to sit on the stage during the Sunday exercises. She is thus quoted: "Julian Hawthorne is nothing more than an old grouch. A short time ago this old man told me himself that he was getting plenty to eat and had no complaint to make of his own or anybody else's treatment in the prison.... When he says such things as he is reported to have said, he should be made to prove them, or keep his mouth shut." Warden Moyer ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... little sick of your wood-carving, while you stuck around by your lonesome and watched him—eh?" Danglar's tones were jocularly facetious. "Don't grouch, Skeeny! We're not killing for fun—it doesn't pay. Supposing anything had broken wrong up the Avenue—eh? We wouldn't have had our friend the Sparrow there for the next ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... of steam and every bit of confidence we've got into it and make it win. That goes for me, and for the principals, and right down through to the last girl in the chorus. Every night there'll be a new audience out there that you will have to fight—shake up out of the grouch they get when they pay for their tickets; persuade to laugh and loosen up and come ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... has made the difference in these two men? Their thoughts have made the difference. The grouch has, for years, entertained grouchy thoughts. The sunshiny man has cultivated the habit of seeing the bright side of things. That's ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... "Oh, that's your grouch, is it?" cried Martin. "Forgive me; here's my pouch, old chap; or wait, here's something altogether finer than anything you've been accustomed to. I was at old Kingston's last night, and the old boy would have me load up with his finest. You know I've been working with him this summer. Awfully ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... He must be getting queer like all other hermits he had ever heard of. It occurred to him that possibly Marion Rose was not really feather-brained, but that the trouble was in himself, because he was getting a chronic grouch. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... other places. It minds me iv what happened wanst in me cousin Terence's fam'ly. They was livin' down near Healey's slough in wan iv thim ol' Doherty's houses,—not Doherty that ye know, th' j'iner, a good man whin he don't dhrink. No, 'twas an ol' grouch iv a man be th' name iv Malachi Doherty that used to keep five-day notices in his thrunk, an' ownded his own privit justice iv th' peace. Me cousin Terence was as dacint a man as iver shoed a hor-rse; an his wife was a good woman, too, ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... Will, have a little patience!" she said. "If you like your man so well, you had better live at home, but don't come around here with a grouch and bulldoze everybody——" ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... and he set his elbows on his knees and proceeded to nurse his private grouch in silence, quite excluding his companion from his thoughts. Now that he had been snatched so summarily from his hateful position on board the Olenia, his desire to leave her was not so keen. After ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... never seen the Kid Next Door, although he had come four months ago. But she knew he wasn't a grouch, because he alternately whistled and sang off-key tenor while dressing in the morning. She had also discovered that his bed must run along the same wall against which her bed was pushed. Gertie told herself that there was something almost ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... temporary "grouch" against the Jews was partly due to the irruption into her Society of three new and attractive Israelites of her own sex—an event happening about that time. In one of these newcomers, Terry, it appears, was ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... asked Mr. Pepper Sneed, who was known as "the actor with the grouch." He was always finding fault. "Lovely alligators!" he sneered. "If you want to go to Florida, and be eaten ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... had got out of the business, I got a mighty grouch on. I used to go round town licking private citizens and all kinds of unprofessionals just to please myself. I'd lick cops in dark streets and car-conductors and cab-drivers and draymen whenever I could start a row with 'em. It didn't make any difference ...
— Options • O. Henry

... family gathering, it sets the pace for the twenty-four hours. A cheerful start in the morning may give an optimistic momentum for all-day hill-climbing; or, one may slip dejectedly down hill if leaden-weighted with a "morning grouch" (one's own, or somebody else's). Even fellow "boarders" might reflect on this, with profit. Preoccupied with our own affairs, we forget to be mutually considerate. We habitually wake to rush and worry, taking social recreation chiefly at ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... various kinds of drinks and how good they would taste. I tried out the club. I may have imagined it, but I thought my old friends lacked interest in my advent at the table. One of them said: "Oh, for Heaven's sake, take a drink! You've got a terrible grouch on." I backed out. ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe

... man in a large and wicked city to keep from soda when once he has got the habit. Everything was against me. The old convivial circle began to shun me. I could not join in their revels and they began to look on me as a grouch. In the end, I fell, and in one wild orgy undid all the good of a month's abstinence. I was desperate then. I felt that nothing could save me, and I might as well give up the struggle. I drank two pin-ap-o-lades, three grapefruit-olas and an egg-zoolak, ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... better man than I thought. He's the main grouch among 'em. Said if I hadn't had a gun he'd have tackled me in the cabin. Meant it, too, though I'd have smashed him. He's sore becoz I said he warn't my equal. I told him, enny time he wanted to try it out, I'd accommodate ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... new moving picture drama. He and the girls, in common with the other members of the Comet Film Company, had to portray many different scenes in the course of a season's work, and though some of it was distasteful, it was seldom objected to by anyone, unless perhaps by Pepper Sneed, the "grouch," or perhaps by Mr. Wellington Bunn, an actor of the old school, who could not reconcile ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... My hard-faced companion regarded the lank figure overhanging the fence with new respect. "Looks to me like the original Gloom," he observed. "What's his grouch?" ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... of a successful camping-out trip are personal. One must have the receptive and acceptive spirit. No matter what comes it is for the best; an experience worth having. Nothing must be complained of. The "grouch" has no place on a camping-trip, and one who is a "grouch," a "sissy," a "faultfinder," a "worrier," a "quitter," or who cannot or will not enter fully into the spirit of the thing had better ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... Don't get sore. You've been a grouch ever since we asked you to come along. One would think you didn't have any interests ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... was Pepper Sneed, the "grouch" of the company. Nothing ever went the way Pepper wanted it to go, from the depiction of a play to the meals he ate. No wonder he had dyspepsia. He was always apprehensive of something going to happen and when it did—well, they used to say that Pepper was the original ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope

... saying that Charley had handled the situation about as well as he could have done it himself. Evidently the forester did not propose to enlighten Charley, for all he said was, "Don't let him worry you, Charley. He's just naturally lazy and a grouch. He doesn't like it because I made him hustle for once, and he's disappointed not to find Jim at the point of death. These doctors are strange animals, Charley. But with all their faults we love them still." ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... Carnegie medal thereby. I knew Oliver Sickles, and even better did I know his kind, who only go to battle when certain victory lies before them. The only chance I was taking was with my firm's interests. It might be that he'd have such a grouch against me that he'd carry no more coal for my firm than he ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... Leverage. "President of the Capitol City Woolen Mills. Rated about a hundred thousand—maybe a little more. He's on the Board of Directors of the Second National. Has the reputation of being hard, fearless—and considerable of a grouch. Age forty-two. ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... mused Tom, on his way back, after settling the score, "he could have shown us the way through his hay field, and we might have gotten into the Hall on time. The old grouch!" ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman

... lovely?" asked Mr. Pepper Sneed, who was known as "the actor with the grouch." He was always finding fault. "Lovely alligators!" he sneered. "If you want to go to Florida, and be eaten ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... Sol replied. "Klein'll be glad to hear it. You know, Mawruss, Klein ain't such a grouch as most people think he is. In fact, taking him all around, Klein ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... had some sort of a special grouch; I guess he was just beginning to get his snowshoes off after a fight with his ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... it is for a man in a large and wicked city to keep from soda when once he has got the habit. Everything was against me. The old convivial circle began to shun me. I could not join in their revels and they began to look on me as a grouch. In the end, I fell, and in one wild orgy undid all the good of a month's abstinence. I was desperate then. I felt that nothing could save me, and I might as well give up the struggle. I drank two pin-ap-o-lades, three grapefruit-olas and an ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... I've hated it for thirty-two years. I'll die here—and I'll hate it till I die. I ought to have been a business woman. I had a good deal of talent for tending to figures. All gone now. Some folks think I'm crazy. Guess I am. Sit and grouch. Go to church and sing hymns. Folks think I'm religious. Tut! Trying to forget washing and ironing and mending socks. Want an office of my own, and sell things. Julius never hear of it. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... against you, which is worse. You are something for people to laugh at. You are also expected to laugh. It is all right for a thin man to be grouchy; people will say the poor creature has dyspepsia and should be humored along. But a fat man with a grouch is inexcusable in any company—there is so much of him to be grouchy. He constitutes a wave of discontent and a period of general depression. He is not expected to be romantic and sentimental either. It is all right for a giraffe to be sentimental, but not a hippopotamus. If you doubt ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... ours, for all its thoughtlessness, was so rich in genuine friendships, so filled and bubbling over with the joy of being young, that we could not understand how any decent sort of chap could deliberately keep out of it. We put Joe Kramer down as a "grouch." ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... has a grouch against garden-parties, so often does he shake his sieve with deliberate intent to spoil the affair, which is after all, merely afternoon tea out of doors. The hostess anxiously consults "the probabilities" as to weather, and if storm threatens ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... we come to them, Gib. Cheer up, my boy, cheer up. I got a new engineer. He won't last, but he'll last long enough for Mac to forget his grouch an' listen to reason," and with this optimistic remark Captain Scraggs dropped into the engine room to get up enough steam to keep ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... all, a quiet mania which sought out the soul of things and in the seeking fed itself upon the problems of the world, a diet which too much prolonged might lead to mental indigestion. Morbid—was he? Introspective? A "grouch"? He was—he must be—all of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... they were about ten times worse in appearance than the court-martial I had previously encountered. Four of the men I did not know, but the fifth I recognized at once, having often seen his portrait. He is Admiral Sir John Pendergest, popularly known in the service as 'Old Grouch,' a blue terror who knows absolutely nothing of mercy. The lads in the service say he looks so disagreeable because he is sorry he wasn't born a hanging judge. Picture a face as cleanly cut as that ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... that means somethin'," he asserted, gropingly, "but what it means, blamed if I know! Newspapers never turn money down unless they're a'ready bought, or have got a grouch of their own.... Say!" he suddenly cried, as an inspiration struck him, "you ain't got anything agin the mill at Royal, or agin Skeelty, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... going to ask you to read that letter from Washington to-night," said Ernest, feebly, "but I feel that I need immediate rest. I'll go up in the morning to see Dick and if he still has his grouch with him, I'll bring him back ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... department. Every man there had liked and respected the competent young worker, Robinson. They all knew that he had been discharged largely because Joe Lathrop was jealous and somewhat afraid of him, and because Joe had had a bad headache and grouch. They resented the injustice. Their respect for their foreman dropped several degrees. Their interest in their work slackened. "What is the use," they thought, "to do our best when superior workmanship might get us thrown out of here instead ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... of it?" said Mr. Spike in my ear. "Nothin' but an old stone barn, where he can set all day nursin' a grouch and keepin' his daughter Anita—they do say he does—under lock and key for fear somebody's goin' to ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... the background of lights he could see the slender figure of the girl passing among the huge fishermen who towered like giants above her. Radiating energy wherever she went, criticizing some, commending others and joking away the early-morning grouch, she directed the movements of the constantly increasing stream of men who thronged the dock and despatched the boats one by one ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... Melissa flatly. "The worst grouch I've ever seen, Mr. Bingle, even if he is your own flesh and blood uncle. He's almost ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... more than you have to," advised one of the uniformed rookies, coming over to them after a few moments. "Shrimp is a terror and a grouch all the time. Sergeant Brimmer you'll find a real old soldier, and a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock

... his chair to fully face the lad, the grouch caustically inquired: "What 'n seven kinds of blue blazes do you think I want ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... pull off a deal like that is not worthy of the confidence of one of our sex. But, understand, I am not by any means damning the whole male sex, for I have met gentlemen who threw the lid of their grouch bag in the gutter and didn't care if they ever found it again. Those is the kind of parties that has my trust. Me grub, and I got money in the bank? Sure I do. I got to keep in training somehow, so if I did lose my inheritance I wouldn't ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... and almost losing her oar. But what cared they, yo, ho? Sometimes the boat seemed to be coming back to us, and then we could see Scout Harris sitting there with his knees together, looking fierce and terrible, like Billikins with a grouch. The rowing wasn't much of ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... "I visited him, but I didn't find out much. He's a regular old grouch. He isn't the least bit neighborly. It took me a long time to find him. He has more holes than anybody I ever knew, and I couldn't tell which one is his home. When I did find him, he gave me a terrible scare. I didn't see him until I was right on top of him, ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... short, was accumulating, drop by drop, a masculine grouch. A grouch deeper than he realized, till ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... the sourest man in all o' Comp'ny G; You could sing and tell stories the whole night long, but never a cuss gave he. You could feed him turkey at Christmastime—and Tony the cook's no slouch— But Jim wouldn't join in "Three cheers for the cook!" Gosh, but he had a grouch! ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... had wicked, little greenish-grey eyes, and their stare was uninviting as he fixed them on his quondam partner. "If you want to grouch, go ahead and grouch! We've been pretty good friends for a pretty good number of years, but I ain't a fool. Sure, it's mine now! I didn't ask you to employ Grenville, did I? I was satisfied to take any old piece of paper with your fist on it, saying you'd sold out to ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... hungry, but not for bacon. Alas! Our hunger was the healthier one! We talked of New York. "Mother's in Paris," he volunteered, "and Dad's in New York meeting her bills. But the Old Man's got a grouch at me, and so he sent me 'way out here in this God-forsaken country! Say, what did they make this country for? Got any tailor-made cigarettes about you? How did Broadway look when you were there last? Lights all there yet at night? I've been here two years—it ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... "No, don't grouch," laughed the captain. "We are losing too much time as it is. Better roll in your blankets and go to sleep. The fire will drive ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin

... it himself, and he used to consider that the natural form of companionship. He must be getting queer like all other hermits he had ever heard of. It occurred to him that possibly Marion Rose was not really feather-brained, but that the trouble was in himself, because he was getting a chronic grouch. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... down with a full-grown grouch upon him—that was plainly to be seen. But when he had taken in a great draught of the sweet odor of the flowers, and found his niece with her lips puckered, and standing on tiptoe to kiss him on his unshaven cheek, he somehow forgot ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... inside out. You overwork and shirk exercise, and let your temper run away with you, and smoke strong cigars on an empty stomach; and when you get indigestion as a natural result you look on yourself as a martyr, nourish a perpetual grouch, and make the lives of everybody you meet miserable. If you would put yourself into my hands for a month I would have you eating bricks and thriving on them. Up in the morning, Larsen Exercises, cold bath, ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... proves that he was here then. He may be a hundred miles off by this time. Still, it won't do a bit of harm to keep our eyes peeled and make sure that our guns are in good working order. He's probably got a perpetual grouch, and he might be peevish if he should turn up and find us ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... matter with you lately, Mark?" remonstrated McTeague. "You've got a grouch about something. Is there anything ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... cheroots while I listened. "He ain't been in a civilized town like this since I've knowed him. For a l'arned chap, and a New Englander, he seems to have lost all curiosity, and, I reckon, he's got a grouch ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... are extravagant. I have preferences, even if I CAN'T afford them. If you were a tippler instead of a plain grouch I could tell you precisely how you'd act and what you'd talk about as the evening goes on. First you'd be gallant and attentive; then you'd forget me and talk business with Mr. Wharton—he's nearest you. About that time ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... my kitchen table, as on any part of the house. If I find later that the winning plans include these things I shall believe that Henry Anderson is a mind reader, or that lost plans naturally gravitate to him. But there is no use to grouch further. I seem to be born a loser. Anyway, I haven't lost you and I still ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... the reason given was that life on the farm was "too slow, too lonely, and no fun." In country neighborhoods family life means more than it does in the city. The members of a family are at each other's mercy; and so, if the "father" always has a grouch, and the "mother" is worried, and tired, and cross, small wonder that the children try to get away. In the city there is always the "movie" to go to, and congenial companionship down the street, and so we mourn the ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... beggar. This may have been my fault; but after you've sat around in offices and corridors and been scowled at as an intruder for three or four hours and then been greeted with a surly "What do you want?" you can't help having a grouch. There wasn't a man who treated my offer as ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... the rule that no successful play should be performed more than once, they decreed that 'revivals' of Aeschylus should always be in order. And Aristophanes testifies to his lasting popularity—when he shows little Tomides with a bad grouch over seeing a play by Theognis, when he had gone to the theater "expecting Aeschylus";—and when he shows Aeschylus and Euripides winning, because his poetry had died with him, and so he had it there for a weapon—whereas Aeschylus's was still ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... man's opinion for the tendency to "grouch" that always appears in veterans who know best how to fight. Men like this were "fed up" on the war, of which they never saw anything but the glimpse of their own sector. The war was over now, and between the armistice and getting home many such men had ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... this production is an experiment, a novelty? We shall but show Macbeth as it might have been costumed at the court of King James. In the clothes of the day, but gaudier, as was then the stage fashion. Hold, dove, I've somewhat for thee." He fumbled his grouch bag from under his doublet and dipped finger and thumb in it, and put in my palm a silver model of the Empire State Building, charm bracelet size, and one ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... was going up the elevator he sighed and said: "It takes all kinds of people to make up a world—Mr. Hummockstone is wan of the t'others. He has a grouch agin the universe. Sure but he's been housin' a gnawin' serpent. How ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... Johnny lost his grouch so suddenly and beamed upon his friends with such a superior air that they began to worry about what was in the wind. The suspense wore on them, for with Hopalong's assistance, Johnny might spring some game on them all that would more than pay up for the fun they had ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... had watched the price of porterhouse steak climb the ladder of fame, was deep in the throes of an unusually bad grouch when a would-be customer, eight years old, approached him and ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... lived with me, there was only one who did not care for the game. He refused steadfastly to play, and, having learned the penalty of alighting below the line, very carefully avoided the unsafe territory. That fly was a sullen, disgruntled creature. As the convicts would say, it had a "grouch" against the world. He never played with the other flies either. He was strong and healthy, too; for I studied him long to find out. His indisposition for play was ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... Harrington. No one cared whether he had a grouch or not. For Harrington was a new boy who had as yet failed to "fit in." He was emphatically not an athlete. But he was not a "sissy" either. He was quite as emphatically not a student nor a literary light; but he was as quick as a jack rabbit in his physics "lab" work and not to be scorned as a guesser ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... He was here on Friday.... Somehow I feel uneasy.... He has a way of smiling too brilliantly.... I suppose, after these experiences I'll remain a suspicious grouch all my life—but his papers were in order... I don't know just why I don't care for that type of man.... You're bound for somewhere or other via Mount Terrible, ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... your wood-carving, while you stuck around by your lonesome and watched him—eh?" Danglar's tones were jocularly facetious. "Don't grouch, Skeeny! We're not killing for fun—it doesn't pay. Supposing anything had broken wrong up the Avenue—eh? We wouldn't have had our friend the Sparrow there for the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... happened wanst in me cousin Terence's fam'ly. They was livin' down near Healey's slough in wan iv thim ol' Doherty's houses,—not Doherty that ye know, th' j'iner, a good man whin he don't dhrink. No, 'twas an ol' grouch iv a man be th' name iv Malachi Doherty that used to keep five-day notices in his thrunk, an' ownded his own privit justice iv th' peace. Me cousin Terence was as dacint a man as iver shoed a hor-rse; an his wife was a good woman, too, ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... irascibility broke out among them. They were good-natured enough while the girls were about, but over their work and during their leisure, they developed what Honey described as every kind of blue-bean, sourball, katzenjammer and grouch. They fought heroically against it—and their method of fighting took various forms, according to the nature of the four men. Frank Merrill lost himself in his books. Pete Murphy began the score of an opera vaguely heroic in theme; he wrote ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... been hearing that some of those cheap suckers from down State have been sneaking around this district. But I've never insulted you by believing you took any stock in that kind of cattle. We're neighbors here together. What's the matter with me? Out with your real grouch!" ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... a failure of the outfit that I'd have to let it go for a comic song. He got gay and I fired him. He tried to manhandle me and I plugged him. And now I am going to run my own outfit! What have you got to say about it, you grumbling old grouch with the crooked face! Put up or ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... is part and parcel of the Thoracic's makeup. But did you ever see a fiery-natured man who didn't have lots of warm friends! It is the grouch—in whom the fire starts slowly and smoulders indefinitely—that nobody likes. But the man who flares up, flames for a moment and is calm the next never lacks ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... airily, jumping into the seat beside him. "Though what has given you a grouch I really am at a loss to imagine!" ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... to mellow his own discomfiture at Maria Theresa's coldness with numerous visits to the grill. The result was a morning "grouch," an afternoon headache, and a twilight bitterness which kept him ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... from the Boss was like this: Her father, the old brigand pantanta, couldn't get over the way we'd bansheed his bunch of third rate kidnappers with our tin armor play. He accumulated a sort of ingrowin' grouch and soured on the whole push because they wouldn't turn state's evidence as to who had given us the dope ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... mentioned was a lady whom I never spoke to—it is strictly against rules for a prisoner to speak with a visitor—and never knowingly saw, though I understand she was wont to sit on the stage during the Sunday exercises. She is thus quoted: "Julian Hawthorne is nothing more than an old grouch. A short time ago this old man told me himself that he was getting plenty to eat and had no complaint to make of his own or anybody else's treatment in the prison.... When he says such things as he is reported to have said, he should be made to prove them, or keep his mouth shut." ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... perversity; obstinacy &c. 606; torvity|, spinosity[obs3]; crabbedness &c. adj. ill temper, bad temper, ill humor, bad humor; sulks, dudgeon, mumps[obs3], dumps, doldrums, fit of the sulks, bouderie[Fr], black looks, scowl; grouch; huff &c. (resentment) 900. V. be sullen &c. adj.; sulk; frown, scowl, lower, glower, gloam[obs3], pout, have a hangdog look, glout[obs3]. Adj. sullen, sulky; ill-tempered, ill-humored, ill-affected, ill- disposed; grouty [obs3][U. S.]; in an ill temper, in a bad temper, in a shocking temper, in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... card on his desk that says, "Do it Now," and so he lays down his book with a patient sigh, and comes back to it with a patent grouch. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... hair was long, And graying and long was he; And I heard this grouch on the shore avouch, In ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

... an interesting moment. There'll be things doing before the evening is over. I've had an anxious caller here five times already to- day. I've been standing in the barber-shop opposite getting a line on him. His card name is Grouch, his real ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... with him in the morning about 11:30. On going over to my other man's store I found that he was still in bed. Pretty soon he came in with his before-breakfast grouch. It was afternoon before I got him over to my sample room. Meantime I had gone to sell another man and sold him a bunch of children's and misses' goods—such stuff as a clothing house has no ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson

... sitting down there in the punt. The river's silver. Come down for a while," he implored. "All evening I've been as lonely as a leper. Ever since you motored off with Kenny, Don's been a grouch. Can't you climb down ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... being to identify me. Those I passed—there were people out of course, late as it was—saw my headlights as I went by. But I was moving fast, Jerry. I was working off a grouch; I ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... breathing. But not all investigators have got these results; and, anyway, it would be impossible to generalize to the extent of asserting that slow heart beat always gave a pleasant state of feeling, and rapid heart beat an unpleasant; for there is slow heart beat during a "morning grouch", and rapid during joyful expectation. Or, in regard to breathing, try this experiment: hasten your breathing and see whether a feeling of pleasantness results; slacken it and see whether unpleasantness results. The fact is that pleasantness ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... has sort of a grouch on me," laughed George. "Nothing much. That's our house just beyond grandfather's." He waved a sealskin gauntlet to indicate the house Major Amberson had built for Isabel as a wedding gift. "It's almost the same as grandfather's, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... the Far East, too—even the one little corner of it that we've seen," retorted Sergeant Hal. "Don't be a grouch or a knocker, Noll. Own up that you wouldn't start for the United States to-morrow if you were offered double pay back ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock

... silk purse out of a pig's ear. Thad's an incurable grouch," at which Skeets laughed till she shook, and ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... it was more than they had expected of an "old grouch." George Allan and Danny Kelly, from out their superior wisdom in dog affairs, agreed that while improbable, it had never been impossible for a freighter to develop into a racer under favorable conditions. While most gratifying ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... "Well, parson, what's the grouch? Are you the devil or an angel sent to bring retribution?" He ended with a silly laugh that told the experienced ear of the young lawyer that the young man had been drinking heavily. And this was the man whose name was signed as Rev. Theodore Brooks, D.D., on the tawdry ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... is well-nigh impossible to preserve one's dignity when suffering a reprimand in public; but when you are handicapped by a shabby bath-robe, a three days' growth of beard, and a grouch that gives you the expression of a bandit, and the public happens to be the one being on earth whom you are most anxious to please, the ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... no more, and the pictures began again, but her mind was not following them. She was very quiet on the way home, and when Jimmie asked her if she had a grouch on she shivered and said, no, she guessed she was tired. Then she suddenly asked him what time he was going out to hunt for another job. He told her he couldn't be sure. He would call her up about noon and let her know. Could she manage to get out a while and meet him? ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... spoke Griscom in a kindly tone, and then, edging nearer to his prime young favorite, he half-whispered: "Keep your eye on this grouch ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... camp and my only hope seemed to be to buy or borrow one somewhere. I asked the two or three fellows standing about the telegraph office where I might be likely to find one. No one seemed to know, but just then the old grouch—excuse me, person who keeps the ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... most anywheres," he reflected. "This here's a swell head with a grouch. I reckon he ain't a serious friend of hers, or she wouldn't have stood for me rescuin' her when he offered himself that generous." The recollection convulsed him, and he bowed his head over the pony's neck to hide the laugh. When he looked ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... the sentimental Jacklondon idea, that no wild animal should be made to work on the stage or in the show-ring, as illogical and absurd. Human beings who sanely work are much happier per capita than those who do nothing but loaf and grouch. I have worked, horse-hard, throughout all the adult years of my life; and it has been good for me. I know that it is no more wrong or wicked for a horse to work for his living,—of course on a humane basis,—either ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... right—yes, sir," replied Merton Gill, though but half respectfully. The "Oh, all right" had been tainted with a trace of sullenness. He was tired of this continual nagging and fussing over small matters; some day he would tell the old grouch so. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... well-nigh impossible to preserve one's dignity when suffering a reprimand in public; but when you are handicapped by a shabby bath-robe, a three days' growth of beard, and a grouch that gives you the expression of a bandit, and the public happens to be the one being on earth whom you are most anxious to please, the situation ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... any rate, a sudden irascibility broke out among them. They were good-natured enough while the girls were about, but over their work and during their leisure, they developed what Honey described as every kind of blue-bean, sourball, katzenjammer and grouch. They fought heroically against it—and their method of fighting took various forms, according to the nature of the four men. Frank Merrill lost himself in his books. Pete Murphy began the score of an opera vaguely heroic in theme; he wrote every spare moment. Billy ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... Watching practice had brought back the smart, and being liked or disliked seemed a little thing beside the bigger trouble. Still, he thought, if Roy was right perhaps he had better meet fellows half-way. There was no use in being a grouch. As a starter and in order to test the accuracy of Roy's statement, he decided that he would drop in on Carl Bennett, who roomed in Number 3. Bennett was a chap he rather respected and, while they had never been very close friends, Tom had seen a good deal of the other during the Fall. But ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... willing to take my money for a meal. And I came away all up in the air. There was something about you—the tone of your voice, the way your proud little head is set on your shoulders, your make-up in general—that sent me away with a large-sized grouch at myself, at Cariboo Meadows, and at you ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... you used to be when you were a youngster. The girls, I know, are all ready to be friends, bless their dear little hearts. As for the boys, I'll venture to say we can patch up a treaty of peace with them. If you will promise to be a little less free with that stick and not get a grouch on you every time a boy looks your way, they will promise to play no more tricks. If they don't promise, I'll give every mother's son of them Hail Columbia when I come this way again," and by his looks, the boys knew he meant what he said. They were conscious that Ben was standing ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard

... forget," Sol replied. "Klein'll be glad to hear it. You know, Mawruss, Klein ain't such a grouch as most people think he is. In fact, taking him all around, Klein ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... and my only hope seemed to be to buy or borrow one somewhere. I asked the two or three fellows standing about the telegraph office where I might be likely to find one. No one seemed to know, but just then the old grouch—excuse me, person who keeps the hardware ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... to be found in the person of a nondescript elderly man who received a dollar a day from the town funds to act as jailer when the lockup was in use. His name was Moody, his chief characteristic the determined grouch he had cherished since the ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... were about ten times worse in appearance than the court-martial I had previously encountered. Four of the men I did not know, but the fifth I recognized at once, having often seen his portrait. He is Admiral Sir John Pendergest, popularly known in the service as 'Old Grouch,' a blue terror who knows absolutely nothing of mercy. The lads in the service say he looks so disagreeable because he is sorry he wasn't born a hanging judge. Picture a face as cleanly cut as that of some severe old Roman Senator; a face as ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... with you lately, Mark?" remonstrated McTeague. "You've got a grouch about something. Is there ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... wasn't of a pretty decent sort? Did you ever know of a man who loved pie—who'd go out of his way to get pie—that didn't have a heart in him bigger than a pumpkin? I guess you didn't. If a man's got a good stomach he isn't a grouch, and he won't stick a knife into your back; but if he eats from habit—or necessity—he isn't a beautiful character in the eyes of nature, and there's pretty sure to be a cog loose somewhere in his makeup. I'm a grub-scientist, David. I warn you of that before ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... she could go to sleep and forget them both, and the trains and the cars and the man in the park and Miss Stein, who still had against her a "grouch." If only she could forget even big, blundering Ursus, who wanted to treat her to oyster stews that he couldn't afford and take her to a dance hall next Sunday! And Sadie, too, who knew such strange and awful things about ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... we had yesterday, excepting the unpleasant feeling that I made rather a donkey of myself last evening. My only excuse, and a mighty poor one, is that I was rather played out and developed a silly grouch. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... Life must have gone hard with her. She's probably got a grouch, as the American boys over here say. We must try and do something to soften her down, and make her see things through rosier spectacles, if she and her brother join on to our party for ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... SHAW, G. Bernard, grouch, truth teller. An English writer who made money by being honest enough to tell people what they knew. S.'s enemies claim he would have to work should his theories be put into practice. Believes in socialism and wants everything. Author of considerable ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous

... Mendelson," I answered, "it's about time you cast off your grouch. Look! The sky is so beautiful, the mountains so majestic. Cheer up, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... more than usual, and barely polite to Miss West and me when we chance to address him. His replies are grunted in monosyllables, and his face is set in superlative sourness. Miss West who is unaware of the occurrence, laughs and calls it a "sea grouch"—a phenomenon with which she claims ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... king or two. As for money! Say, boys, there are ways and ways of earning it, and ways and ways of spending it! The fellow who knows all about that side of her is the barber Cupido. He imagines he's an artist, because he plays the guitar; and besides he has a Republican grouch, and was a great admirer of her father's. He's the only one in town who followed all she was up to, in the papers. They say she doesn't sing under her own name, but uses some prettier sounding one—foreign, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... my head pityingly. "Go and apologize and make friends again, Terry. You've got a grouch, that's all. These women have the virtue of humanity, with less of its faults than any folks I ever saw. As for patience—they'd have pitched us over the cliffs the first day we lit among 'em, if they ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... himself or not, the sober Bud Moore who lay on his bunk nursing a headache and a grouch against the world was ashamed of the drunken Bud Moore who had paraded his drunkenness before the man who knew Marie. He did not want Marie to hear what Joe might tell There was no use, he told himself miserably, in making Marie despise him as well as hate ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... "A-roo-rie Isi-deen-ie") "but your pa had different notions. Said he'd suffered torment all his days being called Manx Cat and he was going to get even with folks for once; though I can't see how naming innocent children such names would help him any in his grouch against the world." ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... "Mr. Grouch, I'm sorry indeed that I can't vote for you, and I'd like to be able to wish you success, but of course you know I'm on the other side and always have been and ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... going out of it entirely, completely, and I really have been out of politics ever since I left California. I have tried to take a broad non-partisan view of things which is one of the reasons I have had hard sledding. But I am going without a grouch, without a complaint or a criticism—with a great admiration for Wilson and with a thorough knowledge of his defects; and with a more sympathetic attitude toward my colleagues than any can have who do not know the circumstances as well as ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... on the Armour nerves—just a little. Armour was always on friendly terms with his competitors. As a matter of fact, he was on friendly terms with everybody—he had no grouch and never got in a grump. Socially he was irresistible. He got up close—invited confidence—made friends and held them. There was never a man he wouldn't speak to. He was above jealousy and beyond hate; yet, of course, when it came to a show-down, he might hit awfully hard and quick, but he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard









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