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More "Irascible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beginning of his administration of affairs at Vincennes did not put Hamilton into a good humor. He was overbearing and irascible at best, and under the irritation of small but exceedingly unpleasant experiences he made life well-nigh unendurable to those upon whom his dislike chanced to fall. Beverley quickly felt that it was going to be very difficult for him and Hamilton to get along agreeably. With Helm it was quite different; ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... blown up if you interrupt like this! How do you suppose I can learn with you chattering away all the time?" cried Clara, the irascible. She glared at Pixie, and Pixie glared at her, and went on glaring long after the other had settled to work, with an intentness which seemed mysteriously connected with the movement of a stubbly lead pencil. Presently she touched Kate softly, and there ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... had been little known, was from the South of France, and of Italian origin. He was a man full of enthusiasm, vehement, irascible, and impulsive. The day came when these qualities, tempered and refined, did good service to France, when he also proved himself one of those great men in history who are capable of supreme self-sacrifice. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... go back to Germany and to resume his studies was slow in coming. Indeed, he was at last obliged to admit to himself that a game of whist with the old major had more attractions than the latest scientific treatise. Not that he doted on the irascible veteran, but because he thus secured a fair partner whose dark eyes were beaming with mirth and intelligence, whose ever-springing fountain of happiness was so full that even in the solemnity of the game it found expression in little piquant ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... with the Spanish, off Cape Passaro (August, 1718), Matthews had commanded the Kent with credit; but with the exception of courage, he apparently failed to possess a single quality for independent command. Irascible, domineering to his subordinates, and insolent to all others he was brought in contact with, he was entirely devoid of judgment or discretion. Twenty years later, when he became better known, Walpole wrote of his 'brutal manners,' and Horace Mann nicknamed him 'Il Furibondo.' ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... irascible he was at times,—how he allowed his anger to master reason, and hoped it might pass away. Through the night the words were repeating themselves. What course should she pursue? Give up Tom? What if he did help destroy the tea; was it not a righteous protest against ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... forward. Rapt and prophetic, his plump hands clasped round the handle of his umbrella, his billycock hat a trifle askew, this irascible little man of the Voice, this impatient dreamer, this scolding Optimist, who has argued so rudely and dogmatically about economics and philosophy and decoration, and indeed about everything under the sun, who has been so hard on the botanist ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of Father Knickerbocker. The New Yorkers of to-day are accustomed, indeed, to laugh at Mr. Irving's fancy and to say that Knickerbocker belongs to a day long since past. Yet those who know tell us that the image of the amiable old gentleman, kindly but irascible, generous and yet frugal, loving his town and seeing little beyond it, may be held once and for all to typify the spirit of the place, without reference to any particular ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... an irascible temperament, he soon became as serious as a philosopher and as gentle as a lamb. His intelligence seemed to increase visibly. He discoursed like a man inspired, and said ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... no love to school or schoolmaster is little wonder. Perhaps Publius may be fortunate; but if his schoolmaster is of the ordinary type he will be an irascible loud-voiced person, who bawls and scolds and thrashes. It will be a common thing to find, as Seneca puts it, a man "in a violent passion teaching you that to be in a passion is wrong." The doctrine went that "he who ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... got excited, then he reasoned, approving or blaming his impulses; but in time primitive nature at last proved the stronger; the sensitive man always had the upper hand over the intellectual man. So he tried to discover what had induced this irascible mood, this craving to be moving without wanting anything, this desire to meet some one for the sake of differing from him, and at the same time this aversion for the people he might see and the things they ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... shore and gave a fatal order for the fleet to turn and head northward, a change which turned them straight towards cliffs and breakers. He then went to bed. Soon one of the military officers rushed to his cabin and begged him to come on deck as the ships were among breakers. Walker, who was an irascible man, resented the intrusion and remained in bed. A second time the officer appeared and said the fleet would be lost if the Admiral did not act. Why it was left for a military rather than a naval officer to rouse the Admiral ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... Hafner!" That cry which the news brought by Julien wrested from Montfanon was so dolorous that the young man did not think of laughing. He had thought it wiser to prepare his irascible friend, lest the Baron might make some allusion to the grand event during the course of the conversation, and that the other might ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... are now said to be irritable; but when Europeans first settled among them, they were not more irascible than their new neighbors. In their anger however, they differ very much from the whites. They are not talkative and boisterous as these are, but silent, sullen and revengeful. If an injury be done them, they never forget, they never forgive it. Nothing can ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... what Paul got—grace to bear these things. Without it we become cross, censorious and irascible. We get in the habit of sticking our thorns into other people's fingers. But God helping us, we place these annoyances in the category of the "all things that work together for good." We see how much shorter these thorns are ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... temper. So in The Merchant of Venice, I, ii, 143: "If he have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me." Cf. the term 'ill-conditioned,' still in use to describe an irascible or quarrelsome disposition. In l. 236 'condition' refers ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... sanguine and irascible in temper. He felt a tingling in his fingers, and an irresistible desire to apply them to the ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... rest of that afternoon over her music lesson. The music-master was an irascible little German, but Hester played with some taste, and was therefore not too ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... at Paris than the Turkish ambassador. He was generous and more gallant, paid his court with more address, and conformed more readily to French customs and manners. The Turk was irascible, austere, and irritable, while the Persian was fond of and well understood a joke. One day, however, he became red with anger, and it must be admitted not ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... assumed the attitude of a timid man who has just stepped on the tail of a strange and irascible dog, and is holding his legs so that the animal, if he can pull his tail out, can escape without biting either of them. He then held the bat up before his face as though ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... with "old Davis," as of course he was called, and it's my private belief that he would have broken his word if the indignation of one irrepressible young lady had not found vent in a hiss. That hiss, faint as it was, irritated the irascible gentleman, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... good talker, high-spirited and somewhat irascible, a man who admitted no one to his friendship whom he could not thoroughly respect, the friend of the poor, prescribing gratuitously to all who were needy, pre-eminent for sympathy, which for a time made him hate his profession for the constant ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... orders, coupled with threats, from their Major, fired a few harmless shots in the air, after which they returned to camp. There Herman Dodley prepared another telegraphic report for General Shafter, that aroused that irascible warrior to profanity, and resulted in the speedy transference of his offending aide to New Orleans ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... eyes—every smile which wreathed her lips, denoted the chaste purity of her soul. With all her readiness to oblige—with all her anxiety to do her duty as she ought, she frequently incurred the anger of the irascible Nisida; but Flora supported those manifestations of wrath with the sweetest resignation, because the excellence of her disposition taught her to make every allowance for one so deeply afflicted ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... the town loafers, all facing in towards the centre of the ring, and laughing and making jocular remarks to one another. Closer in still, came an excited circle of our friends who, like the old ladies, ought to have been living in the cottage, but were not. The irascible old gentleman was there, purple in the face and swearing frightfully; the solicitor was there, with a slightly anticipatory look in his face; the Strong Man was there, and looked as if he wanted to break something; and closer in than all ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... daybreak when I gave the alarm with bell and telephone. In a few minutes we had the house congested with dishevelled domestics, irascible doctors, and arbitrary minions of the law. If I told my story once, I told it a dozen times, and all on an empty stomach. But it was certainly a most plausible and consistent tale, even without that confirmation which none of the other victims was as yet sufficiently recovered to supply. ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... asked the third occupant of the office, Mr. Wheatcroft, a short, stout, irascible-looking man with a ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... that the lawyer's arguments were unanswerable, and that the only grounds that he himself had for his doubts were his affection for Frank, and the fixed, passionate belief of Alice Hardy in his innocence. That day Captain Bayley was exceptionally out of temper and irascible, for he had that morning received a letter from Mr. Griffith positively declining to draw up a clause for insertion in the will of the nature he desired, and saying that if Captain Bayley insisted upon its insertion, much as he should regret ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... fault which in some degree is to be found in French literature as a whole, and to a greater extent in all mediaeval literature—is that the class and the type are rather too prominent. The central conception of Charlemagne as a generally dignified but too frequently irascible and rather petulant monarch, surrounded by valiant and in a way faithful but exceedingly touchy or ticklish paladins, is no doubt true enough to the early stages of feudalism—in fact, to adapt the tag, there is too ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... employed on the farm of the chief magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill-luck would have it, the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was caught one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming him for life, on the brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of Lemnos. As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about it." "Did she die?" we inquired anxiously. There was a cun-ing twinkle in the old rogue's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Poland, though he ever retained a devoted attachment to Stanislaus. He for some time led a restless life about Europe—visiting Italy, Sicily, Malta, and the south of Spain; troubled with attacks of rheumatism, gout, and the effects of a "Hungarian fever." He had become more and more cynical and irascible, and had more than one "affair of honor," in one of which he killed his antagonist. His splenetic feelings, as well as his political sentiments, were occasionally vented in severe attacks upon the ministry, full of irony and sarcasm. They appeared in the public journals, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... sullenly placed upon a table such food as her cupboard could supply. Palafox emerged, mollified in temper, but still irascible. In his hand he held the long leathern pocket-book containing the alleged evidence of Wilkinson's complicity with the Spanish government. It was creased and dripping, and before eating he opened it, carefully took out ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... was a general shout from the crowd for O'Flaherty, and an irascible-looking man, with a red bloated face and bristling hair came ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Dwight Woolsey, and the other his classmate and friend, the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon, pastor of the great Center Church of New Haven, and frequently spoken of as the "Congregational Pope of New England.'' They were indeed a remarkable pair; Woolsey, quiet and scholarly, at times irascible, but always kind and just; Bacon a rugged, leonine sort of man who, when he shook his mane in the pulpit and addressed the New England conscience, was heard throughout the nation. These two, especially, braved public sentiment, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... very thin, and her neck too slender to uphold the heavy masses of her brown hair. Her hands were only less expressive of suffering than her face. The father was as bluff and portly and irascible as she was patient and gentle. He bullied the waiter because he did not know how else to express ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen were content to recognise him by merely touching their tarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea, without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance. Like some poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street, lest if they pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a summary ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... don't want to know what plausible arguments you may have to justify yourself. The fact remains, sir, that Wharfside is in my parish. If you have anything to say against that, I will listen to you," said the irascible Rector. His Welsh blood was up; he even raised his voice a little, with a kind of half-feminine excitement, common to the Celtic race; and the consequence was that Mr Wentworth, who stood perfectly calm to receive the storm, had all the advantage in ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... not a person who easily becomes confused, but I must own I did get confused with the large party into the midst of which we were now ushered. I soon made out Sir George Danvers, a delicate, but irascible-looking old gentleman, who received me with dignified cordiality, but returned Charles's greeting with a certain formality and coldness which I was pained to see, family affection being, in my opinion, the chief blessing of a truly happy home. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... 2: Just as human flesh has not of itself the good of virtue, but is made the instrument of a virtuous act, inasmuch as being moved by reason, we "yield our members to serve justice"; so also, the irascible and concupiscible powers, of themselves indeed, have not the good of virtue, but rather the infection of the fomes: whereas, inasmuch as they are in conformity with reason, the good of reason ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... portrait of Erasmus Darwin, Darwin's distinguished grandfather, shows a pituitocentric, but with a rounder head and a fatter face, which point to a predominance of the post-pituitary over the ante-pituitary. Correspondingly, he was more speculative and poetic intellectually than his grandson, and more irascible ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... impetuosity of his temper? The first step to reformation, as I conceive, is to subdue sudden gusts of passion, from which frequently the greatest evils arise, and to learn to bear disappointments. If the irascible passions cannot be overcome, what opinion can we have of the person's power over those to which bad habit, joined to greater temptation, gives ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... of Mr. Carter's was always bare and orderly, cleared for action, like the deck of a battle-ship, and over it many engagements had been fought, for the man behind it never shirked a conflict. His was a vigorous and irascible temperament, compounded of old-fashioned, slow-burning black powder and nitroglycerine—a combination of incalculable destructive power. It was a perilously unstable mixture, tool, at times nothing less than a flame served to ignite it; on other occasions the ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Fogy, whose letters aroused much curiosity and comment when they appeared from time to time in the columns of The Etude. I confess I do this rather unwillingly. When I attempted to assemble my memories of the eccentric and irascible musician I found that, despite his enormous volubility and surface-frankness, the old gentleman seldom allowed us more than a peep at his personality. His was the expansive temperament, or, to employ a modern phrase, the dynamic temperament. Antiquated as were his modes of thought, he would bewilder ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... whose lips Are coolness enchanting, rock-sourced. And much of the sacred loon, The frolic, the Goatfoot God, For stories of indolent noon In the pineforest's odorous nod, She questioned, not knowing: he can Be waspish, irascible, rude, He is oftener friendly to man, And ever to beasts and their brood. For the which did she love him well, She said, and his pipes of the reed, His twitched lips puffing to tell In music his tears and his need, Against the sharp ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... That was better; and the prosecution rubbed its hands with satisfaction. The satisfaction increased when various dependents living at Kerfol were induced to say—with apparent sincerity—that during the year or two preceding his death their master had once more grown uncertain and irascible, and subject to the fits of brooding silence which his household had learned to dread before his second marriage. This seemed to show that things had not been going well at Kerfol; though no one could be found to say that there had been any ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Silver was moving hurriedly toward the open front door, where appeared, at that moment, Mr. Atwater in his most irascible ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... and intriguer, that you have nothing in particular against his government, he might not be quite so angry. Pardon me if I say that he is not disposed to take your expedition any more seriously than is your own Federal government. The little Baron is irascible, choleric, stern, or else good-natured, good-hearted, and charitable, just as one happens to take him. As we say in France, it is not well to strike flint and steel in his presence. He might blow up and destroy one. Suppose ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... life precisely the same dispositions, or is at all times equally under the same influences or governed by the same motives. The gentle and amiable by nature may come into circumstances which shall induce unwonted irritability and ill-humor; the irascible and passionate, surrounded in some favored time, by all that heart can wish, may seem as lovely as though no evil tempers had ever deformed them; and the children who may be the offspring of these episodes in life, may bear indeed a character differing wholly from the usual character ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... remembered most clearly was the strange scene that followed: for, after the Magian had released his enemy, he bade him take the jar back to Silenus, and proceed on his way, like the ass, on all-fours. And the tall faun, a headstrong, irascible Lesbian, had actually obeyed the stately despot, and crept along on his hands and feet by the side of the donkey. No threats nor mockery of his companions could persuade him to rise. The high spirits of the boisterous crew were ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of brevity a part of the first scene has been excised. It subsequently appears that Lady Teazle abandons the society of the scandal-mongers, and she and her fond but somewhat irascible husband ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... other a dozen times or more, following mental lapses, and then gave it up. My ideas failed in consecutiveness, and when I did succeed in hitching two intelligent thoughts together he invariably destroyed the sequence by compelling me to repeat myself, with the result that I became irascible. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... gables of the old German town. The Prince of Trente et Quarante has quite overcome the old serene sovereign of Noirbourg, whom one cannot help fancying a prince like a prince in a Christmas pantomime—a burlesque prince with twopence-halfpenny for a revenue, jolly and irascible, a prime-minister-kicking prince, fed upon fabulous plum-puddings and enormous pasteboard joints, by cooks and valets with large heads which never alter their grin. Not that this portrait is from the life. Perhaps he has no life. Perhaps there is no prince in the ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... teacher, active and diligent herself, very fond of natural history and botany. She enjoyed long rambles, always calling our attention to what was interesting in the world around us. I hear that some of her pupils speak of her as irascible. I have no such remembrance. Fixed as ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... a flock of sheep wandering in search of their scant pasturage or huddling together, an agitated mass of grimy wool, its outskirts painfully exposed to the sharp but well-intentioned admonitions of a somewhat irascible collie. Neither man nor beast took special note of the overgrown boy striding so confidently on his way, nor was one observer more likely than the other to guess what inspiring thoughts were animating the roughly clad, uncouth form. The boy's clothes were shabby and travel-stained, and over his ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... career of licentiousness was not, however, my lot. An irascible countryman of yours, a lieutenant of the royal navy, who was introduced to me at a party, suddenly seemed to scowl at me with the visage of the demon, as we were in the heat of an argument, and I struck him in the face. A duel was the consequence, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... old Dr. Bellamy, of Connecticut, the celebrated Hopkinsian divine, who was called into court to testify concerning one of his parishioners, against whom it was sought to be proved that he was a very irascible, violent, and profane man; and as this man was, in regard to religion, what was called in those days "a great opposer," it was expected that the Doctor's testimony would be very convincing and overwhelming. "Well," said Bellamy, "Mr. X is ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... improve himself in gold-working, he went on foot to Rome, where he met with a variety of adventures. He returned to Florence with the reputation of being a most expert worker in the precious metals, and his skill was soon in great request. But being of an irascible temper, he was constantly getting into scrapes, and was frequently under the necessity of flying for his life. Thus he fled from Florence in the disguise of a friar, again taking refuge at Sienna, and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... integrity, and loyal Federalism, he was, in Hamilton's opinion, too suspicious, jealous of influence, and hot headed, to be a safe leader in approaching storms. With Pinckney as a brilliant and popular figurehead, Hamilton well knew that his own hand would remain on the helm. With the irascible old gentleman from Massachusetts in the Chair, his continued predominance was by no means certain. Washington once said of Hamilton that he undoubtedly was ambitious, but that his ambition was of that laudable kind which prompts a man to excel in whatever he takes ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... stood in the middle of the room. She had in her veins the irascible blood of the common people. Then a sense of shame, a mother's modesty, mingled with a vague sentiment of fear and the exasperation of a passionate woman whose love is threatened, and she shuddered, ready to ask for pardon, or to yield to ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... soundly enough in the comfortable bed, which my obese Gulnare had provided for me, until the numerous cocks of the establishment woke me shortly after daybreak with their crowing. Remembering that I had to secure Marcos in the stocks before the irascible little magistrate should appear on the scene, I rose and hastily dressed myself. I found the greasy man of the brass buttons already in the kitchen sipping his matutinal mate-amargo, and asked him to lend me the key of the prisoner's room; for this was what I had been instructed to do ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the master, with not unnatural indignation mingling with his amazement; and notwithstanding Coleridge's support of the application, the shoemaker was turned out of the place, and the would-be apprentice chosen, "against my will," he says, "as one of those destined for the university." The same irascible yet excellent master flogged the boy severely on hearing that he boasted of ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Dr and Mrs Trevor were pleased that the boy should be brought so much in contact with a man for whom their admiration and respect increased more and more with better acquaintance, for the General's faults were all on the surface, and behind the loud voice and irascible mien were hidden a child-like ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... don't like bees, nor do they like me. They respect only the deliberation of profound gravity and wisdom. Father has these qualities by the right of years, and Webb by nature, and their very presence soothes the irascible insects; but when I go among them they fairly bristle with stings. Give me a horse, and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... longed for a wider sphere of action; the world was all before him; he lamented that he should still be lingering on the mere outskirts of its business; that he should waste so much time and effort in contending with the irascible vanity of players, or watching the ebbs and flows of public taste; in resisting small grievances, and realising a small result. He determined upon leaving Mannheim. If destitute of other holds, his prudence might still have taught him to smother this unrest, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... mulish mule in the whole braying family was selected for the operation, and if we did not have some tall fun I will admit that I am no judge. A hog on ice or a bristling porcupine are bad enough, but an ugly mule outstrips them all. It seems as if the irascible animal tried to do his prettiest, flouncing around in a most laughable manner, pawing and kicking at times furiously. But the desperate Yankee teacher was not to be outwitted, and conquered him at last, when the pack was satisfactorily poised, and the ornamented ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... Brimstone.) An abandoned woman; perhaps originally only a passionate or irascible woman, compared to brimstone ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Recording Angel, with a smile that set us all agog, "one day, when he was a little irascible from over-eating, he—" ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... satirist, statesman, patriot—was a great man, and his death was deeply lamented by his countrymen: many monuments to his memory testify to this. In his duels he killed several of his antagonists and disabled the rest. By nature he was a little irascible. Once when the officials of the library of Bologna threw out his books the gentle poet went up there and challenged the whole fifteen! His parliamentary duties were exacting, but he proposed to keep coming up and fighting duels between ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... wise-heads, it was agreed that Dr. Holtum and Fred, with the captain and mate of the Norna, should go over to Boden next day and interview Mr. Adiesen. I need not describe what they meant to say, or how they hoped to mollify the irascible old man, for their intention was never carried out. In crossing the sound they spied Yaspard gesticulating wildly from ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... of great beauty, from Bengal, being extremely docile on her passage home from Calcutta, was allowed to run about the vessel, and became exceedingly familiar with the sailors. On her arrival in the Thames, however, her temper became very irascible, and even dangerous. She was placed in the Tower, where she for some time continued to exhibit a sulky and savage disposition. One day, the person who had charge of her on board the ship, visited the Tower, and begged permission of the keeper to be allowed to ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... have the charge of youth the crime it is to permit such defects to be the subject of remark. Girard also early lost his mother, an event which soon brought him under the sway of a step-mother. Doubtless he was a wilful, arbitrary, and irascible boy, since we know that he was a wilful, arbitrary, and irascible man. Before he was fourteen, having chosen the profession of his father, he left home, with his father's consent, and went to sea in the capacity of cabin-boy. He used to boast, late ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... creature; and was so in many senses. Yet the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever remain noteworthy. The foolish conceited Scotch Laird, the most conceited man of his time, approaching in such awestruck attitude the great dusty irascible Pedagogue in his mean garret there: it is a genuine reverence for Excellence; a worship for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes nor worship were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem exist always, and a certain ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... talk to those who have lived a life of crime. Explanations they would never permit, though they made it abundantly clear to him that he was the rummiest burglar they had ever set eyes on. They said as much again and again. The fair man was of a taciturn disposition and irascible at play; but Mr. Bingham, now that the evident anxiety of his departure from England was assuaged, displayed a vein of genial philosophy. He enlarged upon the mystery of space and time, and quoted Kant and Hegel—or, at least, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... gallant captain, Old Touchwood here interposed, and by dint of coaxing and threats of joining himself to the gay company at the Spring, the irascible Meg ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... friends and dependents, or in his senatorial capacity.—My townsman too, P. Pontidius, pleaded a number of private causes. He had a rapidity of expression, and a tolerable quickness of comprehension: but he was very warm, and indeed rather too choleric and irascible; so that he often wrangled not only with his antagonist, but (what appears very strange) with the judge himself, whom it was rather his business to sooth and gratify.—M. Messala, who was something younger than myself, was far ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... can do this as long as he is a slave; whilst he is a "chattel personal" he can own no property; but the time is to come when every man is to sit under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and no domineering driver, or irresponsible master, or irascible mistress, shall make him afraid of the chain or the whip. Hear, too, the sweet tones of another string: "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Slavery is an insurmountable barrier to the increase of knowledge in every community where it exists; slavery, then, ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... starch-like, and generally irritating. The patient becomes irascible, capricious, querulous, and sometimes moody and hysterical. She is easily discouraged, her appetite and digestion become impaired, and she grows thin and does not look or act as when ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... large-boned men possess greater energy, a more masculine character, but often less persistence, and are usually devoid of the more delicate emotions. Fat people are good-tempered, but indolent; thin people, full of life, but irascible. ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... no pleasing recollection of Moor Park. And we may easily suppose a situation like his to have been intolerably painful to a mind haughty, irascible, and conscious of pre- eminent ability. Long after, when he stood in the Court of Requests with a circle of gartered peers round him, or punned and rhymed with Cabinet Ministers over Secretary St. John's Monte- Pulciano, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... geraniums from a quaint, long-nosed copper pot, drilling Mr. Boffin, the poodle, in his manners, and, when the early dinner was out of the way, sitting in all simplicity with Jeanne at work upon my shirts—the only example of really democratic institutions that I ever saw in this irascible democracy. I should like to have seen Madam Bradley sewing with the cook and innocently gossiping over the ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... in his disorderly egoism, has said to the servant: "You shall not share with me," and robbed him at one stroke of labor and wages, where is the necessity, where the excuse? Will it be necessary further, in order to justify the CONCUPISCIBLE APPETITE, to fall back on the IRASCIBLE APPETITE? Take care: in drawing back in order to justify the human being in the series of his lusts, instead of saving his morality, you abandon it. For my part, I prefer the guilty man to the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... a very irascible little painter with a fair complexion. 'You surely don't want to make us swallow such a turnip ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... that fashionable weed they would be the most prosperous of peoples." A vulgar Scotchman suggested that Ireland would be all right if the Irish were "Scotched," and the Fenians all roasted on a gridiron. The irascible Irishman replied that a Scotchman was the incarnation of impudence—and hereupon a war of words ensued, until the officers' attention was attracted and brought it to an abrupt conclusion. The two head-centres appeared to be intelligent men, but very unlikely to raise the standard, or ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... with which a man is born and which has its origin in certain deep-seated affections is called a quality. I mean such conditions as insanity, irascibility, and so on: for people are said to be mad or irascible in virtue of these. Similarly those abnormal psychic states which are not inborn, but arise from the concomitance of certain other elements, and are difficult to remove, or altogether permanent, are called qualities, ...
— The Categories • Aristotle
... a curt announcement that he would have to think the matter over. If I had not known the essential justice and common sense under his dry and irascible exterior, I might have been alarmed. The lobbyist's concern was almost comic. As soon as we were out of hearing of the Senator's apartment, shaking both fists frantically at me, he cried: "You've ruined everything! We had him. We had him—all right—until you came down here ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... Consul. I understood that Frederick William was very much offended at this proceeding, which was as indecorous and absurd as the return of the Golden Fleece by Louis XVII. to the King of Spain was dignified and proper. Gustavus Adolphus was brave, enterprising, and chivalrous, but inconsiderate and irascible. He called Bonaparte Monsieur Napoleon. His follies and reverses in Hanover were without doubt the cause of his abdication. On the 31st of October 1805 he published a declaration of war against France in language highly insulting to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... ages, from Dante's own age down to the times of Alfieri and Foscolo. It would be as difficult, from the evidence of his own works and of the exasperation he created, to doubt the extremest reports of his irascible temper, as it would be not to give implicit faith to his honesty. The charge of peculation which his enemies brought against this great poet, the world has universally scouted with an indignation that does it honour. He ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Pittsylvania County, Va., about the year 1780. He was the eighth child of his parents, and, together with all his brothers and sisters, was stout and healthy. At the time of observation Waller was about fifty years of age. He had dark hair, gray eyes, dark complexion, was of bilious and irascible temperament, well formed, muscular and strong, and in all respects healthy as any man, with the single exception of his peculiar idiosyncrasy. He had been the subject of but few diseases, although he was attacked by the epidemic of 1816. From the history of his parents and an inquiry ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... intimacy. So far, too, I am pleased with Montmorin. His honesty proceeds from the heart as well as the head, and therefore may be more surely counted on. The King loves business, economy, order, and justice, and wishes sincerely the good of his people; but he is irascible, rude, very limited in his understanding, and religious, bordering on bigotry. He has no mistress, loves his queen, and is too much governed by her. She is capricious like her brother, and governed by him; devoted to pleasure and expense; and not ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... own, regarding her also with that gentle compassion which the strong and bold delight to show to the weak. He often called her "his faithful little friend;" and truly she stood his friend in every conceivable way, by soothing Sara's only parent—a most irascible papa—to consent to the engagement, and also by lecturing the gay and coquettish Sara herself into as much good behaviour as could be expected from an affianced damsel ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... scrambled to his short legs and charged furiously. Haphazard charges Buto, the rhinoceros. With his weak eyes he sees but poorly even at short distances, and whether his erratic rushes are due to the panic of fear as he attempts to escape, or to the irascible temper with which he is generally credited, it is difficult to determine. Nor is the matter of little moment to one whom Buto charges, for if he be caught and tossed, the chances are that naught will ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... can't put me in jail again. I don't belong to you now." It was well that the wind carried the words away from the doctor's ear. I told my grandmother of it, when we had our next conference at the trap-door, and begged of her not to allow the children to be impertinent to the irascible old man. ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... by the minor calamity of pecuniary embarrassment, I inevitably contracted a few weeks arrears of rent to the rigid occupant of the house wherein I held my humble apartment, when, returned one night to my cheerless domicil, my irascible landlord, in the plenitude of ignorance and malevolence, gave me in charge of a sapient guardian of the night, who, without any enquiry into the nature of my offence, conducted me to the watch-house, where I was ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... daughter of the earl of Sandwich, and Lord Houghton says of her: "She was an instance in which aristocracy gave of its best and showed at its best, although she may have owed little to the qualities she inherited from an irascible race and to an unaffectionate education"—a sentence reminding us of a remark in the London Times, that "with certain noble houses people are apt to associate certain qualities—with the Berkeleys, for instance, a series of disgraceful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... go out, whoever you are—and shut the door!" There was no hospitality in the irascible greeting of the manor's lord, and the face he half-turned to inspect the stranger was devoid of welcome. It was mirthless from its deep eyes to the lips and chin that were hidden in a patriarchal spread ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... advantages of this poor boy—his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery atmosphere—had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, repellant cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... I came to know as Her Britannic Majesty's minister in Peking, was the soul of honour, as upright as any man who walked the earth. But with all his rectitude, he, like the Viceroy Yeh, was irascible and unyielding. When the viceroy refused his demand for the rendition of the Arrow and her crew, he menaced him with the weight of the lion's paw. Alarmed, but not cowed, the viceroy sent the prisoners ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... untried or unaccomplished. Are they not all stamped on the memory of them that go down to the sea in yachts? The little card-box and the scoring-book of the players, the deck chair and rugs of the inveterate reader, the hurried tread and irascible eye of the carnivorous passenger, and the everlasting pipe of the ocean talker, who feels time before him and the world at his feet wherein to spin yarns—has ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... blunt manners struck the old lady's fancy, and she proposed to take her for a companion. This did not suit Jo at all, but she accepted the place since nothing better appeared and, to every one's surprise, got on remarkably well with her irascible relative. There was an occasional tempest, and once Jo marched home, declaring she couldn't bear it longer, but Aunt March always cleared up quickly, and sent for her to come back again with such urgency that she could not ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... command of an irascible old plainsman who had served out his apprenticeship in the Kansas border war, and whose name was Charity Joe, which, considering his avaricious disposition, was the wrong handle on the wrong man. Charity was ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... had a number of Alis. Mahomet was a regular Cairo dragoman, a native of Dongola, almost black, but exceedingly tenacious regarding his shade of colour, which he declared to be light brown. He spoke very bad English, was excessively conceited, and irascible to a degree. No pasha was so bumptious or overbearing to his inferiors, but to me and to his mistress while in Cairo he had the gentleness of the dove, and I had engaged him at 5l. per month to accompany ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... resolution she had formed was full of pain. Yet painful, even terrible in its demand for action, it did not waver, but shone like a star behind the dark and heavy clouds. In Margery Pendyce (who had been a Totteridge) there was no irascible and acrid "people's blood," no fierce misgivings, no ill-digested beer and cider—it was pure claret in her veins—she had nothing thick and angry in her soul to help her; that which she had resolved she must carry out, by virtue of a thin, fine flame, breathing far down in her—so ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... passed since Steve refused to burden himself longer with Sarah Maria's care and education. As a matter of course he saw that the irascible lady was still retained about the place, but he felt that to be no concern of his so long as their orbits did not cross, and so far Sarah Maria seemed to appreciate his indifference ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... notable man in his day on that pioneer railroad. He was a bony, irascible man, fiery of face, with a high hook nose that had been smashed to one side in some battle when he was construction foreman in his days of lowly beginning. He wore a pistol strapped around his long ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... and muscular, and thus far, each was the exact counterpart of the other, but here the resemblance between the brothers ended. In temper and disposition, Henry was mild, generous and forgiving, whilst Arthur was sanguine, violent and irascible. Although they had both been educated alike, they differed very widely in strength of mind and capacity of intellect, for the mind of Henry was strong, and undeviatingly based on the principles of right, while that of his brother was weak and vacillating. The affections of the former when once ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... all we could do was to imitate his example. I was not sorry, however, when the mulatto mate intimated to us that we were to get into the boat and go on shore, as I thought that we should then probably be more out of the way of our irascible-looking friends. We were ordered into one boat with Mr Gale, while the captain was carried away in another. This seriously excited our apprehension, as we could not tell what evil might be intended him. He, however, though very grave, seemed to be under no apprehension, but stepped into the boat ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... filled with guests, who more or less preserved the decorum which etiquette demands in the presence of royalty, (the Duke of Sussex was of the party,) Charles Fox and Lady Anson, great-grandmother of the present Lord Lichfield, happened to be playing at chess. When the irascible dominie beheld them he pushed his way through the bystanders, swept the pieces from the board, and, with rigorous impartiality, denounced these impious desecrators of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... a most extraordinary thing—the result of the young author's telling and most sarcastic portrait of the irascible little judge. It is curious that Forster, while enumerating various instances of Boz's severe treatment of living persons, as a sort of chastisement for their defects of manner or character, seems not to ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... Investigate esplori. Inveterate enradikita. Invigorate vivigi. Invincible nevenkebla. Invisible nevidebla. Invitation invito. Invite inviti. Invoice fakturo. Invoke alvoki. Involuntary senvola. Iodine jodo. Irascible ekkolerema. Ire kolero. Iris (anat.) iriso. Iris (bot.) irido. Irishman Irlandano. Irksome peniga, enuiga. Iron fero. Iron (linen, etc.) gladi. Iron, an gladilo. Ironer (fem.) gladistino. Ironmonger patvendisto. Irony ironio. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... them, and it was to be seen on nearly every page of every book that was published. But all that is changed. To speak or print the name of God is reckoned "bad form." The word is almost tabooed in decent society. You hear it in the streets, however, when the irascible carman calls on God to damn your eyes for getting in his way. There is such a conspiracy of silence about the Great Ghost, except in churches and chapels, that the mention of his name in polite circles sounds like swearing. Eyebrows are lifted, and the speaker is looked ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... they obtained a minister in the person of Magister Jacobus Fabritius who served the congregation in New York and also one in Albany. The new pastor sorely tried the patience of a longsuffering people. In church he manifested a dictatorial and irascible temper. At home he was constantly quarreling with his wife. These eccentricities interfered somewhat with his usefulness as a pastor. With increasing difficulty he administered his office until 1671 when ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... the decline to their dwelling. Gordon supported Lettice to their room; then he stood on the porch without, waiting. The rugged horse, still hitched, snatched with coarse, yellow teeth at the grass. Suddenly Mrs. Caley appeared at a door: she spoke, breaking the irascible silence of months, dispelling the accumulating ill-will of her pent resentment, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... transverse, intersecting; adverse, baffling, contrary, perverse; petulant, peevish, cynical, surly, unamiable, inaffable, crabbed, crusty, captious, fractious, churlish, vixenish, querulous, fretful, choleric, touchy, waspish, morose, sullen, ill-natured, irascible ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... boon; accordingly his wife Anasuya gave birth to three sons, of whom the first was the Moon, an incarnation of Brahma, the second Dattatreya, an incarnation of Vishnu, and the third the holy but irascible saint Durvasas, representing Siva. Dattatreya dwelt in a hermitage in the Dekkan: he indulged in marriage and wine-drinking, which however were not detrimental to his miraculous sanctity and wisdom, and he became famous as a benefactor ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... daughter has nothing in mind or person in common with her family. Where they are irascible, she is patient; where they are imperious, she is humble; where they are covetous, she is liberal; where they are ignorant and indolent, she is studious and skilful. It is rare, indeed, to find a young lady more amiable ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... features, of a sullen and almost savage cast. His figure was gaunt but very muscular, his arms being extremely long and his hands unusually large and bony—personal advantages which made him a formidable antagonist in any rustic encounter, and in such he was frequently engaged, being of a very irascible temper, and turbulent disposition. He was clad in a holiday suit of dark-green serge, which fitted him well, and carried a nosegay in one hand, and a stout blackthorn cudgel in the other. This young man was James Device, son of Elizabeth, and some four ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Hect. Not Neoptolemus so mirable] [W: Neoptolemus's sire irascible] After all this contention it is difficult to imagine that the critic believes mirable to have been changed to irascible. I ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Of course you must! Don't I know that?' the irascible Peterkin growled, getting angry at once. 'Of course you must answer questions, but you needn't blab out stuff they don't ask you, so as to lead 'em on. I know 'em, the blood-hounds; they'll squeeze you dry, once let 'em git an inklin' you know sunthin' more. Now, if this goes agin me, I'm out ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... start with," Lindsay answered, with an irascible air, as if he intended to take this time to finish the young man's case, "that I am in the habit of consulting my attending physicians, and not ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... in my judgments! Mr. Dalton"—she stopped before the neat iron gate in the low fence, which he was holding open for her to pass through, and barring the way, said rapidly, "as we will have to work together in all that is done here, I may as well say at once—I am often quick, irascible, unkind. I want things to move at once, and when they don't it makes me cross. It isn't because I—I have money, though—you mustn't think it. I am not such a cad! It's just my nature, that's all. I can't help it, and it cuts me up when I come to ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... with a coldness that bordered upon incivility; irascible by nature and jealous by situation, the appearance of beauty alarmed, and of chearfulness disgusted her. She regarded with watchful suspicion whoever was addressed by her husband, and having marked his frequent attendance at the Deanery, ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... our route led to Mauleon (seventy-two kilometres) via Oloron, straight across Bearn, where the peasants are still of that picturesque mien which one so seldom sees out of the comic-opera chorus. One reads that the Bearnais are "irascible, ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... degree, Burke went to London and established himself at the Middle Temple for the usual routine course in law. Another long period passes of which there is next to nothing known. His father, an irascible, hot- tempered man, had wished him to begin the practice of law, but Burke seems to have continued in a rather irregular way pretty much as when an undergraduate at Dublin. His inclinations were not toward the law, but literature. His father, angered at such a turn of affairs, promptly reduced his ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... if I insisted, it's only because I'm very fond of our poor friend, noire irascible ami, and have always taken an interest in him.... In my opinion that man changed his former, possibly over-youthful but yet sound ideas, too abruptly. And now he says all sorts of things about notre Sainte Russie to such a degree that I've long explained this upheaval ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to these things only, but also to many other things; thus the name of a stone [lapis] is derived from injuring the foot [laesione pedis], though not this alone belongs to a stone. In the same way the irascible faculty is so denominated from anger [ira]; though at the same time there are several other passions in it, as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... this trembling; he therefore prepared himself to enter with a calm and self- possessed air, promised himself to speak as little as possible, to be very carefully on the watch in order to check, above all things, his irascible disposition. In the midst of these reflections, he was introduced to Porphyrius Petrovitch. The latter was alone in his office, a room of medium dimensions, containing a large table, facing a sofa covered with shiny leather, a bureau, a cupboard ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... colony.[424] Of the four acting governors since 1671, Lynch stood apart as the one who had endeavoured with singleness and tenacity of purpose to clear away the evils of buccaneering. Lord Vaughan had displayed little sympathy for the corsairs, but he was hampered by an irascible temper, and according to some reports by an avarice which dimmed the lustre of his name. The Earl of Carlisle, if he did not directly encourage the freebooters, had been grossly negligent in the performance of his duty of suppressing them; while Morgan, although in ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... music was not one of the Honorable William Linder's attributes. An irascible temper was. Of all instruments the B-flat trombone possesses the most nerve-jarring tone. The master of the mansion leaped from his restful chair. Where his feet had ornamented the coping his face now appeared. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Inn, therefore, the time of waiting before dinner was sufficient for young Mr. Lovel to step out and discover who his amusing and irascible companion of voyage might be. At South Queensferry every one knew Mr. Oldbuck of Monkbarns. Bred a lawyer, he had never practised, being ever more interested in the antiquities of his native country than in sitting ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... sat down. What then? He might be a gentleman of irascible, nasty temper, and in walking about my room, I might step on his feet. These irritable folk have such large feet, at least they are always in the way, and always being stepped on no matter how ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... of the bay of Biscay, when the wind once more deserted us, and we were so entirely becalmed, that we did not advance a mile in many hours. My fresh-water reader will perhaps conceive no unpleasant idea from this calm; but it affected us much more than a storm could have done; for, as the irascible passions of men are apt to swell with indignation long after the injury which first raised them is over, so fared it with the sea. It rose mountains high, and lifted our poor ship up and down, backwards and forwards, with so violent an emotion, ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... that hope is not in the will as its subject. For the object of hope is an arduous good, as stated above (Q. 17, A. 1; I-II, Q. 40, A. 1). Now the arduous is the object, not of the will, but of the irascible. Therefore hope is not in the will but in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... grace and all the virtues most perfectly. Now moral virtues, which are in the irrational part of the soul, make it subject to reason, and so much the more as the virtue is more perfect; thus, temperance controls the concupiscible appetite, fortitude and meekness the irascible appetite, as was said in the Second Part (I-II, Q. 56, A. 4). But there belongs to the very nature of the fomes of sin an inclination of the sensual appetite to what is contrary to reason. And hence it is plain ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... sex does not necessarily exempt you, and to which the wickedness of flatterers may urge you. Say upon your death-bed, 'I have made few orphans in my reign—I have made few widows—my object has been peace. I have used all the weight of my character, and all the power of my situation, to check the irascible passions of mankind, and to turn them to the arts of honest industry. This has been the Christianity of my throne, and this the Gospel of my sceptre. In this way I have strove to worship my Redeemer and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... for it is true. I never was more mistaken in any one in my life than in Mr. Monto. He has his faults and defects of character, as all men have. He is irascible and impatient, and makes in consequence a great ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... is influenced greatly by it. And he goes on to say that some person who has perhaps received a calm, kind letter from Mr. Ruskin instead of the curt, brusque, or impatient one that he had looked for, on account of the irascible nature of the writer, would be altogether surprised could he know that the reason of the unexpected quietness was that Mr. Ruskin had stopped to ask himself, 'What would St. Ursula say? What would St. ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... was losing her sight rapidly—cataract was forming on her eyes, and she could now only dimly see the face and form of her young companion. Primrose, however, always managed to soothe the somewhat irascible old lady, and was already a prime ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... his company were his, body and soul, while they were rehearsing. He gave them fifteen minutes for lunch, and any actor or actress who was foolish or unlucky enough to be a minute late, was sorry afterwards. Mr. Hare was peppery and irascible, and ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... practical girl, did not linger long on the optimistic prospect. For to-night at least, "telling" seemed a matter too dreadful to contemplate. Colonel Dalhousie was an irascible and solitary widower with one son whom he had once been proud of; and this son, having been strangely compelled to take a lady's word as to his own conduct, had been disgraced by that word, cast out with his father's curse upon his forehead. Was it ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Haeght and his mild but correct art, Rubens, feeling his weakness in figure work, went to the studio of the irascible and forcible painter Van Noort, about whom critics have delighted to tell stories of brutality. However true these may be, Rubens stayed with him four years and never ceased to speak in praise of his master's work. Here he became acquainted with Jordaens, who used often to paint ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... Elliot was appointed viceroy. Unfortunately, with the best dispositions, his government was not administered with the tact required to conciliate so irascible a people as the Corsicans. While the viceroy was personally esteemed and beloved, he pursued a course of policy little calculated to calm the irritation which speedily arose. Pascal Paoli felt disappointment at not having been nominated viceroy, and was suspected of secretly fomenting ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Meade commanded a division at Antietam and a corps at Fredericksburg, and held command of the Army of the Potomac to the end of the war. He was a fine soldier and gentleman. Of quiet manners at most times, he was most irascible in the hour of battle, but his temper did not becloud his judgment. General James Shields and General Irwin McDowell, both fine Irish soldiers, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... declined, however, to enter upon the subject, as the manner in which she opened it made it very solemn, and, to her, very affecting. She would take no leave of me, but wished me better hastily, and saying we should soon meet, she hurried suddenly out of the room. Poor woman! If her temper were not so irascible, I really believe her heart would be by no means ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... forward the object of his malice, and keeps himself out of sight.—The angry man talks loudly of his own wrongs; the envious of his adversary's injustice.—A passionate person, if his resentments are not complicated with malice, divides his time between sinning and sorrowing; and, as the irascible passions cannot constantly be at work, his heart may sometimes get a holiday.—Anger is a violent act, envy a constant habit—no one can be always angry, but he may be always envious:—an angry man's enmity (if he be generous) ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... hippodrome; it was a way he had of showing his contempt for a nation. Antipas might have imitated his sovereign in that, only he was not sure that Tiberius would take the compliment as it was meant. He might view such abstention as the airs of a trumpery tetrarch, and depose him there and then. He was irascible, and when displeased there were dungeons at his command which reopened with difficulty, and where existence was not secure. Ah, that sausage of blood and mud, how he feared and envied him! An emperor now, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... young, sandy-haired giant, limited of speech, of movement, of thought, with freckled cheeks and a downy little moustache of decidedly red hue. They had been laboriously deciphering a letter of considerable length and peculiar illegibility, and the slow but irascible Stutter had been swearing in disjointed syllables, his blue eyes glaring angrily across the gully, where numerous moving figures, conspicuous in blue and red shirts, were plainly visible about the ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... various funny and heroically touching anecdotes; but he, accustomed to pulling through examinations and tutoring high-school boys of the fourth or fifth grade, starved her on names and dates. Besides that, he was very impatient, unrestrained, irascible; grew fatigued soon, and a secret—usually concealed but constantly growing—hatred for the girl who had so suddenly and incongruously warped all his life, more and more frequently and unjustly broke forth during the time ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... almost as generally admitted by the world, as that of benevolence. It is a matter of frequent observation, that you seldom see an irascible Quaker. And it is by no means uncommon to hear persons, when Quakers are the subject of conversation, talking of the mysteries of their education, or wondering how it happens, that they should be able to produce in their members such a ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... circumstance which ought not to be omitted. 'At last, sir, Graham, having now got to about the pitch of looking at one man, and talking to another, said DOCTOR &c. 'What effect.' Dr Johnson used to add, 'this had on Goldsmith, who was as irascible as a hornet, may be easily conceived.'] 'DOCTOR, I should be happy to see you at Eaton.' 'I shall be glad to wait on you,' answered Goldsmith. 'No,' said Graham, ''tis not you I mean, Dr MINOR; 'tis Dr MAJOR, there.' Goldsmith was excessively hurt by this. He afterwards spoke ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... moment there was another query, then a third; he was presently committed to a short and vigorous exposition and defence of the point in question. The entire room became attentive. Then, as he paused, the strident voice of a noted and irascible man proclaimed, "That's not democracy and not Jefferson—that doctrine, Mr. Rand. Veil her as you please in gauze and tinsel, you've got conquest by the hand. You may not think it, but you're preaching—what's the word ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... shook the town, or fires threatened it from the hills, the poor ran in a body to the court-yard of Casa Grande and besought his protection. They never passed him without saluting to the ground, nor his house without bending their heads. And yet they feared him, for he was an irascible old gentleman at times, and thumped unmercifully when in a temper. Chonita, alone, ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... is true. I never was more mistaken in any one in my life than in Mr. Monto. He has his faults and defects of character, as all men have. He is irascible and impatient, and makes in consequence a great ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... approached thyt even Belle was afraid of him. His wife, for a wonder, was a slattern German, and she spoke English very imperfectly. With her several small children she lived in a chaotic way, keeping up a perpetual whining and fault-fnding, half under her breath from fear of her irascible husband, that was like a "continual dropping on a very rainy day." Every now and then, Mrs. Wheaton said, he would suddenly emerge from his abstraction and break out against her in a volley of harsh, guttural German oaths that were "henough to make von's 'air riz." Therefore ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... assumed that the mise-en-scene for this print was the same as that of the "Long Minuet." From "Dear me! You don't say so!" we proceed through the stages of "Heigh ho!" "O fye!" "Indeed!" "There now!" to that lively dandy who exclaims "Ha! Ha!" and that irascible old gentleman who is shaking his fist at him with the reply, "God's zounds! hold your tongue!" To the same line of social satire belong the "Front, side, and back view of a modern Gentleman," "Sunday Evening," "Morning, or the Man of Taste," ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... which gave her no choice. In proof of this I refer to that passage in the letter of Jerome to Riparius respecting Vigilantius, whose zealous and persevering opposition to the worship of saints, images, and relics, &c., had greatly provoked the irascible monk of Bethlehem. "I saw (says Jerome) a short time ago that monster Vigilantius. I would fain have bound this madman by passages of Holy Writ, as Hippocrates advises to confine maniacs with bonds; but he has departed, he has withdrawn, he has ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... all during the battle of Saratoga; but the latest and most trustworthy researches on this point would seem to indicate that he commanded there with discretion and skill. He was now a major-general, but his irascible spirit had previously been hurt by the tardiness with which this honor was conferred upon him, five of his juniors having received it before himself. He strongly disliked General Gates, too, and quarrelled with him because of what he held to be ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... more valuable adherent, and a more formidable antagonist. He seems to have regarded all mankind with distrust. On the Bench, his disposition vented itself in judgments remarkable for their brevity and the irascible tone in which they were delivered. His utterance was sonorous, with the mysterious pomp and grandiloquence of an oracle, kindling up at times into solemn denunciation. His "make up" must have been perfect in its ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... small-pox—a victim to the ignorance of his physicians. He was a lover and patron of the arts, and spoke several languages with elegance and fluency. But he had the usual faults of absolute princes; was prodigal in his expenditures, irascible in his temper, fond of pageants and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... warlike title, had a most pacific appearance. He was large and fat, with a broad, hazy, muffin face, a sleepy eye, and a full double chin. He had a deep ravine from each corner of his mouth, not occasioned by any irascible contraction of the muscles, but apparently the deep-worn channels of two rivulets of gravy that oozed out from the huge mouthfuls that he masticated. But I forbear to dwell on the odd beings that were congregated together in one hotel. I have been thus prolix about the old ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... young Bruces went every day across a beaten bush track, from their weather-board cottage home, past the big iron gates of Dene Hall, a house built of grey stone in the early days of the colony, where their irascible grandsire dwelt, up a red dusty road to the little ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... he never hesitated, but went about it with alacrity; he had been known on more than one occasion to inflict wounds or death by preference with his own hands. He was a profuse blasphemer of God and His saints, and that on the most trifling occasions, being of all men the most irascible. He was never seen at Church, held all the sacraments vile things, and derided them in language of horrible ribaldry. On the other hand he resorted readily to the tavern and other places of evil repute, and frequented them. He was as fond of women as a dog is of the stick: in the use ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... caused him to have chronic indigestion. He thought that the worst punishment he could suggest for Satan would be to compel him to "try to digest for all eternity with my stomach." This disorder rendered Carlyle peculiarly irascible and explosive. His wife's quick temper sometimes took fire at his querulousness; but her many actions, which spoke much louder than her words, showed how deeply she loved him and how proud she was of his genius. After ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... obvious as humans. Some are lazy, some alert, surly, or timid. Nearly all the females we saw showed that irritability and irascible disposition that go with the cares of maternity. This family was ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... true, but this poor woman has more need of it than you,' answered the girl. La Louve snatched the bread from the hands of Mont Saint Jean, and began to vociferate, brandishing her knife. As she is very irascible, and very much feared, no one dared to take the part of ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... but the Ducs de Sully and d'Epernon still remained in the capital, where the latter again displayed as much pomp and pretension as he had done under the Regency; and at the commencement of 1618 he had a serious misunderstanding with Du Vair, the Keeper of the Seals, upon a point of precedence. Irascible and haughty, he resented the fact of that magistrate taking his place on all occasions of public ceremonial immediately after the Chancellor Sillery, and consequently before the dukes and peers; and on Easter Sunday, when the Court ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Homer are Fables of this Nature: and that the several Names of Gods and Heroes are nothing else but the Affections of the Mind in a visible Shape and Character. Thus they tell us, that Achilles, in the first Iliad, represents Anger, or the Irascible Part of Human Nature; That upon drawing his Sword against his Superior in a full Assembly, Pallas is only another Name for Reason, which checks and advises him upon that Occasion; and at her first Appearance touches him upon the Head, that Part of the Man ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... had passed since Steve refused to burden himself longer with Sarah Maria's care and education. As a matter of course he saw that the irascible lady was still retained about the place, but he felt that to be no concern of his so long as their orbits did not cross, and so far Sarah Maria seemed to appreciate his indifference ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... money then," retorted the irascible old lady, "and let there be no shirking or delay. Promptitude is our great chance of success. I ought not to start later than Tuesday, and I could do so soon after the wedding ceremony. I could arrange to sleep at Lyons that night, at Dijon the next ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... court-room during the Burr trial is better conveyed if there be held in mind the personality of that eccentric and extraordinary man, so prominent in the history of America and the traditions of Virginia—John Randolph of Roanoke. Irascible, high-voiced, high-headed, truculent, insolent, vitriolic—yet gallant, courteous, kind, just, and fair; the enemy and the friend in turn of almost every public man of his day; truckling to none, defiant of all, sure to do what could not ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... The irascible Giacomo conceived a quick resentment. To discharge his bile, he found nothing less than to publish in the course of the month of August, under the title of: 'Ne amori ne donne ovvero la Stalla d'Angia repulita', a libel in which Jean Carlo Grimani, Carletti, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the moment; and, like brute beasts, they are utterly ignorant of the distinction between right and wrong. They express themselves with great ambiguity and obscurity; have no respect for any religion or superstition whatever; are immoderately covetous of gold; and are so fickle and irascible that they very often, on the same day that they quarrel with their companions without any provocation, again become reconciled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... quite inadequate, although every nerve was strained to the limit. In consequence we received scores of complaints from persons before whose doors dead horses had remained, festering in the heat, for two or three days. One irascible man sent us furious denunciations, until we were at last able to send a big dray to drag away the horse that lay dead before his shop door. The huge dray already contained eleven other dead horses, and when it reached ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... retained a devoted attachment to Stanislaus. He for some time led a restless life about Europe—visiting Italy, Sicily, Malta, and the south of Spain; troubled with attacks of rheumatism, gout, and the effects of a "Hungarian fever." He had become more and more cynical and irascible, and had more than one "affair of honor," in one of which he killed his antagonist. His splenetic feelings, as well as his political sentiments, were occasionally vented in severe attacks upon the ministry, full of irony and sarcasm. They appeared in the public journals, and gained him such reputation, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... and of discussing in person with you both the points on which we agree and those on which we differ. Whether you will think me, what I mean to be, a fair disputant, I know not; I can venture to promise you will not find me an irascible one. In the meantime I have the honour to be, with the highest respect and ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... for: 'twas the not having another chance at those damned British rascals;" and the wooden leg itself would twitch and rap on the floor in his impatient indignation. One of Hetty's earliest recollections was of being led about the farm by this warm-hearted, irascible, old grandfather, whose wooden leg was a perpetual and unfathomable mystery to her. Where the flesh leg left off and the wooden leg began, and if, when the wooden leg stumped so loud and hard on the floor, it did not hurt the flesh leg at the ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... go to Sporus," said he to himself, "and pour out a little wine to Fortuna. I have found at last what I have been seeking this long time. He is young, irascible, bounteous as mines in Cyprus, and ready to give half his fortune for that Lygian linnet. Just such a man have I been seeking this long time. It is needful, however, to be on one's guard with him, for the wrinkling of his brow forebodes no good. Ah! the wolf-whelps ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... as bad as a thankless child, and that is a thankless parent—an irate, irascible parent who possesses an underground vocabulary and ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... Mademoiselle Hafner!" That cry which the news brought by Julien wrested from Montfanon was so dolorous that the young man did not think of laughing. He had thought it wiser to prepare his irascible friend, lest the Baron might make some allusion to the grand event during the course of the conversation, and that the other might not make ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... wife of the second Baring who bore that title. Lady Ashburton was daughter of the earl of Sandwich, and Lord Houghton says of her: "She was an instance in which aristocracy gave of its best and showed at its best, although she may have owed little to the qualities she inherited from an irascible race and to an unaffectionate education"—a sentence reminding us of a remark in the London Times, that "with certain noble houses people are apt to associate certain qualities—with the Berkeleys, for instance, a series of disgraceful family quarrels." Lady Ashburton appears to us from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... silence was broken by the inconsequent bleating of a flock of sheep wandering in search of their scant pasturage or huddling together, an agitated mass of grimy wool, its outskirts painfully exposed to the sharp but well-intentioned admonitions of a somewhat irascible collie. Neither man nor beast took special note of the overgrown boy striding so confidently on his way, nor was one observer more likely than the other to guess what inspiring thoughts were animating the roughly ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... been Sam Johnson, a mere pleasant companion, was highly diverting; and this light notion of himself struck me with wonder. I answered, also smiling, 'No, no, Sir; that will not do. You are good natured, but not good humoured[1085]: you are irascible. You have not patience with folly and absurdity. I believe you would pardon them, if there were time to deprecate your vengeance; but punishment follows so quick after ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... mean between ill-temper—whether of the irascible, the sulky, or the cantankerous kind—and something for which we have no name (poor-spiritedness). Friendliness comes between the excessive desire to please and boorishness. It is a social virtue which might be defined as goodwill plus tact. Sincerity ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... What then? He might be a gentleman of irascible, nasty temper, and in walking about my room, I might step on his feet. These irritable folk have such large feet, at least they are always in the way, and always being stepped on no matter how careful ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... regret. It reminds me of an anecdote related of old Dr. Bellamy, of Connecticut, the celebrated Hopkinsian divine, who was called into court to testify concerning one of his parishioners, against whom it was sought to be proved that he was a very irascible, violent, and profane man; and as this man was, in regard to religion, what was called in those days "a great opposer," it was expected that the Doctor's testimony would be very convincing and overwhelming. "Well," said Bellamy, "Mr. X is a rough, passionate, swearing man,—I am sorry to say it; ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... That irascible old Governor who stamped his wooden leg on the streets of New Amsterdam, who ruled with his iron will and his cane the thrifty burghers of this young city, did he not, when called upon to show a soldier's courage, wage a successful contest with ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Harrison and Mr. Beesly, who want to 'Frenchify the English institutions'—that is, to introduce here an imitation of the Napoleonic system, a dictatorship founded on the proletariat—who can doubt that if both these clever writers had been real Frenchmen they would have been irascible anti-Bonapartists, and have been sent to Cayenne long ere now? The wish of these writers is very natural. They want to 'organise society,' to erect a despot who will do what they like, and work out their ideas; but any despot will do what he himself likes, and will ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... who was not three inches shorter than her antagonist. "You must be a great deal taller before I call you grown up! In two years time, you will scarcely be up to my eyes." At this the irascible Egyptian fired up; she gave the child a slap in the face with the palm of her hand. Mary only stood still as if petrified, and after gazing at the ground for a minute or two without a cry, she turned her back on her companion and silently went ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is no contemporary portrait of Horace. He tells us himself (Ep. II, ii, 214; I, xx, 29) that he was short of stature, his hair black but early tinged with grey; that he loved to bask in sunshine, that his temper was irascible but easily appeased. In advanced life he became fat; Augustus jests with him rather coarsely on his protuberant figure. The portrait prefixed to this volume is from a Contorniate, or bronze medallion of the time of Constantine, representing the poet's likeness as traditionally preserved amongst ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... annoy if he cannot subdue; and when his purpose is served, he puts his scepticism aside,—as the coquette puts her ribbons. Great arguments arise between them, and the doctor loses his field through his loss of temper,—which, however, he regains before any harm is done; for the worthy man is irascible withal, and opposition draws fire ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... on and his hands in his pockets, Roger fared forth, whistling determinedly. He did not want to go to the office, and he dreaded, exceedingly, his next meeting with the irascible Judge. ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... notwithstanding many peculiarities. He is very liberal towards all doctrines and opinions, and cannot be put out of temper. These circumstances give him the advantage of his opponents, who are always bigoted and often irascible. Coleridge is an enthusiast on many subjects, and must therefore appear to many to possess faults, and no doubt he has faults, but he has a good heart and a large mass of information with," as his fellow-student condescendingly admits, "superior talents. The great fault which his ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... slowly along the narrow pathway, trying to invent some plausible excuse for presenting himself before the irascible old man who, he had heard, excluded all strangers from "Darrell's Folly," his steps were arrested by the sound of voices approaching from the opposite direction. In another moment he saw three men hurrying towards him, gesticulating wildly and ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... successful on the stage, and welcome to her countrymen. These people, Mrs. Blower and Meg, are Shakspearean, they live with Dame Quickly and Shallow, in the hearts of Scots, but to the English general they are possibly caviare. In the gallant and irascible MacTurk we have the waning Highlander: he resembles the Captain of Knockdunder in "The Heart of Mid Lothian," or an exaggerated and ill-educated Hector of "The Antiquary." Concerning the women of the tale, it may be said that Lady Binks has great qualities, and appears to have been drawn ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... their dispositions, habits, and characters; to which, perhaps, nature might also in some degree contribute. ALMORAN was haughty, vain, and voluptuous; HAMET was gentle, courteous, and temperate: ALMORAN was volatile, impetuous, and irascible; HAMET was thoughtful, patient, and forbearing. Upon the heart of HAMET also were written the instructions of the Prophet; to his mind futurity was present by habitual anticipation; his pleasure, his pain, his hopes, and his fears, were ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... was of a serious, reflective turn of mind. He became converted at a Methodist camp-meeting, and as he became a kind of preacher among his own people, he staid converted. He had one fault, to speak not of others. He was irascible to a great degree; a mosquito or a flea would drive him into a passion. But throughout his long career as guardian of his master, he had been never known to lose patience with him. Even mothers become vexed exceedingly with undutiful children; but this ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... proved at length sufficient to conquer the others; as it were to burn up all the others, and reduce their sour dark smoke, abounding everywhere, into flame and illumination mostly. This radiant swift-paced Son owed much to the surly, irascible, sure-footed Father that bred him. Friedrich did at length see into Friedrich Wilhelm, across the abstruse, thunderous, sulphurous embodiments and accompaniments of the man;—and proved himself, in all manner of important respects, the filial sequel of Friedrich Wilhelm. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... and Dick Linforth with a sly amusement, and as a result of his watching promised himself yet more amusement during the next two days. He was roused from this pleasing anticipation by his irascible friend, Colonel Fitzwarren, who, without the slightest warning, flung a loud and defiant challenge across the table to ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... born that never yielded, more or less, to the sway of this passion. Everybody gets angry. The child sulks, the little girl calls names and makes faces, the boy fights and throws stones; the maiden waxes huffy, spiteful, and won't speak, and the irascible male fumes, rages, and says and does things that become him not in the least. Even pious folks have their tiffs and tilts. All flesh is frail, and anger has an easy time of it; not because this passion is so ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... editor, who was by nature irascible and whom much daily worry had rendered more so, glared angrily as Triffitt marched up to his table. He pointed to a slip of proof which lay, damp and ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... may regard this picture of Stuart as overdrawn; but it is the simple truth of that brave soul. He had his faults; he loved praise, even flattery, and was sometimes irascible—but I have never known a human being ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... earlier part of this chapter to stand in order to show how a man quite well-meaning, although a trifle irascible, may be wanting in Christian charity and ordinary understanding; and of how many tangled knots of human motive, impulse, and emotion this war is a solvent. You see, she defended her son to the last, adopting his own specious line of argument; ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... and it was to be seen on nearly every page of every book that was published. But all that is changed. To speak or print the name of God is reckoned "bad form." The word is almost tabooed in decent society. You hear it in the streets, however, when the irascible carman calls on God to damn your eyes for getting in his way. There is such a conspiracy of silence about the Great Ghost, except in churches and chapels, that the mention of his name in polite circles sounds like swearing. Eyebrows are lifted, and the speaker ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... circumstances the process of courtship is necessarily to some extent a difficult and delicate one, fraught with no small danger to the adventurous swain who has the boldness to commend himself by personal approach to these very fickle and irascible fair ones. It was most curious and exciting, accordingly, to watch the details of the strange courtship, which we could only observe in the case of the cruel Eliza, the rather gentler Lucy having been already mated, apparently, before she took up her quarters ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of his colossal universe is proof that he is at least steadfast ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... British forces on Rhode Island in 1777, was a petty tyrant, imperious, irascible, and cruel. He would command citizens of Newport who met him on the streets to take off their hats in deference to him, and if not obeyed, he would knock them off with his cane. If he saw a group of citizens ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of logs, called Fort Gothenborg, a chapel with a graveyard, and a mansion house for the governor, and this remained the seat of Swedish authority as long as they had any on the river. From here Governor Printz, a portly irascible old soldier, said to have weighed "upwards of 400 pounds and taken three drinks at every meal," ruled the river. He built forts on the Schuylkill and worried the Dutch out of the fur trade. He also built a fort called Nya Elfsborg, afterward Elsinboro, on the Jersey side below ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... pieces of his new oratorio—the Messiah, he sought for some one who could read music at sight, and a house painter named Janson was indicated to him as one of the best musicians attached to the Cathedral. A meeting took place, but poor Janson managed so badly, that the irascible composer became purple with anger, and after swearing, as was his wont, in four or five languages at a time, cried out, "You Schountrel! tit you not tell me dat you could sing at soite?" "Yes sir," replied the good fellow, "but not at first sight." Handel upon ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... from her eyes—every smile which wreathed her lips, denoted the chaste purity of her soul. With all her readiness to oblige—with all her anxiety to do her duty as she ought, she frequently incurred the anger of the irascible Nisida; but Flora supported those manifestations of wrath with the sweetest resignation, because the excellence of her disposition taught her to make every allowance for one so ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... treated him politely; others with marked rudeness; and the great majority with indifference. Nearly all knew him by name, and had heard of his poems; and nearly all, too, like the rector of Market Deeping, expressed their surprise that an author should retail his own productions. One irascible old gentleman, living close to the village of Easton, told Clare, after some conversation, that he ought to be ashamed to go through the country with a bundle on his back The poet mildly suggested that to go with ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... attracted attention and provoked enquiry, nobody could throw the least light upon his whereabouts. The conviction had therefore at length been arrived at that—the man being well-known as possessing a singularly arrogant, overbearing, and irascible disposition—he had perished in some obscure and, quite possibly, discreditable quarrel; and his post as Governor of La Jacoba Prison had been given to another man. These particulars had been gleaned by dint of very patient and careful enquiry ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... anecdote to any descendants of Cadwallader, who are peculiarly sensitive on the subject, and so hot-blooded, that it is not at all unlikely the injudicious story-teller might be deprived of any future opportunity of insulting the Ap-Shenkins, the Ap-Joneses, and the race of very irascible Taffys in general. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... years; the first notion he acquires in life is, that he is born to command, and the first habit he contracts is that of being obeyed without resistance. His education tends, then, to give him the character of a supercilious and a hasty man; irascible, violent, and ardent in his desires, impatient of obstacles, but easily discouraged if he cannot succeed upon his ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... in German, hurled at Popof, I recognized the voice of the irascible baron. But this time he should have addressed his reproaches not to the engineers of ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... my Fancy follows suit, and yet with a difference. The clef is here changed to its lowest, and the little book is a lot of tremolos about old age, death, and faith. The physical just lingers, but almost vanishes. The book is garrulous, irascible (like old Lear) and has various breaks and even tricks to avoid monotony. It will have to be ciphered and ciphered out long—and is probably in some respects the most curious part of its ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... vivacious, irascible old gentleman, who persisted in treating the undeniable fact of his age on the footing of a scandalous false report set afloat by Time. He was superbly strapped and padded. His hair, his teeth, and his complexion were triumphs of artificial youth. ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... maid-of- all-work, besides a few walking gentlemen and others. It sounded promising, and a perusal of the piece showed that it was very amusing. I cannot describe it, but the complications were magnificent; the two old gentlemen, one very irascible the other very meek, were, of course, enamoured of the two old ladies, one very meek, and the other very irascible; the low comedian was, of course, the victim and the plague of both couples, and took his revenge by the usual expedient ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... Galilee. But he did not trust Judas, who he had heard was a bad, untruthful man, and he had no confidence in his flippant faith in the cowardice of the disciples, and of the people. Annas believed in his own power, but he feared bloodshed, feared a serious riot, such as the insubordinate, irascible people of Jerusalem lent itself to so easily; he feared, in fact, the violent intervention of the Roman authorities. Fanned by opposition, fertilised by the red blood of the people, which vivifies everything on which it falls, the heresy would grow stronger, and ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... thick voice and seemed half asleep; but the more quietly he spoke the more those about him trembled. He had managed to get a wife who was a fit match for him. She was a gipsy by birth, goggle-eyed and hook-nosed, with a round yellow face. She was irascible and vindictive, and never gave way in anything to her husband, who almost killed her, and whose death she did not survive, though she had been for ever quarrelling with him. The son of Andrei, Piotr, Fedor's grandfather, did not take after his father; he was a typical ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... trial this was for the handsome young man of Lancia and for the friends who had known him in the palmy days of his beauty! But his mind kept as youthful as when he was eighteen. He was the same impassioned, affectionate creature, sweet one moment, irascible and terrible another, following the bent of his caprices ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... him, and all the more so, as this invaluable man always treated him with extreme deference, verging on servility. And in M. de Valorsay's eyes this was a great consideration; for he was becoming more arrogant and more irascible in proportion as his right to be so diminished. Secretly disgusted with himself, and deeply humiliated by the shameful intrigue to which he had stooped, he took a secret satisfaction in crushing his accomplice with his imaginary superiority ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... and adventurous prince, at the head of a population at once poor, warlike, and greedy, overruns a vast tract, and acquires extensive dominion, while his successors, abandoning themselves to sensuality and sloth, probably also to oppressive and irascible dispositions, become in process of time victims to those same qualities in another prince and people which had enabled their own predecessor to establish their power. It was as being braver, simpler, and so stronger than the Assyrians that the Medes were able ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... This monster of irascible cruelty regarded himself as a middle-aged person. But he was only twenty-five that day, and he did not look more, either, despite a stiff, strong moustache. He too, like Louis and Rachel, had the gestures of youth—the unconsidered, lithe movements of limb, the wistful, unteachable ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... garden-railings; directly she got up I saw her look towards his infernal red lamp with the pantomime-light. "Don't go to him," I called out of the window, "he's an assassin! A man-trap!" So he is. If he is not—' Here the irascible old gentleman gave a great knock on the ground with his stick; which was always understood, by his friends, to imply the customary offer, whenever it was not expressed in words. Then, still keeping his stick in his hand, he sat down; and, opening a double eye-glass, which he ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Coleridge's support of the application, the shoemaker was turned out of the place, and the would-be apprentice chosen, "against my will," he says, "as one of those destined for the university." The same irascible yet excellent master flogged the boy severely on hearing that he boasted of being ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... these few circumstances of their history, the resemblance ceases. Their characters afford scarcely a point of contact. Elizabeth, inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry's temperament, was haughty, arrogant, coarse, and irascible; while with these fiercer qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange irresolution. Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity of royal station with the most bland and courteous manners. Once resolved, she was constant in her purposes, and her conduct in public and private life was ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... a man of prodigious energy, practical good sense, and lofty character, but irascible, haughty, and contemptuous, and was far from being a favorite with the king and court. His great idea was the unity and independence of Germany. He thought more of German nationality than of Prussian ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... the office while he drank with a theatrical agent at the nearest bar. He was an inveterate gossip, and endowed with a damnable love of slipshod argument; the only oral censor upon our compositions, he hailed us with all the complaints made at his solicitation by irascible subscribers, and stood in awe of the cashier only, who frequently, to our delight and surprise, combed him over, and drove him to ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... or so a very irascible old woman hobbled to us from some mysterious lurking place among the reed huts. She spoke impatiently. Talbot questioned her; she replied briefly, then turned and hobbled off as fast as ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... enters the caustic, generous Witmore, belabouring the profanity, the scurrility, the immodesty, the stupidity of the age with one hand, the while he pays his friend's rent with the other; and who, incidentally, is requested by that irascible genius to kick a worthy publisher down the stairs, on the latter's refusal to give fifty shillings "no, nor fifty farthings" for his play. Once mollified by the settlement of her bill, we have the landlady ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... A tempestuous, hot-blooded, irascible set were these gentlemen of the law-colleges, more zealous for their own honor than careful for the feelings of their neighbors. Alternately warring with sharp tongues, sharp pens, and sharp swords they went on losing their tempers, friends, and lives in the most gallant and picturesque ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... were not much laughed at in Belize, for even the most disrespectful ruffians desired not the thrust of a quick blade nor the ill-will of that most irascible pirate, Blackbeard. ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... Marie Louise so extravagantly to be hated by these irascible cherubs that her anger vanished in regret. She pleaded: "But, my darlings, you don't know what you are saying. The ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... defence, multitudes would be induced to enter upon its cultivation, who are now afraid to have any thing to do with it. As the new system of management which I have devised, seems to add to this inherent difficulty, by taking the greatest possible liberties with so irascible an insect, I deem it important to show clearly, in the very outset, how bees may be managed, so that all necessary operations may be performed in an Apiary, without incurring any serious risk ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... fact, of being an arbiter in the destinies of Chicago in this crisis of her history. From the Pullman to the Leland, from inner depot to outlying freight-yards, from meetings to municipal offices, he sped, never stopping for rest or refreshment. Irascible officers at Springfield, receiving despatches signed Elmendorf, put an H to his name and lopped it off at the neck. There were two precincts he left unpenetrated,—the head-quarters of the railway managers and those of the National Guard. Allison had made him known at the one, his public utterances ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... sour, testy, tiresome, tormenting, touchy, arrogant, austere, awkward, boorish, brawling, brutal, bullying, churlish, clamorous, crabbed, cross, currish, dismal, dull, dry, drowsy, grumbling, horrid, huffish, insolent, intractable, irascible, ireful, morose, murmuring, opinionated, oppressive, outrageous, overbearing, petulant, plaguy, rough, rude, rugged, spiteful, splenetic, stern, stubborn, stupid, sulky, sullen, surly, suspicious, treacherous, troublesome, turbulent, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... in the Province of Alava, Spain, Simon de Anda's irascible temper, his vanity, and his extravagant love of power created enmities and brought trouble upon himself at every step. Exhausted by six years of continual strife in his private and official capacities, he retired to the Austin Friars' Hospital of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... whilst all the time our hero lies slumbering in his britchka! Indeed, his name has been repeated so often during the recital of his life's history that he must almost have heard us! And at any time he is an irritable, irascible fellow when spoken of with disrespect. True, to the reader Chichikov's displeasure cannot matter a jot; but for the author it would mean ruin to quarrel with his hero, seeing that, arm in arm, Chichikov and he ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... main, a peaceable kind of fellow, and nothing choleric nor rash; yet did he bear about him something of what the antients called the irascible, and which his wife, if she had been endowed with much wisdom, would have feared. He had long experienced, that when the storm grew very high, arguments were but wind, which served rather to increase, than to abate it. He was therefore seldom unprovided with a small ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... attitude of a timid man who has just stepped on the tail of a strange and irascible dog, and is holding his legs so that the animal, if he can pull his tail out, can escape without biting either of them. He then held the bat up before his face as though he ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... silently by the door until he was ready. He took her black bag peremptorily, and they went side by side down the street. He held his head well back, his lips were still tightly pursed, and he swung his cane with asperity. His important and irascible nature was oddly disturbed by this awkwardly obstinate old woman stalking at his side in her black clothes. Feminine opposition, even in slight matters, was wont to aggravate him, but in no such degree as this. ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... than that into which some persons have fallen, when they have inferred, from the fiery vehemence with which he could give utterance to moral anger in verse or prose, that he was personally ill-tempered or irascible. He was, in truth, a man whom it was hardly possible to quarrel with or offend personally and face to face; and in his writings, even on public subjects in which his feelings were strongly engaged, he will be observed to have always dealt tenderly with those whom he had once seen ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... less appreciated by the public, that I can treat his memory only with reverence, willingly leaving to others the ungrateful task of ridiculing or scorning him. He had, no doubt, an exaggerated pride and vanity. But he labored for truth and his fellow-men with transcendent fidelity. His irascible egotism made him suffer its own punishment. His lot was lonely and was painful. The solace of the stainless friendship which Madame Clotilde de Vaux brought him appeals to my most respectful sympathy. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... like a mother who takes advantage of a parenthesis of surprise in an irascible child's temper, in order to counsel self-control, and explained how it had all happened. She had received the news of Laurier's wounding just as she and her mother were preparing to leave Paris. She had not hesitated an instant; her duty was to hasten to the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of Hastings," at the other house, is very pleasant too. The irascible William is acted with great vigor by Snoxall, and the battle of Hastings is a good piece of burlesque. Some trifling liberties are taken with history, but what liberties will not the merry genius ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... overtook him now came the fevered desire for sympathy and to tell them all. But as they came nearer he saw that they were Gildersleeve, the scout, and Henry Benham, and that, far from sharing any delight in his deliverance, their faces only exhibited irascible impatience. Overcome by this new defeat, the boy ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... life. Through lack of this, many, not so much walking in the way of God as leaping along it, find themselves—after they have spent the greater portion of their life in contemplation—devoid of virtue, impatient, irascible, and proud, if one but so much as touch them on this point! Such people have neither the active nor the contemplative life, nor even a mixture of the two; they have built upon sand! And would that such cases were rare! (on 2. ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... defect in the ethical system of Plato was the identification of evil with the inferior or corporeal nature of man—"the irascible and concupiscible elements," fashioned by the junior divinities. The rational and immortal part of man's nature, which is derived immediately from God—the Supreme Good, naturally chooses the good as its supreme end and destination. Hence he adopted the Socratic ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... in Edinburgh, his "irascible humour" never went so far as this, "the contumely of condescension" must have entered pretty deeply into the soul of the proud peasant when he made the following memorable entry in his diary, on the 9th April, 1787. After some remarks on the difficulty of true friendship, and the hazard ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Achmet; and subsequently I had a number of Alis. Mahomet was a regular Cairo dragoman, a native of Dongola, almost black, but exceedingly tenacious regarding his shade of colour, which he declared to be light brown. He spoke very bad English, was excessively conceited, and irascible to a degree. No pasha was so bumptious or overbearing to his inferiors, but to me and to his mistress while in Cairo he had the gentleness of the dove, and I had engaged him at 5l. per month to accompany me to the White ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... insist on having the money paid down, and would then tantalise his customer by offering him the opened oyster and hastily withdrawing it just as the impatient jaws were about to close on the desired morsel, and so on to the end, to the vast irritation of many an irascible little animal. ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... was given to him on the preceding day. The ladies scolded so lustily, that the noise was heard outside the wall surrounding their huts, which led them to make the discovery. To appease the indignation of the irascible ladies, and to reconcile them to the loss of so great a dainty as a glass of rum, they were presented with a few beads, and some other trifles, but still it was evident that these fancy articles bore ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the last of the Del Riccio's letters. It is very probable that the irascible artist speedily recovered his usual tone, and returned to amity with his old friend. But Del Riccio departed this life toward the close of this ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... to which they were entitled, either from custom or treaty, on the accession of a new emperor. They expressed, and they communicated to their countrymen, their strong sense of the national affront. The irascible minds of the chiefs were exasperated by the suspicion of contempt; and the martial youth crowded to their standard. Before Valentinian could pass the Alps, the villages of Gaul were in flames; before his general Degalaiphus could encounter the Alemanni, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... victory since the organization of the government had just been won, after a very bitter struggle, by the Republicans or Democrats, as they were then indifferently called, whose exuberant delight found its full counterpart in the angry despondency of the Federalists. That irascible old gentleman, the elder Adams, having experienced a (p. 026) very Waterloo defeat in the contest for the Presidency, had ridden away from the capital, actually in a wild rage, on the night of the 3d of March, 1801, to avoid the humiliating pageant of Mr. Jefferson's inauguration. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... giving over his irascible expletives, and adopting an air of unfeigned pleasure, "why, if it ain't young Master Greenhorn. Ha, ha! How do, my young bantam? ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... mutinous, nevertheless the monkeys were compelled to perform by being tied to their seats and instruments and by being pulled and jerked from off stage by wires fastened to their bodies. The leader of the orchestra, an irascible elderly monkey, sat on a revolving stool to which he was securely attached. When poked from off the stage by means of long poles, he flew into ecstasies of rage. At the same time, by a rope arrangement, his chair was whirled around and ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... fat, red-nosed fellow, with twinkling black eyes, and a mouth irascible as that of a cake-baker of Lerna. His heart was of the right paste, however, and full as a butter-boat of the sweet sauce of good nature, which he was ready to pour over the heads of all his fellows who quietly submitted ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... consolation attained might be considered disproportionate to the needs of the case. The lines of her present had fallen in a white frame house in the main street of Kingsborough; those of her past began with the first Dudley who swung a lance in Merry England, to end with irascible old William of the name, who slept in the family ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... speak, I did not tell you, because, knowing the natural gentleness of your disposition, which I have so often admired, I was alarmed, lest the sudden shock should cause one of those irascible fits, which I have so often witnessed, and produce some of those shakes and buffets, which to my unspeakable astonishment, I have ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... What could be seen of his features appeared sharper than usual, as if the inner virulence, the dark hidden passions smoldering in his breast had at length stamped their impression on the outer man. When he first spoke his tones were more irascible, less icily imperturbable, than they had been hitherto. They seemed to tell of a secret tension he had long been laboring under; but the steady cold eyes looked out from behind the wood barrier with ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... a man of lofty stature; he had broad shoulders, a red face, a crushing fist, a bold heart, a loyal soul, a sincere and terrible eye. Intrepid, energetic, irascible, stormy; the most cordial of men, the most formidable of combatants. War, strife, conflict, were the very air he breathed and put him in a good humor. He had been an officer in the navy, and, from his gestures and his voice, one divined that he sprang from the ocean, and that he came from ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... man somewhat above medium height," replied the secretary, "of rather striking appearance, dark complexioned, sallow, hasty and irascible of temper, has a very exalted opinion of his position and dignity, is very impatient of anything in the most remote degree approaching to dictation, and has a profound belief in his own judgment, and ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... guests, who more or less preserved the decorum which etiquette demands in the presence of royalty, (the Duke of Sussex was of the party,) Charles Fox and Lady Anson, great-grandmother of the present Lord Lichfield, happened to be playing at chess. When the irascible dominie beheld them he pushed his way through the bystanders, swept the pieces from the board, and, with rigorous impartiality, denounced these impious ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... friend remained on board to pursue the voyage to Leghorn. What a din, what frantic gestures, what a rush of these irascible Corsicans at our baggage! It is borne off to the custom-house, and undergoes an examination far from rigorous. We mount several flights of steps, leading from one narrow street to another in this old quarter of ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... absurd claims. The people of Chetasco were less obsequious to her humours than those of Solesbury, her ancient neighbourhood, and her imagination brooded for a long time over nothing but schemes of revenge. She became sullen, irascible, and spent more of her ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... he was well aware that the sacerdotal character was not uniformly respected among the irascible Welshmen,) "By the oath of my order, mighty prince, I have read word for ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... slave never can do this as long as he is a slave; whilst he is a "chattel personal" he can own no property; but the time is to come when every man is to sit under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and no domineering driver, or irresponsible master, or irascible mistress, shall make him afraid of the chain or the whip. Hear, too, the sweet tones of another string: "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Slavery is an insurmountable barrier to the increase of knowledge ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... hundred yards of the mission-house there was a jetty, and at the end of the jetty was Her Majesty's gunboat Badger, a small schooner-rigged wooden vessel commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Muddle, one of the most irascible men that ever breathed, and who had sat on more Consuls than any one ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... was sorely disappointed in the outcome of the fray, and little inclined to recognize the conspicuous instances of individual gallantry shown by his officers. He had set his heart upon capturing the entire fleet of nine Tripolitan gunboats, and the escape of six of them had roused his naturally irascible disposition to fury. As he stalked his quarter-deck, morose and silent, Decatur came aboard. The young officer still wore the bloody, smoke-begrimed uniform in which he had grappled with the Turk, his face was begrimed ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... life alleged by Mr. Hadley that his steady interest in the family of his uncle was nothing but a desire to keep the old gentleman out of mischief. Sir John Burford was indeed of a temper too irascible to be safe with his bucolically English mind: a man who in throwing tankards at his servants and challenges at his friends was a source of continuous anxiety to his reasonable kinsfolk. But ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... Fair, so that the French king was his brother-in-law as well as his cousin, and Isabella, Edward's consort, was his niece. Unluckily, the personality of the great earl was not equal to his pedigree or his estates. Proud, hard to work with, jealous, and irascible, he was essentially the leader of opposition, the grumbler, and the frondeur. When the time came for a constructive policy, Thomas broke down almost as signally as Edward himself. His ability was limited, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... playing catch with a ball the former had just purchased, when, as they passed the Dodson house, a wild throw from Frank sent the ball out of Bert's reach, and it rolled under the gate of the yard. Not thinking of the irascible Lion in his haste to recover the ball, Bert opened the gate, and the moment he did so, with a fierce growl the huge dog sprang at him and fastened his teeth ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... for Boston, at that season of the year, reached East Harniss at five minutes to six, an "ungodly hour," according to the irascible Mr. Ogden Williams, who, in company with some of his wealthy friends, the summer residents, was petitioning the railroad company for a change in the time-table. When Captain Sol Berry, the depot master, walked briskly down Main Street the morning following Mr. Gott's eventful evening ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of his friends Abe Cone and Y. Fred Smart to the rude tone and manner of this irascible guide! Mr. Sprudell fancied that by way of reply he smiled a tolerant smile, but as a matter of fact the expression of his white, ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... in February, 1873, an irascible judge of the Court of Common Pleas refused to ratify the appointment of a woman—Miss Mary Sibley—to the office of deputy clerk, which she had filled for eight years with unusual acceptance, on the ground that not being an elector she was legally disqualified, the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... a little less irascible, until she leaned too close to him and touched his neck. Then he went off like a pent-up volcano, and cursed her until she shuddered; and her fright gave him no satisfaction, because he could not turn his head ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... powers, to whom they believed nature was submitted, either favorable to their views, or to, induce them to cease those afflictions, which natural causes, for the wisest purposes, were continually heaping upon them; thus some irascible, at the same time placable being, was always chosen for the basis of the adopted superstition; it was upon these puerile tenets, upon these absurd notions, that the old men or the priests rested their doctrines; founded their rights; established their authority: it was to render ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... the irascible husband realized that he had committed a serious fault, had in fact been guilty of a gross injustice, which was hardly less than an insult, to the ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... was the irascible response. "You don't know what you are talking about, Bronson. Read ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... into it against her very nature, the resolution she had formed was full of pain. Yet painful, even terrible in its demand for action, it did not waver, but shone like a star behind the dark and heavy clouds. In Margery Pendyce (who had been a Totteridge) there was no irascible and acrid "people's blood," no fierce misgivings, no ill-digested beer and cider—it was pure claret in her veins—she had nothing thick and angry in her soul to help her; that which she had resolved she must carry out, by virtue of a thin, fine flame, breathing far down in her—so far ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the colony.[424] Of the four acting governors since 1671, Lynch stood apart as the one who had endeavoured with singleness and tenacity of purpose to clear away the evils of buccaneering. Lord Vaughan had displayed little sympathy for the corsairs, but he was hampered by an irascible temper, and according to some reports by an avarice which dimmed the lustre of his name. The Earl of Carlisle, if he did not directly encourage the freebooters, had been grossly negligent in the performance of his duty of ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... attempt to interfere with my rights," said Mr Morgan. "I don't want to know what plausible arguments you may have to justify yourself. The fact remains, sir, that Wharfside is in my parish. If you have anything to say against that, I will listen to you," said the irascible Rector. His Welsh blood was up; he even raised his voice a little, with a kind of half-feminine excitement, common to the Celtic race; and the consequence was that Mr Wentworth, who stood perfectly calm to receive the storm, had all the advantage in the world over Mr Morgan. The Perpetual ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... must be cold." The proper answer is, "No, I thank you. I am very well placed here beside the Countess." It took me a month to find a Countess, two to meet her in the drawing-room of a mutual friend, and four to recover from the hole which the irascible little Count made in me when we met next morning ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... you, and to which the wickedness of flatterers may urge you. Say upon your death-bed, 'I have made few orphans in my reign—I have made few widows—my object has been peace. I have used all the weight of my character, and all the power of my situation, to check the irascible passions of mankind, and to turn them to the arts of honest industry. This has been the Christianity of my throne, and this the Gospel of my sceptre. In this way I have strove to worship my ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... to wake up in various different ways. There is the clear and beautiful dawn of new and balanced effort, easy, unresting, planned, assured, and there is also the blundering-up of a still half-somnolent man, irascible, clumsy, quarrelsome, who stubs his toe in his first walk across the room, smashes his too persistent alarum clock in a fit of nerves, and cuts his throat while shaving. All patriotic vehemence ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... lawyer's arguments were unanswerable, and that the only grounds that he himself had for his doubts were his affection for Frank, and the fixed, passionate belief of Alice Hardy in his innocence. That day Captain Bayley was exceptionally out of temper and irascible, for he had that morning received a letter from Mr. Griffith positively declining to draw up a clause for insertion in the will of the nature he desired, and saying that if Captain Bayley insisted ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... have ever known. I had forgotten the Navy. My only excuse is that nowadays, owing to its urgent and unadvertised affairs, we seldom have an opportunity in our village of meeting the Senior Service. But I feel convinced that the irascible Methuselah on the croquet ground was purposely and maliciously guilty of ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... the other hand, overworked and anxious, and compelled to forego her lodges and societies, became more and more irascible and depressed. In some subtle way she was aware that the sympathy of the colored community was solidly with Gordon Lee. Nobody now asked her how he was. Nobody came to the cabin when she was there, though it was apparent that visitors were frequent during her absence. Aunt Kizzy had evidently ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... him several thousand pounds, and was rich in archaeological books. Mrs. Alexander was a charming lady, always exquisitely gentle in her way, and gifted with a quiet firmness which enabled her to match very effectually the somewhat irascible disposition of my friend, who had the irritability as well as the kindness of heart which, I have since observed, are often found together in Frenchmen. With all his goodness he was by no means an indulgent judge; he could not endure the slightest failure or forgetfulness ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the chief magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill-luck would have it, the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was caught one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming him for life, on the brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of Lemnos. As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about it." "Did she die?" we inquired ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... he said, "a complete bellyful of it," they were still on the wing, and resolved sooner or later to pounce upon their prey, pursuing the same system as heretofore in regard to the post-horses. Major Mowbray and Paterson took the lead, but the irascible and invincible attorney was not far in their rear, his wrath having been by no means allayed by the fatigue he had undergone. At Bawtrey they held a council of war for a few minutes, being doubtful which course he had taken. Their ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
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