"Choleric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expected and was looking for," answered the chief of the rattlesnakes. "But why were you about to declare war against me—me, who alone possess, under the Wahconda, the means of conducting you in safety to the end of your journey? You are too brave and valiant, too hasty and choleric, Lenapes; it will be good for you to lose some of your blood ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... uncontrollable energy. Great qualities have not been superfluously assigned to the King; the poet could command our sympathy for his situation, without concealing what he had done to bring himself into it. Lear is choleric, overbearing, and almost childish from age, when he drives out his youngest daughter because she will not join in the hypocritical exaggerations of her sisters. But he has a warm and affectionate heart, which is susceptible ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... and 'twas the unseemly kilt that was the better part; for I have met a blustering red-faced Scot as thou sayest; and he was boisterous and surly, giving vent to a choleric temper by coarse oaths; and 'twas his plaid denoted a gentleman of high rank withal. The long hair that swept his shoulders was as florid as his face, as was also his flowing whiskers and mustachio, the ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Colfax in but one trait: he was choleric. But he was painstaking and cautious, and I soon found out that he looked askance upon any one whom his nephew might recommend. He liked the Major, but he vowed him to be a roisterer and spendthrift, and one day, some months after my ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... when our ancient Briton, the commandant, Colonel Jones, again presented himself, vif et emporte. The spectators exclaimed—"que cela venoit de la trop rapide circulation de son sang." N'importe: the choleric Colonel, blustering, restored us to comparative tranquillity, as he brandished on high his sword, giving it an after-sweeping movement, as if to moissonner nos tetes; my valiant compatriot extended on the pavement was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... tall man, heavy and red-faced, strong as an ox and was greatly liked in the district, though of an excessively violent disposition. Very nearly forty years old, and a widower for the past six months, he lived on his estate like a country gentleman. His choleric temperament had often brought him into trouble, from which the magistrates of Rouy-le-Tors, like indulgent and prudent friends, had extricated him. Had he not one day thrown the conductor of the diligence from the top ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... nodded carelessly, and passed it on to his junior, who gave it in turn to the Solicitor-General and Playford, Q.C. When it had gone the rounds, Mr. News took it and showed it to his two privileged clients, Messrs. Addison and Roscoe. Addison was a choleric-looking, fat-faced man. Roscoe was sallow, and had a thin, straggly black beard. When they looked at it, Addison groaned fiercely as a wounded bull, and Roscoe sighed, and that sigh and groan told Augusta—who, womanlike, had all her wits about her, and was watching every act of the ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... passes too rapidly. Hitherto both Emily and I have had good health, and therefore we have been able to work well. There is one individual of whom I have not yet spoken—M. Heger, the husband of Madame. He is professor of rhetoric, a man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable in temperament. He is very angry with me just at present, because I have written a translation which he chose to stigmatize as 'peu correct.' He did not tell me so, but wrote the word on the margin of my book, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... collected many curious and valuable things, had gathered together some remarkably fine stag-horns. One pair of these especially pleased Pirkheimer. The widow, without knowing Pirkheimer's desire for these, sold them for a small sum and thus brought upon herself the anger of her husband's choleric friend, who wrote a most unkind letter concerning her which has been quoted from that day to this to show how Albrecht Durer suffered in his home. The truth seems really to be that Agnes Durer was as sweet-tempered ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... hearing of the mandate, made his appearance on deck; and on a repetition of the order from the officer, exhibited unequivocal symptoms of a choleric temper. After letting off a little of his exuberant wrath, he declared with emphasis that he had a RIGHT to wear a pennant, and WOULD wear it in spite of all the officers in ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... from Cassius, had long been brooding in his mind; and that a melancholy man, upon consideration of an affront, especially from a friend, would be more eager in his passion, than he who had given it, though naturally more choleric. Euripides, whom I have followed, has raised the quarrel betwixt two brothers, who were friends. The foundation of the scene was this: The Grecians were wind-bound at the port of Aulis, and the oracle had said, that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... him inquisitorial and peremptory. And as his temperament was choleric there were fellows who were actually afraid of him. He was redoubtable, not in virtue of his office, but because of his unwarrantable assumptions. I had never had anything to ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... to heart, bold Allen,' exclaimed their leader, who was none other than the great Jack Cade himself. 'Thou knowest of old that my temper is somewhat choleric, and my tongue not greased with that unguent which oils the mouths of the lip-serving lords of the land. And you,' he continued, turning suddenly upon our hero, 'are you ready to join the great cause which will make ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... kindly take your hand from your revolver, I am not choleric—but accidents may chance. And here's the father, who alone can be the solver Of this twin riddle of the hat ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... are merry still, laughing, pleasant, meditating on plays, women, music, &c. Phlegmatic, slothful, dull, heavy, &c. Choleric, furious, impatient, subject to hear and see strange apparitions, &c. Black, solitary, sad; they think they ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... he lived in a ruffling time," says Naunton, "so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers wont to call men of their hands, of which sort he had many brave gentlemen that followed him; yet not taken for a popular or dangerous person." Though extremely choleric, he was honest, and not at all malicious. It was said of him that "his Latin and his dissimulation were both alike," equally bad, and that "his custom in swearing and obscenity in speech made him seem a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... not bite me, their company would be more pleasant to me than that of men, who are choleric and intolerable. But I abide by what I have said, that, if my husband were in a like danger, I should ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... present; there's too much for me to do. But this is my advice to you: apply for a leave of absence and take the waters of Wiesbaden. They are good for choleric dispositions. Now, I return the compliment: go to the devil yourself, only choose a route that will not ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... these long Greek words without noticing another objectionable abuse of them, whereby, upon the principle that "what in the captain's but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy," a distinction is made between vice in the rich and vice in the poor, and that which in the latter is obstinate depravity, to be handled only by the police, becomes in the former a pitiable weakness or an irresistible impulse to be gently nursed ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... a choleric person, as courageous a man as ever wore the blue and silver of the Service, and very thoughtful of his men. We had had a bad trip; two swarms of meteorites that had worn our nerves thin, and a faulty part ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... that he allowed the abbe to find his own way out. When he thought himself alone he flew into the fury of a choleric man; the strangest blasphemies escaped his lips, in which Ursula's name ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... the only child of old John Massey. He was a large figure in the small town, and one not cordially admired. He was masterful, choleric, some claimed, unjust. Owner of the steel mill which stood just outside of the town limits, the employer of hundreds of men, he had failed to gain the esteem of one human being. Fear, for many depended upon him for their livelihood, was the ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... bounteously to all comers? It was useless, as he fretted and chafed at these untoward omissions, to urge in his own behalf that he did not know of the existence of the mill, and that the miller, being an ungenial and choleric man, might have perversely lent himself to resisting his demand for the custody of the young runaway. No, he told himself emphatically, and with good logic, too, the miller's acrimony rose from the fact of a stranger's discovery of the still and the danger ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... adopts the present opinion of the present person; he insinuates himself only into the esteem of fools, but is soon detected, and surely despised by everybody else. The wise man (who differs as much from the cunning, as from the choleric man) alone joins the 'suaviter in modo' with the 'fortiter in re'. Now to the advantages arising from the ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... to ask us to dinner," said the First Lieutenant, an officer with a smiling cherubic visage and a choleric blue eye. "We were getting a bit bored with our hooker. A fortnight of looking for Der Tag gets a bit wearisome. D'you think the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... consequence, took their way with suitable dignity and deliberation. In the three who turned, about half-way up the broad-aisle, into a square pew, a physiognomist would have seen at one glance the characteristic features of each mind. In the Colonel, choleric, fresh, and warm-hearted, a good lover, and not very good hater. In his wife, "a chronicler of small-beer," with a perfectly negative expression. One might guess she did no harm, and fear she did no good,—that she saved the hire of an upper servant,—that she was an inveterate sewer and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... take any step that might tend to the disgrace of yourself or your family; and I say again I had rather die than live to see you reckoned any otherwise than compos."—"Die and be d—ned! you shambling half-timber'd son of a——," cried the choleric Crowe; "dost talk to me of keeping a reckoning and compass?—I could keep a reckoning, and box my compass long enough before thy keelstone was laid—Sam Crowe is not come here to ask thy counsel how to steer his course." "Lord! sir," resumed the nephew, "consider what people will say—all ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... that. I'm as choleric as all the devils and there's no morality that sticks, I want to be as full of anger as ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere
... all biassed in our own favour, and what, when another man says it, is 'flat blasphemy,' we think, when we say it, is only 'a choleric word.' We have fine names for our own vices, and ugly ones for the very same vices in other people. David will flare up into generous and sincere indignation about the man that stole the poor man's ewe lamb, but he has ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "Sir Rowland is so choleric, my lord," he said in his pleasant, level voice, "that perhaps the tale would come more intelligibly from me. Believe me that he has served you to the best of his ability. Unfortunately for the success of your choice plan of murder, ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... of hiding his culinary bones in the small gardens before his own and the neighboring doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors off, a bulky, choleric, red-haired, red-faced man—torvo vultu—was, by the law of contrast, a great cultivator of flowers, and he had often scowled Toby into all but non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of his eye. One day his ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... face crimsoning with anger, for he was a choleric little old gentleman, was the Corporal, and as quick to become enraged as to do a good action; "hold! No man shall call me villain with impunity; I shot two rascally Dons at Madrid for the same word, and by God, ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... sympathetic eye to catch them, as the gladiators of old, for mercy in the circus. Then suddenly, at one point of his reading, he had to introduce the passing character of a nameless individual in a London crowd, a choleric old gentleman who has only one short sentence to fire off. This he gave so spontaneously, so inimitably, that the puppet became an absolute reality in a second. I saw him, crowd, street, man, temper, and all. For I am, I may say, what is called a very good audience. I ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... not handsome; Put less water into your wine, says the philosopher, and you'll quickly make her so. Wine heightens indifference into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It often turns the good natured man into an idiot, and the choleric into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it makes vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... The Colonel, though choleric, was a good-natured man, and too much of a gentleman to let his temper loose, though sorely tried, when at the bottom of the hill the Die-hards halted his carriage that he might receive not only an address from the Doctor as Mayor, but a large bouquet from ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the anxiety which she could not conceal. He questioned her, and she told him what had happened. He became furious with rage on hearing her story, for he was naturally choleric; he ran among the tents, flinging off his turban, and crying at the top of his voice, while all the Arabs crowded round him, "Tribe of Byah, tribe of Byah! Kinsmen and friends, hear me." Then he related what his daughter had told him. "I cannot permit," he added, ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... Susanna all the more zealously took upon herself, with delicate morsels and kind words, to console him for the injustice of his race. After the geese, came the well-meaning but awkward ducks; the turkey-cock, with his choleric temper and his two foolish wives, one white and the other black; lastly, came the unquiet generation of hens, with their handsome, quarrel-loving cocks. The prettiest of all, however, were a flock ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south of us. He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement. Sometimes he will ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... incompatible with the Christian religion, or any other professed revelation. Whoever imagines himself the favored object of the Creator's love, must look down with disdain upon his less fortunate fellow-creatures, especially if he regards that Creator as partial, choleric, revengeful, and fickle, easily incensed against us, even by our involuntary thoughts, or our most innocent words and actions; such a man naturally conducts himself with contempt and pride, with harshness ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... first important division of what may be called the action begins—the "War of the Cakes," in which certain outrageous bakers, subjects of King Picrochole of Lerne, first refuse the custom of the good Grandgousier's shepherds, and then violently assault them, the incident being turned by the choleric monarch into a casus belli against the peaceful one. Invasion, the early triumph of the aggressor, the triumphant appearance of the invincible Friar John, and the complete turning of the tables by the advent of Gargantua and his ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... who was a choleric little Indian, and, judging by his finery, a tip-top swell in Indian upper circles, looked up with an air ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... pacifists and half the Cabinet, he did not concern himself about Gedge. Young Randall Holmes's intimacy with the scoundrel seemed to him a matter of far greater importance. He strode up and down his library, choleric ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... can have the empty house to disport themselves in till doomsday—or till her Grace looks into the matter"; and he made a motion to run down the steps, but his heart sank. Mr. Graves put out a deprecating hand and touched his arm; and Mr. Buxton very readily turned at once with a choleric face! ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... strangely questioned but surely unquestionable claim to the authorship of "The Fair Maid of the Exchange." A curious allusion to a more famous play of the author's is the characteristic remark of the young ruffian Chartley: "Well, I see you choleric hasty men are the kindest when all is done. Here's such wetting of handkerchers! he weeps to think of his wife, she weeps to see her father cry! Peace, fool, we shall else have thee claim kindred of the woman killed with kindness." And ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... choleric Captain strode wrathful away to the council, Found it already assembled, impatiently waiting his coming; Men in the middle of life, austere and grave in deportment, Only one of them old, the hill that was nearest to heaven, Covered ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... impossible to say how this conference strengthened John Callendar. Naturally a very choleric man, he controlled himself into a great patience with his erring nephew. He watched for him like a father; nay, more like a mother's was the thoughtful tenderness of his care. And David was often so touched by the love and forbearance shown ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to him any one temperament. He was neither sanguine, like Peter, nor choleric, like Paul, nor melancholy, like John, nor phlegmatic, as James is sometimes, though incorrectly, represented to have been; but he combined the vivacity without the levity of the sanguine, the vigor without the violence of the choleric, the seriousness without the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... court; and, besides bawling, you are smoking, so you are wanting in politeness to the whole company." As he said this, Raskolnikoff felt an inexpressible delight at his maliciousness. The clerk looked up with a smile. The choleric ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... uniforms of khaki, and, dressed up with their backs to the gateway, were performing the simple movements of foot drill in face of a choleric sergeant-major, who shouted the words of command, and of a mounted officer who fronted the squad, silent, erect in saddle, upon a strapping bay. Some few paces behind this extremely military pair stood a couple of civilian spectators side by side, in attire— ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Morton not at all, so long as he personally could enjoy himself in his own fashion, which was to browbeat, bully and swear at every hapless household retainer that came across his path in the course of the day. He was more than usually choleric and fussy in the 'distinguished' presence of Lord Roxmouth, for though that individual had gone the social pace very thoroughly, and was, to put it mildly, a black sheep of modern decadence, hopelessly past all regeneration, he still presented the exterior appearances of a gentleman, and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... and say that no screw was loose in that line, then would I reply—'Sir, with submission, you are——.' 'What!' suppose the Fiend suddenly to demand in thunder; 'what am I?' 'Horribly wrong,' you wish exceedingly to say; but, recollecting that some people are choleric in argument, you confine yourself to the polite answer-'That, with deference to his better education, you conceive him to lie;'—that's a bad word to drop your voice upon in talking with a fiend, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... candlesticks rattled, "I would have killed him or he would have killed me, before the nigger struck bottom!" Very likely he would have done as he said. I have never seen a man with a swifter temper and resolution than poor, brave, choleric, handsome Arnold had; and into a hideously hopeless morass of infamy they landed him, too! No doubt it will seem to my readers, as well, that in nature I ought upon the instant to ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Blades, a red-haired, choleric man. 'How under the sun did she find out these were not fresh? They look all right, and they smell ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... quickly understood their gesture, And being somewhat choleric and sudden, Drew forth a pocket pistol from his vesture, And fired it into one assailant's pudding— Who fell, as rolls an ox o'er in his pasture, And roar'd out, as he writhed his native mud in, Unto his nearest follower ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... more or less the same characteristic somatic and psychic traits and trends. Tuberculosis, for instance, was noted for its frequency in long-skeletoned, thin persons, remarkably optimistic. And the plethoric, choleric nature of the sufferer from gout has become proverbial. Before the era of the great bacteriologic discoveries of the eighties and nineties, the concordance of esoteric racial and personal markings ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... on the tablecloth, hardly realized the foulness of the crime of which he had been guilty, but felt inclined to congratulate himself upon his desperate bravery. Then as he realized that, in addition to the offence for which the choleric Mr. Dunn was even now seeking the aid of the law, there was a dead bulldog and a spoiled carpet to answer for, he resolved upon an immediate departure. He made his way to the back door, and sheathing his knife, crept stealthily down the garden, and ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... the Desire of Several Ladies of Quality. By Her Majesty's Company of Comedians. At the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, this present Monday, being the 5th of May, will be presented a Comedy called Love makes a Man, or The Fop's Fortune. The Part of Don Lewis, alias Don Choleric Snap Shorto de Testy, by Mr. Penkethman; Carlos, Mr. Wilks; Clodio, alias Don Dismallo Thick-Scullo de Half Witto, Mr. Cibber; and all the other Parts to the best Advantage. With a new Epilogue, spoken by Mr. Penkethman, riding on an Ass. By her Majesty's Command no Persons are to ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... this! ay, more: fret till your proud heart break; Go show your slaves how choleric you are, And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge? Must I observe you? must I stand and crouch Under your testy humour? By the gods, You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Though it do split you; for, from this day ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Ah! Here is choleric old "Father Duchesne" in a towering passion, with short legs, bare arms, and rubicund face, topped with an immense red cap. In one hand he holds a diminutive Monsieur Thiers and stifles him as if he were a sparrow. Here, the drawing is not ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... Stewart, great-grandson of the Scotsman, was master of Riverview. His portrait, which hangs to-day to the left of the fireplace in the great hall, shows him a white-haired, red-faced, choleric gentleman, with gray eyes and proudly smiling mouth. He had been chosen a member of the House of Burgesses, as had his father before him, and was one of the most considerable men in the county. His son, Tom, was just twenty-one, and had inherited from his father the hasty ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... with contempt. He was always too choleric to hide his mind, and he answered with little pretense at civility. He gave them permission to go home, and sent a knife by them to their kindred. It was not for war, he told them, but that they might cut the veil that hung before their eyes, and see things as they ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... Hardwigg, my worthy uncle, is by no means a bad sort of man; he is, however, choleric and original. To bear with him means to obey; and scarcely had his heavy feet resounded within our joint domicile than he shouted for me to ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... a great blaze of splendor hidden somewhere behind the western mountain-tops; broad bars of fiery light were climbing the sky, and the chalets and the Alpine meadows shone in a soft crimson illumination. The Zemmbach, which is of a choleric temperament, was seething and brawling in its rocky bed, and now and then sent up a fierce gust of spray, which blew like an icy shower-bath, into the faces of ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to arrive. With him was a choleric-looking old gentleman, at sight of whom Tommy flushed up to the roots of his hair. He ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... me. He was a handsome man of a sinister type, and I regarded his expressionless face as that of a gambler. I didn't know that he was a poker player but it amused me to think so. Another buyer was a choleric Cornishman whom the other men sometimes goaded into paying five or six cents more than the market admitted, by shrewdly playing on his hot temper. A third was a tall gaunt old man of New England type, obstinate, honest, but of sanguine ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Cowardice than the Debauch of Falstaff, he would have been time enough to have shared in the danger of a fair and honest decision. But great men have, it seems, a privilege; "that in the GENERAL'S but a choleric word, which in the SOLDIER WERE flat blasphemy." Yet after all, Falstaff did really come time enough, as it appears, to join in the villainous triumphs of the day, to take prisoner Coleville ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... No, no, hang't; I was not afraid neither—though I confess he did in a manner snap me up—yet I can't say that it was altogether out of fear, but partly to prevent mischief—for he was a devilish choleric fellow. And if my choler had been up too, agad, there would have been mischief done, that's flat. And yet I believe if you had been by, I would as soon have let him a' had a hundred of my teeth. Adsheart, if he should come just now when I'm angry, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... governors of Canada was undoubtedly Louis de la Buade, Count de Frontenac, who administered public affairs from 1672-1687 and from 1689-1698. He was certainly impatient, choleric and selfish whenever his pecuniary interests were concerned; but, despite his faults of character, he was a brave soldier, dignified and courteous on important occasions, a close student of the character of the Indians, always ready when the necessity arose to adapt ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... since, as we trekked into the town, which at that time was still a small place, whom should we meet but Sir Alexander Somers, who, hearing that wagons were coming from Zululand, had ridden out in the hope of obtaining news of us. It seemed that the choleric old gentleman's anxiety concerning his son had so weighed on his mind that at length he made up his mind to proceed to Africa to hunt for him. So there he was. The meeting between the two was ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... furnace, a reveller and a jangler, accustomed to take toll thrice, and given to all the sins that then abounded. He is the most repulsive figure in the crowd, both vulgar and wicked. In contrast with him is the reve, or steward, of a lordly house,—a slender, choleric man, feared by servants and gamekeepers, yet in favor with his lord, since he always had money to lend, although it belonged to his master; an adroit agent and manager, who so complicated his accounts that no auditor could unravel them ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... is cleared, and the stranger—who is an amazingly ugly old man, with a rather benign though choleric countenance—speeds past the Misses Blake like a flash of lightning, and with a haste creditable to his years, but suggestive rather of fear ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... himself. This sensation, the common accompaniment of an attempt to do your duty, was just of the right strength to ensure that all his actions should be disastrous. It was, as you see, not strong enough to restrain him from exciting the dull and choleric mind of Sir John Burford; it did not avail to direct the ensuing storm. And then, having first failed to be sufficient check, it developed ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... Quin. A man of varied parts, though rough And choleric at times. Yet, at his best, As Falstaff, never matched, they say. But I Had not the fate to see him in ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... of forty-four who had the spending of a large income, she had made up her mind to abandon all hope of that sort of love which poets describe and which young people generally desire to experience. Sir Patrick at the time of his marriage was red-faced, stout, bald, very choleric, generous in money, suspicious in temper, and intelligent. He knew how to govern men. He could read and understand a book. There was nothing mean about him. He had his attractive qualities. He was a man who might be loved,—but ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Temperaments have been classified as sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic. The sanguine type is inclined to look on the bright side of things, to be optimistic; the melancholic tends to moodiness and gloom; the choleric is easily irritated, quick to anger; the phlegmatic is not easily aroused to emotion, is cold and sluggish. An individual seldom ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... choleric physician in argument was a mere matter of keeping one's own temper, and Shelby took no pride in his victory. It was a relief to know that he knew so little, but the possibility remained that, in the weakness of convalescence, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, until he knows whether the writer of it be a black[1] or a fair man, of a mild or choleric[2] disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... the filing of the complaint he was waited on in his office by a man only slightly known to him, Major Marmaduke Miles. The major's occupation in life was obscure. He was a red-faced, tightly buttoned, full-jowled, choleric Southerner of the ultra-punctilious brand, always well dressed in quaint and rather old-fashioned garments, with charming manners, and the reminiscence of good looks lost in a florid and apoplectic habit. This person entered Keith's office, greeted him formally, declined ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... complexion like a cranberry by candlelight, you will find that there is a degree of absolute certainty about what he thinks he knows that will put any young man to shame. I am specially convinced of this from the case of my friend Colonel Hogshead, a portly, choleric gentleman who made a fortune in the cattle-trade out in Wyoming, and who, in his later days, has acquired a chronic idea that the plays of Shakespeare are the one subject upon which he is most ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... out of sight. Shortly afterwards he returned for another burden, and this he repeated several times. I suppose he was building a nest,—at least, I know not what else could have been his object. Never was there such an active, cheerful, choleric, continually-in-motion fellow as this little red squirrel, talking to himself, chattering at me, and as sociable in his own person as if he had half a dozen companions, instead of being alone in the lonesome wood. Indeed, he ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... moral sense of educated men been outraged by common fraud and deceit for any continuance of a regime which had disgraced China for four long years to be humanly possible. Far and wide the word was rapidly passing that Yuan Shih-kai was not the man he had once been: he was in reality feeble and choleric—prematurely old from too much history-making and too many hours spent in the harem. He had indeed become a mere Colossus with feet of clay,—a man who could be hurled to the ground by precisely the same methods ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... was the occasion of his seldom visiting, except with those who were like himself in a state of happy singleness. In other points, he was a liberal, worthy man, and a perfect gentleman, but extremely choleric in disposition. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... three thousand men. [Footnote: Rumour had somewhat exaggerated the number of his force. It was only twenty-five hundred.] Here is part of his proclamation. He offers 'peace, liberty, and security,' or, 'war, slavery, and destruction.' Confound his impudence," exclaimed the choleric farmer, striking his fist on the table till the dishes rattled again. "He may whistle another tune before ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... Mohan Bai, or Chandra Babu, as he was usually called, was a rich banker with many obsequious customers. He was a short choleric man, very fond of his hookah, without which he was rarely seen in public. He had no family, except a wife who served him uncomplainingly, and never received a letter or was known to write one except in the course of business. His birthplace, ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... word, but he looked at her strangely; and she watched him with sudden keenness, leaning forward in her chair, her gaze alert but quiet, fixed on the dilating pupils of his eyes. He seemed to become dizzy, and the choleric scarlet which had overspread his broad face ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... which is expression, the Roman poet is at least equal to the Grecian, as I have said elsewhere; supplying the poverty of his language by his musical ear, and by his diligence. But to return: our two great poets, being so different in their tempers, one choleric and sanguine, the other phlegmatic and melancholic; that which makes them excel in their several ways is that each of them has follow'd his own natural inclination, as well in forming the design as in the execution of it. The very heroes shew their authors: Achilles ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... it aroused new affinities between individuals. People who up to this time had not a thought in common discovered all at once that they thought alike; and this resemblance drew them together. It was what people called "the Sacred Union." Men of all parties and temperaments, the choleric, the phlegmatic, monarchists, anarchists, clericals, Calvinists, suddenly forgot their everyday selves, their passions, their fads and their antipathies,—shed their skins. And there before you were now creatures, grouped in an unforeseen ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... frowning and muttering in his choleric fashion, but the fierce glitter began to go out of his eyes and his hands ceased to tremble and clutch at the things before him. The girl was silent, because again there seemed to her to be nothing ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... verge of the new.... A virtue he had which I should learn to imitate: he never spoke of what was disagreeable and past. His was a healthy mind. He had the most open contempt for all "clatter."... He was irascible, choleric, and we all dreaded his wrath, but passion never mastered him.... Man's face he did not fear: God he always feared. His reverence was, I think, considerably mixed with fear—rather awe, as of unutterable depths of silence through which flickered a trembling hope.... Let me learn of him. Let ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... gaming-houses he uttered wonders, and many more than can here be repeated—commending highly the patience of a certain gamester, who would remain all night playing and losing; yea, though of choleric disposition by nature, he would never open his mouth to complain, although he was suffering the martyrdom of Barabbas, provided only his adversary did not cut the cards. At a word, Rodaja uttered so many sage remarks, that, had it ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... as to block my path. (to audience) For damme, just tell me why a god like me hasn't as much right to hector people that hinder him as your paltry slave in the comedies? He brings word the ship is safe, or the choleric old man approaching: (magnificently) as for me, I hearken to the word of Jove and at his bidding do I now hie me hither. Wherefore 'tis still more seemly to get out, to get off the ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... store, or shop, or counting-room, Good Health will come and say: "Good-bye, I am going." You say: "Where are you going?" "Oh," says Good Health, "I am going to take a vacation!" It is a poor rule that will not work both ways, and your good health will leave you choleric and splenetic and exhausted. You coquetted with your good health in the summer-time, and your good health is coquetting with you in the winter-time. A fragment of Paul's charge to the jailer would be an appropriate inscription for the hotel-register in every watering-place: ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... was slow to believe that Roland could dislike his son, she could yet readily believe that he was harsh and choleric, with a soldier's high notions of discipline; the young man's story moved her, his determination pleased her own high spirit. Always with a touch of romance in her, and always sympathizing with each desire of ambition, she entered into ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of a choleric temper, friend Benteen. Great Heavens, what names have you English!" he exclaimed. "And you need greatly to practise better control over yourself, as such weakness is apt to lead one into just such scrapes as this of ours. Sacre! it hath been my failing ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... in 1751, by Peregrine Pickle, a book in similar taste, but the characters in which are even more striking. The forms of Commodore Trunnion, Lieutenant Hatchway, Pipes the boatswain, and Ap Morgan the choleric Welsh surgeon, are as familiar to us ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... to meet them). Welcome, captain. I have been somewhat choleric in your absence. (He conducts him to the corpse.) Be you judge between him and me. He meant to waylay ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... choleric royal governor, Lord Dunmore, dissolved the House of Burgesses he accomplished nothing save to increase the bitterness already existing. The Virginia representatives met and chose delegates to the General ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... glad of it. I knew it, somehow; before you told me. I was conscious of rapport between you and myself. You are patient, and I am choleric; you are quiet and pale, and I am tanned and fiery; you are a strict Protestant, and I am a sort of lay Jesuit: but we are alike— there is affinity between us. Do you see it, Mademoiselle, when you look in the glass? Do you observe that your forehead ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... play over, and well over, than the choleric and arbitrary M. Paul underwent a metamorphosis. His hour of managerial responsibility past, he at once laid aside his magisterial austerity; in a moment he stood amongst us, vivacious, kind, and social, shook hands with us all ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... humble friend. The dictum of this my friend comes from a quite different character than myself. He is a great man; he has read everything; seen everything; known everybody. Exception to him could be taken only on one ground. He is perfectly awful. He belongs to an old school; splenetic, choleric. He is Sir-Anthony-Absolute-like; a critic in the spirit of the thundering days of William Ernest Henley. His face is like a beefsteak. His frame is like "a mountain walking." His voice, Johnsonian. He knows more about literature than probably ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... one of Maecenas's circle. This position naturally gained him many enemies; nor was his character one to conciliate his less fortunate rivals. He was choleric and sensitive, prompt to resent an insult, though quite free from malice or vindictiveness. He had not yet reached that high sense of his position when he could afford to treat the envious crowd with ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... they began to arrest with all possible speed, and were more solicitous to procure their number than to make discriminations. Their diligence, however, was inadequate to appease the choleric legislator, and the Mayor, municipal officers, and all the administrators of the district, were in the morning sent to the Castle, whence they are to be conveyed, with some of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... writings read to them, they should account them as indentures, whereby they were made servants; and so, remembering their condition, ought not to set themselves up against their lords." And when they, knowing what a choleric husband she endured, marvelled that it had never been heard, nor by any token perceived, that Patricius had beaten his wife, or that there had been any domestic difference between them, even for one ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... DE, a French general, born in Auvergne, distinguished in the Seven Years' War, in the West Indies and during the Revolution; "last refuge of royalty in all straits"; favoured the flight of Louis XVI.; a "quick, choleric, sharp-discerning, stubbornly-endeavouring man, with suppressed-explosive resolution, with valour, nay, headlong audacity; muzzled and fettered by diplomatic pack-threads,... an intrepid, adamantine man"; did his utmost for royalty, failed, and quitted France; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... should be thirty feet further back, and had granted as consolation to the Tivoli the right to spread itself around the corner and wreck the work of the Brothers Adam. Could not this outrage be averted? There sprang from my lips that fiery formula which has sprung from the lips of so many choleric old gentlemen in the course of the past hundred years and more: 'I shall ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... resumed, after some moments of nursing his choleric feelings. "Would you debate further! The Holy Father for some unexplained reason inflicts a madman upon me! And I, innocent of what you are, obey his instructions and place you in the University—with what result? ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... up to that level?... I am very hot, very choleric. Thou hast seen me. Thou shalt not live. I will slay thee. I shall do such things as make the moon ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... had set all his hopes upon her, tarrying till she should have seen some little life before he asked her for his wife. He had her father's Godspeed to his wooing, for he was a man whom all men knew honest and generous as the sun, and only choleric with the mean thing. She, also, had given him good cause to think that he should one day take her to his home, a loved and honoured wife. His impulse, when her name passed the Prince's lips, was to draw his sword, for he would have called an emperor to account; but presently ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... been speaking in a low tone to the chiefs, and it inflamed a choleric man like Alloway to hear anyone saying words that he could not understand. He was not able to restrain himself ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the very worst kind of tempers are established upon the fretting care for trifles that I want to make war upon in the essay. A man is choleric. Well, it is a very bad thing; it tends to frighten those about him into falseness. He has outrageous bursts of temper. He is humble for days afterwards. His dependants rather like him after all. They know that "his bark is worse than his bite." Then there is ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... I noticed that when you handed over your gun to me so lamblike." He laughed it out flippantly, buoyantly, though it was on his mind to wonder whether the choleric little officer might not kill him out ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... mitigation of human ills was nothing but a sentimentality and a fad. A debate between this personage and Dr. Derwent was brought to a close by the latter's inextinguishable mirth. He was, indeed, a man who laughed heartily, and laughter often served him where another would have waxed choleric. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... their prestige enhanced, sent him sacks of chocolate, presents which the incorruptible Don Custodio returned, so that Ben-Zayb immediately compared him to Epaminondas. Nevertheless, this modern Epaminondas made use of the rattan in his choleric moments, and ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... choleric, whitehaired and bearded elder, rushes in, cudgel in hand, with an overwhelming retinue, and silences Osman with a sounding thwack. In a moment the back of the room is crowded with his followers. The Sheikh retreats a little towards his men; and the ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... torment a fellow critter? If Misser Mulford run, why put him down run, and let him go, I say, on'y mulk his wages; but what good it do anybody to starve him? Now dis is my opinion, gentle'em, and dat is, dat starwation be wuss dan choleric. Choleric kill, I knows, and so does starwation kill; but of de two, gib me de choleric fuss; if I gets well of dat, den try starwation ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Masterly I call it, and such it must appear to any dispassionate thinker. The beauty of my procedure seemed to consist in its perfect quietness. There was no vulgar bullying, no bravado of any sort, no choleric hectoring, and striding to and fro across the apartment, jerking out vehement commands for Bartleby to bundle himself off with his beggarly traps. Nothing of the kind. Without loudly bidding Bartleby depart—as an inferior genius might have done—I assumed the ground ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... alluded. Fear restrained him from open inquiry, and curiosity kept him from making good his escape during the orgy which followed. But his situation was beginning to become critical. Flash-in-the-Pan, who seemed to have been a man of choleric humor, taking fire during some hotly contested argument, discharged both his pistols at the breast of his opponent. The balls passed through on each side immediately below his armpits, making a clean hole, through which the horrified ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Herodotus (iv. 75) that the Scythians and Tartars intoxicated themselves by inhaling the vapour of a species of hemp thrown upon red hot stones. And the odour of the seeds of henbane alone, when its power is augmented by heat, produces a choleric and quarrelsome disposition, in those who inhale the vapour arising from them in this state. And in the "Dictionnaire de Medecine," (de l'Encyclopedie Methodique, vii, art. Jusquiaume) instances are quoted, the most remarkable of which ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... quab, a gudgeon; not that a gudgeon can be rubbed to much sense, but that a man grossly deceived is often called a gudgeon. Mr. Upton reads quail, which he proves, by much learning, to be a very choleric bird. Dr. Warburton retains gnat, which is found in the early quarto. Theobald would introduce knot, a small bird of that name. I have followed the text of the folio, and ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... that Philip was put on entering the school. The Rev. B. B. Gordon was a man by nature ill-suited to be a schoolmaster: he was impatient and choleric. With no one to call him to account, with only small boys to face him, he had long lost all power of self-control. He began his work in a rage and ended it in a passion. He was a man of middle height and of a corpulent figure; he ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... into his mind, the one mentioned by the choleric Pablo Valls when he recalled the burning of the Chuetas and Father Garau's little book. He was an elegant and gallant Febrer, who had kindled enthusiasm among the ladies of Palma at the famous auto de fe, with his new suit of Florentine cloth, embroidered in ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... at each doorway. In the middle of the open space was a table, and at it three chairs, in which sat his honour, another gentleman, and a choleric-looking man in the uniform of a captain of horse. Standing before the table handcuffed, and in the custody of three policemen, stood Flanagan and his comrade, whom I had last left back to back on Black ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... mastered?" he cried, trying with both hands to seize her beautiful black head to press a smack upon her lips. She thrust him back once, twice, with a more and more violent shove, but he returned to the attack, becoming ruder and more vehement. Then she lost her self-control, and the choleric family blood suddenly seethed in her veins. Bending down to the heap of bricks on which she had just sat, she grasped a fragment and, with the speed of lightning, dealt her persecutor a furious blow. Misfortune guided her hand, and she struck him full in the face. Pista ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... white roses in one hand, and a bunch of yellow roses in the other. A door closes above, and SIR WILLIAM CHESHIRE, in evening dress, comes downstairs. He is perhaps fifty-eight, of strong build, rather bull-necked, with grey eyes, and a well-coloured face, whose choleric autocracy is veiled by a thin urbanity. He speaks before he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... depraved appetite for human flesh. He was married at twenty-seven, and for twenty-eight years exercised his calling as a cow-herd. Nothing extraordinary was noticed in him, except his rudeness of manner and his choleric and gross disposition. In 1771, at the age of fifty-five, he met a young traveler in the woods, and accused him of frightening his cows; a discussion arose, and subsequently a quarrel, in which Goldschmidt ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... to this extent of fury, but give vent to their spleen in a more cool and calculating manner. Their temper, for being less fiery, is more bitter. They are choleric rather than bellicose. They do not fly to acts but to desires and well-laid plans of revenge. If the desire or deed lead to a violation of justice or charity, to scandal or any notable evil consequence, the sin is clearly mortal; the more so, if this inward brooding be of long ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... front of the curtain and walked swiftly over the little bridge from the stage to the stalls. He was a small, sturdy, thin-lipped, choleric man, who looked as if he were made up of energy; energy distilled and bottled. Some one had said of him that his hat was really a glass stopper, which might fly off at ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... condemned and slashed to pieces in the National Observer, his contemporaries imagined that Henley did nothing anywhere at any time save thunder and denounce and condemn and slash to pieces and that he was altogether a fierce, choleric, intolerant, impossible sort of a person. The chances are few now realize that Henley was enough of an influence in his generation for it to have mattered to anybody what manner of man he was. A glimpse of him remains here and there. Stevenson has left the description of his personality, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... and few crimes. They hurry past, smiting at their victim as they go. None the less they are misery. Mr. Britling in these moods did not perhaps experience the grey and hopeless desolations of the melancholic nor the red damnation of the choleric, but he saw a world that bristled with misfortune and error, with poisonous thorns and traps and swampy places and incurable blunderings. An almost insupportable remorse for being Mr. Britling would pursue him—justifying ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... general laughter. Another who has already embraced all his comrades in turn, breaks in among the gypsies and kisses them one after the other, swearing brotherhood to the bass fiddler and the clarinetist. At the farther end of the table sits a choleric fellow, whose habit it is always to end in riotous fights, and he begins his freaks by striking the table with his fist, and swearing he will kill the man who has worried him. Luckily he does not know with whom he is angry. The gay singer is not content with giving ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... The Choleric again are excessively vehement, and are angry at everything, and on every occasion; whence comes their Greek name signifying ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... image. Addison makes his Spectator remark, rather in joke than earnest, that "a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author." I am inclined to say nearly as much, without being the least in joke. I think I understand an author all the better for knowing ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... original submarine manifesto of February 4th, 1915, warning neutral vessels to keep out of the war zone, threatened a rupture with the United States. When two weeks later Washington sent a sharp note of protest to Berlin, the Germans became choleric every time they spoke of America or met ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... school of his father, in the exercise of war and hunting; Constantinople was yet spared; but in the three years of a short reign, he thrice led his armies into the heart of Bulgaria. His virtues were sullied by a choleric and suspicious temper: the first of these may be ascribed to the ignorance of control; and the second might naturally arise from a dark and imperfect view of the corruption of mankind. On a march in Bulgaria, he consulted on a question of policy his principal ministers; and the Greek logothete, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... looked straight into his opponent's eye so long for nothing. He knew now that de Mezy was choleric and impatient, that he would attack at once with a vigorous arm and a furious heart, expecting a quick and easy victory. His reading of the mind through the eye was vindicated as de Mezy immediately forced the combat, cutting and thrusting with a fire and power that ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... man has a temper that you have slighted his suit?" interrupted the matron, peevishly. "Child, child, don't you know that every man that is worth his salt has a warm constitution? Why, the tales and warnings that were brought to me of the general's choleric nature when he was wooing me were enough to fright any woman. And true they were, for once roused, his wrath is terrible. Yet to me he has ever been the kindest and most amiable ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... vibrant cra-a-sh! of a revolver, somewhere off to his left. The president! That was his first thought. One glance across the room to where the chief executive stood, in conversation with two other gentlemen, reassured him. The choleric blue eyes of the president had opened a little at the sound, then he calmly resumed the conversation. Mr. Grimm impulsively started toward the little group, but already a cordon was being drawn there—a cordon of quiet-faced, keen-eyed men, unobstrusively ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... before the eyes of the populace—but what he did next was more amazing than all the rest. Having sourly admitted to himself that he was a coward when he was alone with the girl, he took advantage of this moment when his choleric desperation gave him fictitious courage. He slashed into the situation with what weapons he had at hand—and he held a reserve weapon, so he thought, in the big wallet that thrust its bulk reassuringly against his breast. "This thing seems to have come to a climax; and it ain't through ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... to be crushed under an anvil, counting the strokes. I had dropped my book, and was staring listlessly out of the window. At the other end of the compartment my fellow-passenger had pulled down the blinds, and hidden his face behind the Western Morning News. He was a red and choleric little man of about sixty, with a protuberant stomach, a prodigious nose, to which he carried snuff about once in two minutes, and a marked deformity of the shoulders. For comfort—and also, perhaps, to hide this hump—he rested his back in the angle ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and there was a short interval of silence; he was, doubtless, making the tea. Presently there was a violent ringing, and before it could be answered, another ringing still more violent. "Bless me! what a choleric old gentleman!" The waiter came down in a huff. The butter was rancid, the eggs were overdone, the ham was too salt:—the stout gentleman was evidently nice in his eating; one of those who eat and growl, and keep ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... emigre passed ten years of his life in a foreign country, and never learned to speak its language. The young men of our times are not like those of to-day. The world, which when I knew it was so gay and careless, which from its very recklessness and its choleric daring was so interesting, now looks to me like a vast school. Its atmosphere, formerly impregnated with perfumes, is now saturated with the atmosphere of dusty tomes and damp newspapers. We meet with no one but persons anxious ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... whose Life we are now about to write, was a student in the garden with those named above; and he was not only powerful in person, and proud and fearless in spirit, but also by nature so overbearing and choleric, that he was for ever tyrannizing over all the others both with words and deeds. His chief profession was sculpture, yet he worked with great delicacy in terra-cotta, in a very good and beautiful manner. But not being able to endure that any one should surpass ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... Virtue") performed at Whitehall on Twelfthnight, 1617. During the play, twelve cavaliers in masks, the central figure of whom was Prince Charles, chose partners, and danced every kind of dance, until they got tired and began to flag; whereupon King James, "who is naturally choleric, got impatient, and shouted aloud, 'Why don't they dance? What did you make me come here for? Devil take you all, dance!' On hearing this, the Marquis of Buckingham, his majesty's most favored minion, immediately sprang forward, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dry, choleric and thin persons; these, even at a mature age, should seldom indulge in this passion, as their bodies are already in want of moisture and pliability, both of which are much diminished by the sexual ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... enemy—especially on wet and stormy nights—they would engender a sense of strain and insecurity among our opponents that could not be without an appreciable influence on their temper and moral throughout the campaign. The tents of commanding officers of notoriously choleric nature should be the objects of persistent attention ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... American caused an avaricious glint to leap into the other's eyes. Plainly, two master passions fought for supremacy: an inordinate greed for money and a choleric determination to prohibit any further attentions to his wife. The struggle was brief, for the vehemence of his enmity, triumphant, the hope of immediate emolument was sacrificed, and the rooking of the young man postponed to some future occasion. Then, subtly concealing ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... choleric!" pleaded the knight, leaning anxiously across the table. "What terms do ye offer, Master Droop? Come, man, give a show of reason ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... are now understood to have had no basis except in the waste brains of courtier men and women; but their existence there can become tragical enough. Add to which, the Great Elector, like all the Hohenzollerns, was a choleric man; capable of blazing into volcanic explosions, when affronted by idle masses of cobwebs in the midst of his serious businesses! It is certain, the young Prince Friedrich had at one time got into quite high, shrill and mutually minatory ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... their tents and their houses therein—it is a pretty place. There the rich men come and seethe in their gold all summer; and Lazarus comes to see whether he cannot marry Dives's daughter. And the choleric architect, dissatisfied with the face of Nature, strikes her many a dread blow, and produces an unhealthy eruption wherever he strikes, and calls the things he makes houses. Here also, on Sunday afternoon, young gentlemen and younger ladies patrol in pairs, and discourse of the ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... as thou art, Since they do better thee in their command. Thou hold'st a place, for which the pained'st fiend Of hell would not in reputation change: Thou art the damned doorkeeper to every Coistrel that comes inquiring for his Tib; To the choleric fisting of every rogue Thy ear is liable, thy food is such As hath been ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... words A scheme of villainy is soon bewrayed. Thou art his father, therefore canst not pay In kind a son's most impious outrages. O listen to him; other men like thee Have thankless children and are choleric, But yielding to persuasion's gentle spell They let their savage mood be exorcised. Look thou to the past, forget the present, think On all the woe thy sire and mother brought thee; Thence wilt thou draw this lesson without fail, Of evil ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... who is subjected to choleric outbursts should never send for anything but food an hour before dinner, for the reason that a very trivial thing looks, at that time, big enough to wreck the nation. Bissell, however, failed to recollect this simple truth, and greeted his daughter with ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan |
