"Fret" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the kingdom of heaven as Sodom and Gomorrah. We speak of rulers' sins, that ye may mourn for them, lest ye be judged with them. If ye do not mourn for them in secret, know that they are your sins, ye are companions with them. Many fret, grudge, and cry out against oppression, but who weeps in secret? Who prays and deprecates God's wrath, lest it come upon them? And while it is so, the oppression of rulers becomes the sin of the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... how it angered me at the time! It made me fret all the more for—her. Why had she broken faith? I knew that she had not. Something had kept her; had he? I had hoped he was out of the way; he left her so much. He was really on the watch, as you may know. At last I got up and went to the window. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... people who fell in love at first sight have made splendid marriages. But it does not always happen so. Sometimes this physical attraction remains the only bond between two people. Sometimes in the other departments of life they actually fret and annoy one another. Sometimes a friendship refuses to grow up. Sometimes even while the attraction still exists contempt lurks behind it. And that means that it is entirely unsafe to get engaged on the basis of a mere physical attraction. There is really something impersonal ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... paper from her hand. He smiled inwardly to himself, subduing his fret of impatience. "You will not object to let me talk it over," he said, "first ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... at me with something like a smile upon his bloodless lips. "Fret not thyself, Ralph Percy," he said. "Within a week I shall be gone. Did you see my servant, my Italian doctor, lying dead upon the floor, there beyond the screen? He had poisons, had Nicolo whom men called the Black Death,—poisons swift and strong, or subtle ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... have said that I had a favourite motto, which was, "Never fret." It has often stood me in good stead and helped me to obey it. I was once put to it, however, on my way to open the Commission at Bangor on the Welsh Circuit. The Assizes were to commence on the following day. It was a very glorious afternoon, and ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... old granny, don't you fret and worry any, For I'll soon come back and tell you whether this is work or play; There can't be mischief in it, so I won't be gone a minute"— For a minute then I started. I was ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... persons. It may be said that one day the tree itself must die, and the leaves no longer live therein; and so, also, that the very God or Life of the World will one day perish, as all that is born must surely in the end die. But they who fret upon such grounds as this must be in so much want of a grievance that it were a cruelty to rob them of one: if a man who is fond of music tortures himself on the ground that one day all possible combinations and permutations of sounds will have been exhausted so that there can be ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... Majesty's army with gladness in his heart. After he had found the column and had got into the Lilliputian forest with its stunted, bushy trees and its sandy soil, he was brought face to face with the greatest enemy that can harass, fret, and wear down nerves of steel—absence of water. A commander whose mind is racked by the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of finding water for his troops is like the man haunted day and night, waking and sleeping, by debt. "This was our menu," says Baden-Powell: ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... pretty close-fisted here, for a fact, but you can manage to rub along somehow. If you should get into any real difficulties, why, I guess—" the lawyer paused to smile in a hesitating, significant way—"I guess some road out can be found all right. The main thing is, don't fret, and don't allow your wife ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... stern the estrangement be, However time with laggard lapse may fret, That haunt of our fond friendship I shall hold As loved this hour as when elate I see Its draperies, dark with absence and regret, Slide softly back ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales of the golden future? Hope herself, does she not spread her radiant wings above its head? Does it not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of sorrow and its tears of joy? Does it not fret for trifles, cry for the pretty pebbles with which to build its shifting palaces, for the flowers forgotten as soon as plucked? Is it not eager to grasp the coming time, to spring forward into life? Love is our second transformation. Childhood and love were ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... thing at lovers' parting," he said; "but time rubs the rough edges off matters that fret our minds the worst. Days and nights, and plenty of 'em, are the best cure ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... odd in their expression of mingled fun and sadness; he was trying to feel sorry and ashamed, as he knew he ought, but penitence was so very difficult to him. 'Dear little mother, don't fret; I'll do better for the future,' ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... voiaige que cestuy et rendre iceulx galyons et nefs prestz, et apareillez a faire led. voiaige dedans deux moys de ce jourduy Par ainsy que nous Admiral et Ango, prenderons au retour dud. voiaige, pour le fret et noleage desd. gallyous et nef, le cart de toutes les marchandises qui reviendront et seront rapportes par iceulx, sans aucune ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... mournful imaginings of rainy days. When the sun reappears, the soul grows clear like the sky, and there succeeds to my brief discouragement a state of mind in which it appears to me so foolish and so cowardly to fret because I see a change in my face, to mourn the careless light-heartedness of my youth, to rebel against the laws of nature in a burst of angry regret, that I am overcome with shame. I rouse myself, I scramble to my feet, I seize hold of my faith, my hopes, my intentions, I set ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... hold fast to his ideals and struggle upward with a courage born of inspiration. Living among such goodly people, he finds his world resplendent with the virtues that prove a halo to life. With such people about him he can be neither lonely nor despondent. If the cares of life fret him for the moment, he takes counsel with them and his equilibrium is restored. In their company he finds life a joyous experience, for their very presence exhales the qualities ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... away on the breeching and trot gently. He could tell, merely by glancing at a rise in the roadway, whether a slow, steady pull was needed, or if the time had come to stick in his toe-calks and throw all of his two thousand pounds on the collar. He had learned not to fret himself into a lather about strange noises, and not to be over-particular as to the kind of company in which he found himself working. Even though hitched up with a vicious Missouri Modoc on one side and a raw, half collar-broken ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... the forecastle. No boats came off. Sharpe began to fret; for the wind, though light, had now got to the N.W., and they were wasting it. After a while the captain came on deck, and ordered all the carronades to be scaled. The eight heavy reports bellowed the great ship's impatience across ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the sea and dash back the foam of the waves, unmoved by their fury. Recently I have stood upon New England's shore, and have seen the waves of a troubled sea dash upon the granite which frowns over the ocean, have seen the spray thrown back from the cliff, and the receding wave fret like the impotent rage of baffled malice. But when the tide had ebbed, I saw that the rock was seamed and worn by the ceaseless beating of the sea, and fragments riven from the rock were lying on ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... can do more good to all by being away. And my wages have been raised. I couldna leave just now. Oh, I dare say we shall do very well. But, Christie, you must not fret and be discontented, and think what you do is not worth while. It is the motive that makes the work of any one's life great or small. It is little matter, in one sense, whether it be teaching children, or washing dishes, or ruling a kingdom, if it is done in the right way and from right ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... Bru. Away, slight man! Cas. Is 't possible? Bru. Hear me, for I will speak. Must I give way and room to your rash choler? Shall I be frighted when a madman stares? Cas O ye gods! ye gods! Must I endure all this? Bru. All 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 humor? By the gods, You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Though it do split ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Pleasing most when most I speak; The delight of old and young, Though I speak without a tongue. Nought but one thing can confound me, Many voices joining round me; Then I fret, and rave, and gabble, Like the labourers of Babel. Now I am a dog, or cow, I can bark, or I can low; I can bleat, or I can sing, Like the warblers of the spring. Let the lovesick bard complain, And I mourn the cruel pain; Let the happy swain rejoice, And I join my helping voice: Both are ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the crosses in a manner indicated in these articles you find that the pieces do not exactly fit to form a square, you may be certain that the fault is entirely your own. Either your cross was not exactly drawn, or your cuts were not made quite in the right directions, or (if you used wood and a fret-saw) your saw was not sufficiently fine. If you cut out the puzzles in paper with scissors, or in cardboard with a penknife, no material is lost; but with a saw, however fine, there is a certain loss. In the case of most puzzles this slight loss is not sufficient to be ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... it was not right to trouble this man, —as we have no just cause of ill will against him. But it is certainly useless to fret yourself about Hagiwara Sama, because his heart has changed towards you. Now once again, my dear young lady, let me beg you not to think ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... "Oh, well; never fret!" she managed to say at last. "Plenty more dances before I'm dead. We won't make a ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... the fire. Therefore they must needs spread farre vnder the earth. And I dare well say, if nature would giue leaue to man by Art, to dresse the roots of trees, to take away the tawes and tangles, that lap and fret and grow superfluously and disorderly, (for euery thing sublunary is cursed for mans sake) the tops aboue being answerably dressed, we should haue trees of wonderfull greatnes, and infinite durance. ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... not that that has 'ampered Miss Norah much, I will say, seein' how she rides an' all. I'm sure it's a picture to see her on that there Bobs, an' the dumb beast knows every single word she says to him. They'll fret for each other cruel, Bobs an' her, when she goes ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... "Don't you fret!" Neifkins interrupted impatiently. "You've worried until you're all worked up over somethin' that hasn't happened and ain't ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... of August) not knowing the length of the straight and dangers thereof, we tooke it our best course to returne with notice of our good successe for this small time of search. And so returning in a sharpe fret of Westerly windes the 29. of September we arriued at Dartmouth. And acquainting master Secretary with the rest of the honourable and worshipfull aduenturers of all our proceedings, I was appointed againe the second yere to search the bottome of this straight, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... the boy said in a low voice, "thar's no call vor to fret. It warn't thy fault; thou couldn't not tell why oi would not let ee pass, and ye were roight enough to foight rather than to toorn back. I doan't blame ee nohow, and thou stoodst up well agin me. Oi doan't bear no malice vor a fair foight, not loikely. Thy feyther has been roight good ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... "Oh, don't you fret," Jack Herring interrupted him—"a pretty boy like you! We will give a ball next season, and bring you out, if you're good—get you off our ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... between the white fret of Lachine Rapids and the dense forests that shrouded the base of Mount Royal. Checkerboard squares of farm patches had been cleared in the woods. La Salle's old thatch-roofed seigniory lay not far back from the water. St. Anne's ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... know of, but we'll rake one up somewhere, don't you fret. And, I say, this is a fine way to welcome a visitor; you haven't even said how-do to your host and ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... home life as any ordinary man, and we have a little baby—my wife used to worry terribly. She'd expect me to come home on a stretcher. But I never happened to choose that conveyance, and she don't fret any more. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... awkward hand upon Elisabeth's dark hair, and began stroking it the wrong way. "I say, I wish you wouldn't fret so; it's more than I can stand to see you so wretched. Isn't there anything that I can do to make ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... about him, but he's an aisy kind o' man, my lady, an' he said he would, an' he never did to this day; an' John, he always said it was no use sinding for the doctor, an' looked so swate at me, an' said for me not to fret, for sure he'd be better soon, or he'd go to a better place. An' I thought he was already like a heavenly angel itself, an' always was, but then more nor ever. Och! it's soon that he'll be one entirely! let Father Shannon say what ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the sincere true man. 'How kind it is,' he said, with a slight French accent and in a pensive tone, 'to come to see me; and how wise, too, to leave that crazy city.' He then shook me warmly by the hand. 'Do you know,' he continued, 'how I wonder that men can consent to swelter and fret their lives away amid those hot bricks and pestilent vapours, when the woods and fields are all so near? It would kill me soon to be confined in such a prison house; and when I am forced to make an occasional visit there, it fills me with ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... said John, with equanimity. "Let Lionel Verner produce it, and I'll vacate the next hour. That will never turn up: don't you fret yourself, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "Fret not for thy sword, Sir Scout." she replied, "neither flatter thyself that Circe wastes her spells on all who come her way. Those only will ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... Trot with a basket of eggs, He used his pipes and she used her legs; She danced about till the eggs were all broke, She began for to fret, but he laughed at ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... dear," said she, "that I do not approve of dwelling upon troubles. You know I never encourage my children to fret about ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... poor cross little things who fret and tease and worry are the ones who should be praised when they make an effort not to be disagreeable. But I am not going to preach any more. I am going down-stairs to make some sponge-cake for the picnic you and Lisa and I are going ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... his merry flight, And the little bird is right. No deserter, child, is he, Who escapes to liberty. Air and sun and open sky Birdie likes, as you and I. Paid to him is now your debt, And I'm glad: so do not fret. ...
— The Nursery, July 1877, XXII. No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... which walks the earth: holding the lover ever in the strain of apprehension, it inures him to unwearying worship, and itself moving in regions incorruptible, never loses the glory of its first hour. The years may pass, but one face, like a hallowed thing, abides continually; years may fret and corrode other ideals, but to this they add beauties of ever fresh significance. The auroral glow is always round it, brightening the world, until it becomes an emblem of illumination and the symbol of eternal truths. This visionary presence ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... have confused recollections of that illness. I especially remember the tenderness with which my mother tried to soothe me in my waling hours of fret and pain, and the agony and bewilderment with which I awoke after a tossing half sleep, and turned my eyes, so dry and hot, to the wall away from the once-loved light, which came to me dim and yet more dim each day. But, except for these fleeting memories, if, indeed, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... six-footers, whose lives have ever passed at hard work in the open air, groan and sigh incessantly under the burden of minor afflictions, worry every one with their querulousness, moan for their wives, mothers, or sweethearts, and the comforts of the homes they have left, and finally fret and grieve themselves into the grave, while slender, soft-muscled boys bear real distress without a murmur, and survive sickness and wounds that by all rules ought ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... why they should ever be that, Millicent. As it is we have both sufficient for anything any man or woman could reasonably want, and neither of us need fret over it if the treasure is never found. Still, he wished us to have it, and it is properly ours, and I don't want it to go to enrich someone who has not a shadow of a right ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... these would not forget The pangs which love to all its victims bears, The fever of the brain, the ceaseless fret, And all the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... to have you, 'tis but fair, all in our turn; won't be chorused; Master Harrel's had his share. Sorry could not get you that sweetheart! would not bite; soon find out another; never fret." ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... it odd that Henrietta should "fret so much about Evelyn's children whom she had never seen. She has always seemed to make so much more fuss over them than over her own nephews and nieces in England. Of course, it was natural that dear Evelyn herself should be ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... near.) Do not go fret after her, McDonough. She could not go through the world forever, and travelling the world. It might be ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... is no coal for the grate, and no clothes for the bed, and the thin bones are seen through the ragged clothes, does the rich man share his plenty with me, as he ought to do, if his religion wasn't a humbug? When I lie on my death-bed and Mary (bless her!) stands fretting, as I know she will fret," and here his voice faltered a little, "will a rich lady come and take her to her own home if need be, till she can look round, and see what best to do? No, I tell you it's the poor, and the poor only, as does such things for the poor. Don't think to come over me ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... distinctly does tire. No matter how much he may love a woman, too much lovemaking becomes cloying to him, and he wants to get away. Even mere proximity, if too prolonged, becomes irksome to him, and he begins to fret and fidget, and pull at his chains, even if the chains are but of gossamer. Woman should know ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... to be found in it."—"Who said there were?" said Kazuma testily. His eyes were taking in the wide proportions of the garden, the spreading roof and eaves of a stately mansion. As they passed along the ro[u]ka to a sitting room Cho[u]bei called his attention to the fret work (rama-sho[u]ji) between the rooms, the panelled ceilings, the polished and rare woodwork of tokonoma (alcoves). A kakemono of the severe Kano school was hung in the sitting room alcove, a beautifully arranged vase of flowers ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... But she always wants him to be by her. If he's a few minutes late, she knows it, and begins to fret and worry.' ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... awake at night and fret and fume, to think Of bank officials on a spree with what he's toiled to get. He is not driven by his woe quite to the verge of drink By wondering if his balance in ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... wide, high room, panelled with fresh oak, and hung with a little old tapestry here and there, and a few portraits. A staircase rose out of it to the upper story. It had a fret-ceiling, with flower-de-luce and rose pendants, and on the walls between the tapestries hung a few antlers and pieces of armour, morions and breast-plates, with a pair of pikes or halberds here and there. A fire had been lighted in the great hearth ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... them disdain and fret till they are weary! We in ourselves have that shall make us merry; Which he that wants and had the power to know it, Would give his life that he might ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... Comedy, all kinds of plays— (No dramatist should ever be without 'em)— And, just conceive the bliss— There is so little of the goose about 'em, One's safe from any hiss! Ah! who can paint that first great awful night, Big with a blessing or a blight, When the poor dramatist, all fume and fret, Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright, Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness—more f's yet: Flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat, Add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that, Funeral, fate-foreboding—sits in doubt, Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage To ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... development is accomplished under the stress of many demands. One claim balances the other; a touch of hardness and privation gives strength of mind and makes self-denial a reality; a little anxiety teaches foresight and draws out resourcefulness, and the tendency to fret about trifles is corrected by the contact ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... for the high colours with which a tale that has grown stale is apt to be daubed, I am forced to admit the inference that a mean, sordid, contentious woman probably did as much as was in her power to harass and fret one of the best men in Germany, or in the world. Luckily for himself, Albrecht was a severe student, had much engrossing work which carried him abroad, and travelled once at least far away from the harassing and galling home ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... likes—it is not often he does—and when he don't, he tells me with great energy, and I fret and alter. I have thrown them in to soften the ferocity of our Infidel, and, for a dying man, have given him a good deal to say ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... mischief, while those who have any good in them have chances given them to lead a new life.' Why some of them are getting to be well-to-do bodies, Nic, and married and have children, who will grow up better people in a new land. Don't you fret about the convicts, boy; but take them as you find them. When you have to do with the bad ones, keep them at a distance; and when you have to do with the good and repentant, just shut your eyes to the past and open them as wide as you can to the future. Sure, Nic, I'm the governor's ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... sun says winter is done, He'll gladden us all with his cheery song; And never will fret if the season is wet, Or wail that the winter was ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... some rich and noble house. I was handsome enough still, but he never looked at me at the banquets. I came across him at least twenty times, but he avoided me as if I were tainted with leprosy, and I began to fret, and fell ill of a fever. The doctors said it was all over with me, so I sent him a letter in which there was nothing but these words: 'Beki is dying, and would like to see Assa once more,' and in the papyrus I put his first present—a plain ring. And what was the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... may do well to lighten the ship, but not by throwing overboard the ordnance; for you can but drop them close to the ship's side, and where the water is shallow they will lie up against the side of the ship and fret it, and with the working of the sea make ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... talked to his reflection in the mirror. This method of procedure he found to work capitally, for it relieved his sometimes overburdened mind with absolute security to himself. Did not the barber of Midas when he found out what was under the royal crown of his master, fret and chafe over his secret, until one morning he stole to the reeds by the river, and whispered, "Midas, has ass's ears?" In the like manner Mr. Gorby felt a longing at times to give speech to his innermost secrets; and having no fancy ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... American citizen would resent with heat the regulations regarded as a matter of course in France. He would fume and fret and all but rebel, if asked to live as the French people are forced to live during ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... I fancy.' He laughed a little bitterly. 'I certainly meant to do them some good, and I even thought I had succeeded. My dear aunt, people don't always like being done good to. I remember that myself when I was a small boy. I used to fret and fume at the things which were done for my good; that was because I was a child. The crowd ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... of prosperous life, With little grief, or fear, or fret: She, loved and loving long ago, Is loved and ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... going up to Philip and putting a kind hand on his shoulder. 'What's amiss? What's wrong to-day may prove right on the morrow, so never fret, lad.' ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... in the inverse ratio of those displayed by Lady Binks, and that, though ashamed to testify, or perhaps incapable of feeling, any anxious degree of jealousy, his temper had been for some time considerably upon the fret; a circumstance concerning which his fair moiety did not think it necessary to give herself ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... alone, the noble and patient heart that beat within her breast. I am not sure that they acknowledged even to themselves that they had always been lovers; they could not consent to anything so definite or pronounced; but they were happy in being together in the world. Esther was untouched by the fret and fury of life; she had lived in sunshine and rain among her silly sheep, and been refined instead of coarsened, while her touching patience with a ramping old mother, stung by the sense of defeat and mourning her lost activities, had given ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... considered as not less extraordinary, the captain, who was very avaricious, did not attempt to take it from me, there being only him and I on board; for the rest were all gone ashore trading. Sometimes the people did not come off for some days: this used to fret the captain, and then he would vent his fury on me by beating me, or making me feel in other cruel ways. One day especially, in his wild, wicked, and mad career, after striking me several times with different things, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... the city behind us. That is how I always feel when I'm on my way home again. The ranch is home to me, you know. I was born there. I do not know what would happen to me if I was unable to return home at least once every week. It takes me away from all the fret ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... self-preservation, I care not what you call it, which so often makes the American farmer a far better politician than nine tenths of the best read European political philosophers—works under all this tumult and confusion of tongues. The newspapers and politicians fret and fume and shout and denounce; but the great mass, the nineteen or twenty millions, work away in the fields and workshops, saying little, thinking much, hardy, earnest, self-reliant, very tolerant, very indulgent, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... Then it would fret between its banks until the spangled frills of the mimulus were all tattered with its spray. Often at the end of the summer it was worn quite thin and small with running, and not able to do more than reach ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... I don't want my job to turn me into an ogre. There are people who don't feel that way about me." He laughed slyly. "Don't you fret about being haled into court. Several persons besides ourselves wish to meet those two distinguished gentlemen we are after. When we get them they will have to be shipped to Chicago and various other cities. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... And the absurdity of the thing! Such a mixture of relationships as it would have been! I should never have entertained the thought for a moment. And he ought to have spoken to me first, and spared you all this. No, you needn't fret; he deserves all he suffers, for what he has inflicted ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... sir; don't you fret about that. We see how it is. We only wish we could do something ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... the supposed illegitimate daughter of Adelbert Beaucaire, and a slave woman. There is no reason why I should fret about her, is there? She is my property already by law." He laughed again, the same ugly sneering laugh of triumph, "That was why I was so particular about the wording of that bill of sale—I would rather have her than the whole bunch ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... until he should give me into the hands of my lawful protector. I thanked him with true English reserve, and a coldness that seemed rather to grate on his warm feelings; and having owned that his seeing my Newfoundland dog well fed and lodged would be a great obligation, I withdrew to fret alone over my exile to this foreign land. You may call this an exaggeration, but it is no such thing. I delight in dwelling upon my reluctant approach to the land that I was ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... know what I am. Were my husband not still living it would be the same. I should never under any circumstances marry again. I have passed the period of a woman's life when as a woman she is loved; but I have not outlived the power of loving. I shall fret about you, Phineas, like an old hen after her one chick; and though you turn out to be a duck, and get away into waters where I cannot follow you, I shall go cackling round the pond, and always have my eye upon you." He was holding her now by the hand, but he could not speak ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... suavity, devotional fervency and beaming esoteric consciousness, which is intensely attractive to some minds and realizes beyond rivalry a particular ideal—that of ecclesiastical saintliness and detachment from secular fret and turmoil. It should not be denied that he did not always escape the pitfalls of such a method of treatment, the faces becoming sleek and prim, with a smirk of sexless religiosity which hardly eludes the artificial or even the hypocritical; on other minds, therefore, and these some of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... are marred by incompatibility of temper than by actual immorality, and, surely, if two people find they have made a mistake, and are irritants instead of sedatives to one another, they should not be left to champ and fret like horses at too severe a bit, for all their long sad lives—to mar one another's happiness, to worry their children, and annoy their friends. Our hideously cruel separation orders merely encourage immorality. Finland shows us an excellent example. The very fact of being ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... to him then, for no one saw the strange woman but only Connla. "He is speaking to a high woman that death or old age will never come to," she said. "I am asking him to come to Magh Mell, the Pleasant Plain where the triumphant king is living, and there he will be a king for ever without sorrow or fret. Come with me, Connla of the Red Hair," she said, "of the fair freckled neck and of the ruddy cheek; come with me, and your body will not wither from its youth and its comeliness ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... then 6, and then 4, and then 9 againe, and deeper; but 3 fadome was the last, 2 leagues off from the shore. This breach is in 35. degr. and a halfe, and lyeth at the very Northeast point of Croatoan, whereas goeth a fret out of the maine Sea into the inner waters, which part the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... appearance, some of it having the characteristic surface finish and color of the Rio Grande ware. A small amount of ancient pottery also occurs here, some of the fragments of black and white ware displaying intricate fret patterns. The quantity of these potsherds is quite small, and they occur mainly in the refuse ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... not insist—why fret him to confess what she knew the instant she read "Schulze" on the box? After an hour she heard him breathing as only a sleeper can breathe; but she watched on until morning. When they were dressing, each looked at the other furtively from time to time, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... are times When all this fret and tumult that we hear Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear His ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... night, she was so much fatigued, having been up very early, that she did not wake till she was nearly undressed, when, finding herself in a house where she had never before been, she looked about, but was too good to fret at such a circumstance, though she wished to be at home again. The next morning they renewed their journey, and in two days arrived at Mr. Piner's house about eight o'clock in ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... sat down in the big rocker and drew Mary Rose close to her heart. "Don't you fret yourself, Mary Rose," she said with her lips against Mary Rose's tear-stained face. "We'll find Jenny Lind. Sure, we'll find her. Just you pretend she's gone for a visit. You've loaned her to 'most everyone in the buildin', just you pretend she's ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... that are cheated by great men, for they lose their money and must say nothing. It is the best discovery of humours, especially in the losers, where you have fine variety of impatience, whilst some fret, some rail, some swear, and others more ridiculously comfort themselves with philosophy. To give you the moral of it; it is the emblem of the world, or the world's ambition: where most are short, or over, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... an answering squeeze that brought the tears to her eyes, as he whispered in return, "That's all right, old lady. Don't you fret ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... fret, man," says he, taking leave. "Kill time with the champagne of El Paso. We will be back in a squirrel's jump; and, trust me, I will bring you a mule-load of Mexican shiners. God ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... dinner will keep; let it cool, let it cool. And Madam may worry and fret, And children half-starved go to school, go to school;— He can't think ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... and revenged the other's hated touch, his gray eyes held a pleased, proud look. Once more in the soiled big shirt and trousers, with the strap coiled about his middle, he could put Barber aside for the day—not brood about him, harboring ill-will, nor sulk and fret. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Byerdale permitted his fulfilling them, the Duke sent off a special messenger with a note beseeching him not to fail. The dinner hour, however, arrived; the various guests made their appearance; the cook began to fret, and to declare to his understrappers that the Duke always spoilt the dinner; but Wilton had not yet come, and the Duke was anxious, if but to obtain five words ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... "Don't fret, dear," said my mother; "you've done your best and given up everything. But tell me, Harry," she cried, "what did my poor brother do? Had he ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... short. Oh, yes, I knew all about you beforehand, although you happen to be the newest girl. Dad wrote me a whole page—wonderful for him!—and said he'd stayed at your house in London, and I was to tack myself on to you and show you round, and see you didn't fret and all the rest of it. Are you wanting a crony, temporary or otherwise? Then here I am at your service. Link an arm and we'll parade the place. I guess by the time we've finished there's not much you won't know about the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... at the chimney bricks and their substance seemed to part before my eyes. I looked into a world beyond—a fabric of moonlight and hilltop and the hot fret of youth. Perhaps the boy had only been waiting for the fire upon the hearth to cool to enter this other world of ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... "Don't fret yourself, my son. We've bought the gun all right; an' the next time we meet, you can hand it over. I wish our pile had been bigger so's we could have given twenty, 'cause a kid ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... the summer morning coming through the Venetian blinds? Somehow there was a sense of sculpture, even without the beautiful body. Seven years have passed. She has enjoyed seven years of peace and rest; we have endured seven years of fret and worry. Life of course was never worth living, but the common stupidity of the nineteenth century renders existence for those who may see into the heart of things almost unbearable. I confess that every day man's stupidity seems to me more and more miraculous. Indeed ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Seth had dropped out of a wind-blown cloud into a quiet garden, sweetly fenced about and away from the jar and fret of ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... fret not after knowledge—I have none, And yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge—I have none, And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens At thought of idleness cannot be idle, And he's ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace; While her mother did fret and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume, And the bride-maidens whispered, "'Twere better by far To have matched our fair ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... other responded, "Oh, hell! If you'd been in this business as long as I have, and seen all the different kinds of shysters that are trying to plunder the railroads, you'd not fret about justice. The way the public has got itself worked up just at present, you can win almost any case you can get before a jury, and there are men who spend all their time hunting up cases ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... objective point. If he comes toward the upper Potomac, follow on his flank and on his inside track, shortening your lines while he lengthens his. Fight him, too, when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is, fret him and ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... I shall come out to-morrow and talk it over with you. Good-by; and, above all, do not fret until you know that you really have a cause ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... unwilling to face their own incompetence, thwarting authority while professing to serve it. With a compound of arrogance and humility they demand of the people more submission than kings expect, and fret their souls because those above them are not brought down to their level, as if greatness could be little, as if ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... prerogative of spiritual power. By this power, aroused from the torpor of ages, and speaking, as it had once spoken, to the very conscience of mankind, the gates of a glorious future would be thrown open. Conspirators might fret, and politicians scheme, but the day on which the new life of Italy would begin would be that day when the head of the Church, taking his place as chief of a federation of Italian States, should raise the banner of freedom ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... but still I know that I should fret; and, sir, it will be four months at least before the Circe is ready for sea and I may just as well be appointed to her, and I can decide whether I do go to sea or ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... But fret as she might, and burn as she might, with impatience, love-created anger and resentment of some infamy, doubtless practiced on them both, there was nothing in the world ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... to me, the merchant said, As over his ledger he bent his head; I'm busy to-day with tare and tret, And I have no time to fume and fret. It was something to him when over the wire A message came from a funeral pyre— A drunken conductor had wrecked a train, And his wife and child were among ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... rather have gone without her breakfast than had her hair parted. Hatty was apt to fret about being hurt all the while the operation was going on, and Mrs. Lee actually dreaded to propose what, if borne cheerfully, would have been but the work of a moment. Happily for Hatty at that instant her thoughts were called in a different ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly
... Louis Champney wouldn't have stood that—I know him well enough for that; but she might have hinted at a something, and it's my belief she did. But don't you fret, Aurora; she'll never speak again—I'd take my oath on that—and if I dared, I'd say I wish Almighty God would strike her dumb for saying ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... musick too; but such As is beyond all voice or touch; My minde can in faire order chime, Whilst my true heart still beats the time; My soule['s] so full of harmonie, That it with all parts can agree; If you winde up to the highest fret, It shall descend an eight from it, And when you shall vouchsafe to fall, Sixteene above you it shall call, And yet, so dis-assenting one, They both ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... The silence was full of strange, rushing noises, the rush of blood in David's head. He called again and again, but no reply came. Then he heard the rush and fret of many feet, the cry of a pack of hounds, a melancholy cry, with a sombre joy in it. He saw a light gleaming fitfully in the belt ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... gone into hysterics,' said Mrs. Palliser, 'but I don't think I should have told deliberate falsehoods: and to say that you were engaged to a rich man when you were not engaged, and the man hasn't a sixpence, was going a little too far. But don't fret, dear,' added the step-mother, soothingly, as the tears of shame and anger—anger against fate, life, all things—welled into Ida's lovely eyes. 'Never mind. We'll say no more about it. Come upstairs to your own room—it's Vernie's day-nursery now, but you won't mind that, I know—and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... palace. If his life is threatened he goes home. He will not stir to escape but for the urgency of his wife. So well had he already begun to learn the worthlessness of life's trifles. So thoroughly does he practice his own precept, "Fret not thyself because of evil-doers;" "rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him." (Psa. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... be studied and learned by the child, rules out such conditions of fulfilment. It condemns the fact to be a hieroglyph: it would mean something if one only had the key. The clue being lacking, it remains an idle curiosity, to fret and obstruct the mind, a ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... Margaret!" Children's voices should be dear (Call once more) to a mother's ear: Children's voices, wild with pain. Surely she will come again. Call her once and come away. This way, this way. "Mother dear, we cannot stay." The wild white horses foam and fret. ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... Peet, with a heavy sigh, as she gazed at her son with tears in her eyes, 'and he is so patient! Why, you never so much as hear a grumble, nor a fret! Now, what do you think his great wish is—what ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... interval poor Mrs. Briggs managed to recover somewhat of the hard demeanour that usually characterized her. "I've no call to fret," she said. "And don't you go rubbin' my dirty face with your clean 'andkerchief, Miss Violet. I ain't fit for ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... through banks of green, Where the wild waves fret and quiver; And we've down the Danube been— The dark, deep, thundering river! We've thridded the Elbe and Rhone, The Tiber and blood dyed Seine, And we've been where the blue Garonne Goes ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... do that the Utes will be here to-morrow at latest, and there ain't more chance of my getting away from them than there is of my flying. It would be just throwing away your scalp if you were to stop here, and it would not do me a bit of good, and would fret me considerable. Now before you start I will get you to put me somewhere up among those stones where I can make a good fight of it. You shall light a fire by the side of me, and put a store of wood within reach and a few pounds of bear's flesh. I will keep them ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... condemn her? It is a terrible thing to remain chained and helpless at such a time, to realize that cruel wrong, possibly torture, is being visited upon another, upon one you know and love, and yet be unable to uplift hand or voice in warning. I am by nature cool in action, yet there are few who fret more grievously when held in leash, compelled to await in uncertainty the coming of ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... the risk of startling sincerely religious persons. But there is no help for it, if we are to combat the adversaries on their own ground; and because it is thus only that, while we startle a few, we can prove to all that the torrent of negations is but a passing rush of waters, which, fret as they may in their channel, shall be found to have left not so much as a trace of their passage ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... (silently taking THE CALIFORNIAN'S measure with his eye, as he stands six fret in his stockings). If I did, I'd get the biggest brakeman I could find to do it for me. I'VE got nothing to say except that I think you'd better all go back to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... about the society of Constantinople. As one cannot always be out shooting, it is very important to our happiness to have something to fall back upon in the social way. I was told once by a very great friend of mine, who saw that I was inclined to fret, 'to take everything as a joke.' If one's liver is in good order it is very easy to do so, but sometimes the contrary is the case, and it makes one at times quite savage to see the airs that are temporarily put ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... you that even Mr. Bond is not wholly exempt from the annoyances and trials of life! He has learned how to make the best of every thing, and that is more than half toward averting a trouble. Put a cheerful face upon the matter, it will but make it worse to fret and frown and keep your neighbors uncomfortable about it, besides working yourself into a teapot! Mr. Bond crowded all the evils down into the deepest corner of his heart and turned the key upon them, and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... new-pulled hemlock with the starlight on our faces, For the Red Gods call us out and we must go! He must go—go—go away from here! On the other side the world he's overdue. 'Send your road is clear before you when the old spring-fret comes o'er you And the Red Gods call for ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... prodigious scarcity of wit Did the new authors starve the hungry pit! Infected by the French, you must have rhyme, Which long to please the ladies' ears did chime. Soon after this came ranting fustian in, And none but plays upon the fret were seen, Such daring bombast stuff which fops would praise, Tore our best actors' lungs, cut short their days. Some in small time did this distemper kill; And had the savage authors gone on still, Fustian had been a new disease i' ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and fret not yourselves, else shall you be moved to do evil. Remember the saying of the wise man: "Go not after the world. She turns on her axis; and if thou stand still long enough she will turn ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... do not speak this in any deprecatory sense. Blessed be the memory of the warm-hearted Scotchman for what he has left us, just as it is!) He likewise did not know himself, in more ways than one. Though so really fret and independent, he prided himself in his songs on being a reactionist and a Jacobite—on persistent sentimental adherency to the cause of the Stuarts—the weakest, thinnest, most faithless, brainless dynasty ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels: Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... been drawn half aside, and in the semi-obscurity the chalk-grey face of the King showed ghost-like against the vaulted darkness of the curtained bed. The fret of spirit through these ten or twelve days had sapped him, worn him like so many days of consuming fever. With one hand, the elbow propped upon the coverlid, he pushed the draperies aside, the other was fumbling with its finger-tips at his convulsed mouth. In impatience, or that ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Penelope, "that I too may hear his story. As for the suitors, let them take their pleasure indoors or out as they will, for they have nothing to fret about. Their corn and wine remain unwasted in their houses with none but servants to consume them, while they keep hanging about our house day after day sacrificing our oxen, sheep, and fat goats for their banquets, and never giving so much as a thought to the quantity of wine they drink. No ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... his ward gravely, "is only your property at stake? I can manage Chunk, and through him perhaps get others. I am not responsible for changes which I can't help; I am to blame if I sit down idly and helplessly and do nothing better than fret or sulk. Your bitter words of protest are not bread and bring no money. For your sakes as well as my own you must either act ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... on pinions of silver descending, Had brought me a gem from the fret-work of heaven; And smiles, with his star-cheering voice sweetly blending, The blessings of Tighe had ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... the grove, In plaintive moans replying, To every leafy bough above His tender tale is sighing; Ruffled beneath his viewless wing Thy wavelets fret and wimple, Now forth rejoicingly they spring ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... for nearly a year, and in that time Robin Hood often turned over in his mind many means of making an even score with the Sheriff. At last he began to fret at his confinement; so one day he took up his stout cudgel and set forth to seek adventure, strolling blithely along until he came to the edge of Sherwood. There, as he rambled along the sunlit road, he met a lusty young butcher driving a fine ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... long, late twilights of the Spring, Where all the fret of life seems nothing worth, And grief, itself, a half-forgotten thing, Less keen than these cool odours of the earth,— I sometimes think we find the secret gate That gives on gardens of enchanted ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... to me in every line, "I talk about God's goodness and loving-kindness, but I worry over the dust in the spare room, I fret about our expenses, I am troubled about my lungs, and I fear my husband has an unregenerate heart. I never know an hour's peace, for even in my sleep, I worry, worry, worry, but of course I know I will be saved ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... old men could longer fret about their wives being caught in a heavy snow; but, nevertheless, their anxiety concerning the whereabouts of the women did not cease, and the homesickness which Abe felt for Angy, and Samuel for Blossy, rather increased than diminished as one ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... "My flesh;" and, with another, saying with tears: "My son, if you had died sooner, instead of Chu Erh, and left Chu Erh behind you, you would have saved your father these fits of anger, and even I would not have had to fruitlessly worry and fret for half of my existence! Were anything to happen now to make you forsake me, upon whom will you have me depend?" And then after heaping reproaches upon herself for a time, break out afresh in lamentations for her, unavailing offspring, Chia Cheng was much cut up and felt ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... soldiers and sailors, all of them—here, there, and everywhere. One is in America, beyond seas; another is in China, making tea; and another is at Gibraltar, three miles from Spain; and yet, you see, I can laugh and eat and enjoy myself. I sometimes think I'll try and fret a bit, just to make myself a better figure; but, Lord! it's no use, it's against my nature; so I laugh and grow fat again. I'd be quite thankful for a fit of anxiety as would make me feel easy in my clothes, which them manty-makers will make ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell |
