"Meddlesome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Prussia even the Imperator-Rex has to divide some of his authority with a meddlesome assembly, and has to delegate it to an obedient but ridiculous bureaucracy. In the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg the ruler governs his subjects in the good old patriarchal way. It is true, in the troubled ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... neither less irregular nor conducted with more wisdom and regard for the public interest. King Robert had not succeeded in keeping his first wife, Bertha of Burgundy; and his second, Constance of Aquitaine, with her imperious, malevolent, avaricious, meddlesome disposition, reduced him to so abject a state that he never gave a gratuity to any of his servants without saying, "Take care that Constance know nought of it." After Robert's death, Constance, having become regent ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... know," and apologetic "I am sure I thought I was acting for the best," gave, considering her agitation, a tolerably accurate account of the whole interview. Her interlocutor saw plainly that she had acted from a sincere conscientiousness, and not from a meddlesome, mischievous interference; so he only thanked her for her kind interest, and suggested that he had now arrived at an age when it would, perhaps, be well for him to conduct matters, particularly of so delicate a nature, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... well that you have brought me the promise, for had you not you would never have seen me again. I thank you for the promise and for the ring. No one shall see it. Of that you may be doubly sure. If by any chance some meddlesome body should see it and tell this arrogant lady of the castle that I have the keepsake she sent you, there would be trouble, Max, there would be trouble. She is a jealous, vindictive little wretch and you shall not think on her. No doubt she would have me torn limb from limb ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... wit and honesty are brought into the highest possible relief by the restoration to the feebly guileful Polonius of the speeches of which he has long been deprived. Among the reinstated scenes is that in which the meddlesome dotard teaches his servant Reynaldo modes of espionage that shall detect the moral lapses of his son Laertes in Paris. The recovered episode is not only admirable comedy, but it gives new vividness to Polonius's ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... informed by the presiding officer that "the sisters were not invited there to speak but to listen and learn." She and three or four other ladies at once left the hall. The rest of the women had not the courage to follow, but called them "bold, meddlesome disturbers," and remained to bask in the approving smiles of the Sons. They sought advice of Lydia Mott, who said the proper thing was to hold a meeting of their own; so they secured the lecture-room of the Hudson street Presbyterian ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... for being meddlesome,' continued Percy, 'I thought I saw a way of being even with that scoundrel. Your papers had got into my pocket, and, as I had nothing else to do, I looked them over after parting with you, and saw a way out of the difficulty. I was coming in the morning to return them and propound my plan, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... strike, there were persons who thereupon thought that it was in my power, and was my duty, to settle all other strikes, so after the peace of Portsmouth there were other persons—not only Americans, by the way,—who thought it my duty forthwith to make myself a kind of international Meddlesome Mattie and interfere for peace and justice promiscuously over the world. Others, with a delightful non-sequitur, jumped to the conclusion that inasmuch as I had helped to bring about a beneficent and necessary peace I must of necessity have changed my mind about war being ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... one day he found a caddis, and wanted it to peep out of its house; but its house door was shut. He had never seen a caddis with a house door before; so what must he do, the meddlesome little fellow, but pull it open, to see what the poor lady was doing inside. What a shame! How should you like to have any one breaking your bedroom door in, to see how you looked when you were in bed? So ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... partridge. Because the land you are standing on is my land. Because my own land was only taken from me by a crime, and a worse crime than poaching. This has been a single estate for hundreds and hundreds of years, and if you or any meddlesome mountebank comes here and talks of cutting it up like a cake, if I ever hear a word more of you and your ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... There is a certain meddlesome spirit, which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... his fingers, and fell to the ground with a heavy thump and slight crashing noise, upsetting some lumber that stood against the wall, and raising a cloud of dust, which caused the man of manacles to step back and rub his eyes. With a muttered curse on the meddlesome official, Tchartkoff sprang forward to raise the picture. As he did so, a small board, forming one of the sides of the frame, and which had been cracked by the fall, gave way altogether under the pressure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the only one who dared to tell him the truth. The truth? No, it was a lie, a lie; he was not dying, he was going to be well and strong again as soon as he could shake this cold that had settled upon him. Nancy was a meddlesome old woman. He had told her so not more than an hour ago and had sent her off about her business. He had been harsh to her and rude, and after all she was old and had probably meant to do him a kindness. But, then, he was not sorry; ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... mischances. Now praise be to Allah for thy safety!" I thanked him for his friendly solicitude and, retiring to my corner, sat pondering and musing on what had befallen me; and I blamed and chided myself for my meddlesome folly and my frowardness in kicking the alcove. I was calling myself to account when behold, my friend, the Tailor, came to me and said, "O youth, in the shop there is an old man, a Persian,[FN212] who seeketh thee: he hath thy hatchet and thy sandals which he had taken to the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... twisting of the roots, and others that there was water or air in the wood of the tree which could not get free. The noise seemed to come from the roots, and people fancied it groaned least when the weather was wet, and made most noise in dry weather. This went on for nearly two years, until at last a meddlesome gentleman took an opportunity to bore a hole in the trunk. The result was that the elm ceased to groan. It was then decided to take the tree up by the roots and examine it; but nothing has ever been discovered ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... from their habit of going entirely naked. One of them is said by Arrian to have said to Alexander. "You are a man like all of us, Alexander—except that you abandon your home like a meddlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions; enduring hardships yourself, and inflicting hardships on others." (Arrian, vii, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... to believe in an unnatural god who apparently must be ever ready to answer anybody's prayerful cry and act as a general servant to humanity by distributing good things to those who beg for them; a sort of meddlesome god who enters into all the petty quarrels of hunan beings and generally settles them in ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... English or Chinese, whom a man is supposed to respect. Who are they? God knows. Nine-tenths of them are in a place where they have no business to be: so much is certain. And what are they doing, these swarms of parasites? Justifying their salaries by inventing fresh regulations and meddlesome bye-laws, and making themselves objectionable all round. Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty, even as the first military duty is said to be the reverse of it. We catch ourselves talking of the "lesson of history." ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... temper, or you would wonder no more. I tried it when I came to Croydon, and we kept on until about two months ago, when we had to part. I don't want to say a word against my own sister, but she was always meddlesome and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "I am a meddlesome old woman!" said Mrs. Tree. "You wish I would leave you alone, James Stedman, and so I will. Old women ought to be strangled; there's some place where they do it, Cap'n Tree told me about it once; I suppose it's because they talk too much. ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... shook his head, and declared that no good could come of such preaching, since there was no true religion in it. Another snapped his fingers, saying the man was not only a fool, but a mischief-maker. A third said all the trouble in the world had been made by just such meddlesome men. The church of great moral ideas might be a good enough church for some people; but such a preacher as this made more infidels than ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... Van Cortlandt. The police force paid not the slightest attention to these open, flagrant, shameless violations of the city ordinances and the state bird laws. In those days I never but once heard of a policeman on his own initiative arresting a birdshooter, even on Sunday; but whenever meddlesome special wardens from the Zoological Park have pointedly called upon the local police force for help, it has always been given with cheerful alacrity. In the fall of 1912 an appeal to the Police Commissioner resulted in a general order to stop all hunting and shooting in the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... lads found Captain Bland impatiently awaiting them, since the transfer of goods was nearly completed, and he was anxious to get his compromising cargo away from the coast patrolled by those meddlesome frigates. ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... in one year, and where many of their sturdy buildings still remain a testimony to their honest craftsmanship. Unfortunately, however, two pests appeared which they had not foreseen. Harassed by malaria and meddlesome neighbors, Father Rapp a third time sought a new Canaan. In 1825 he sold the entire site to Robert Owen, the British philanthropic socialist, and the Harmonists moved back to Pennsylvania. They built their third and last ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... all this. She pressed on, and they gave way for her a little as she approached the table. Three constables stood around it to guard the dead body from the touch of meddlesome hands. On seeing Lady Vincent with the air of one having authority, the constable that guarded the head of the table guessed at her rank, and officiously turned down the white sheet that covered the dead body, and revealed the horrible object beneath—the ghastly face fallen back, with ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... meddling wi' my fashion o' sleeping next, and taxing me for ivery snore a give. They've been after t' winders, and after t' vittle, and after t' very saut to 't; it's dearer by hauf an' more nor it were when a were a boy: they're a meddlesome set o' folks, law-makers is, an' a'll niver believe King George has ought t' do wi' 't. But mark my words; I were wed wi' brass buttons, and brass buttons a'll wear to my death, an' if they moither me about it, a'll wear brass buttons ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... from the doorway toward the table; she had her hands closed upon what seemed trinkets, some of which glittered and dangled from them. She said, "Will you go to him and tell him that this meddlesome minx, here, had no business to say anything about me to him, and you take it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and most of the troops from Winchester, to strengthen Fort Cumberland, which was now to become headquarters; thus weakening the most important points and places, to concentrate a force where it was not wanted, and would be out of the way in most cases of alarm. By these meddlesome moves, made by Governor Dinwiddie from a distance, without knowing any thing of the game, all previous arrangements were reversed, every thing was thrown into confusion, and enormous ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... told her he was going to take her with him. It didn't really matter, of course; he didn't suppose Mrs. Leadbatter could exercise any control over Mary Ann, but it was horrible to be discussed by her and Rosie; and then there was that meddlesome vicar, who might step ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... good thing Rachel Lynde got a calling down; she's a meddlesome old gossip," was Matthew's ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... persuading others that He was a taskmaster. They also brought up an evil report of the good land, saying it was not half so good as some pretend it was. They also began to vilify His servants, and to count the very best of them meddlesome, troublesome, busybodies. Further, they could call the bread of God husks; the comforts of His children, fancies; the travel and labour of pilgrims, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ready to do things for other people. The word is now restricted to its bad sense of meddlesome. Cf. Shakespeare, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... its grasp the commune and department cease to be private companies in order to become administrative compartments.—According to the opportunity and the temptation, it glides downhill, now toward the surrender of its duty, and now toward the meddlesome interference of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... every morning, that before night you will meet with some meddlesome, ungrateful and abusive fellow, with some envious or unsociable churl. Remember that their perversity proceeds from ignorance of good and evil; and that since it has fallen to my share to understand the natural beauty of a good action and the deformity of an ill one; since ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... fellows at the club may chaff me all you choose. I'm going to marry her and that's all there is to it. I'm my own master, do you understand? I have no family—no inquisitive, meddlesome relatives, thank God! If this marriage is going to cost me what friends I have—all right—let them keep away! Such friends are not worth having, anyway. My mind is made up and you know me. Once I make up my mind, nothing can alter it." Determinedly he added: "I'll marry ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... an interfering, meddlesome idiot, and shook him violently while holding him in his grasp. This was a usage which Harry was not the man to endure, and there soon arose a scuffle, in which blows had passed between them. The captain stuck to his prey, shaking him again and again in his drunken ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... bedtime, and argued the whole transaction with him, representing the dreadful consequences of meddling with people's private papers under trust. Here was poor Lucy taken away from home, and papa made very angry with Ulick, because Maurice had been meddlesome and mischievous; and though he had not been beaten for it, he would find it a worse punishment not to be trusted another time, nor allowed to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rendered serious by the resolution of a full-lipped yet firm mouth. "Sir!" said he, turning to the young King with a look in which the bonhomie of an indulgent Mentor was blended with genuine respect, "it will, no doubt, seem to your Majesty both meet and proper that we should not leave a meddlesome parson to let you know that our faithful hearts have been sorely exercised by that which is newly come to us out of France. Not to stay on sundry general advertisements and rumours that have reached us—and which seemed to glance at a very exalted personage—I mean, more particularly, what ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... experienced. The roughness of the trail, the absence of cultivated fields, the entire exemption from the restraints of civilization, were perfectly delightful after a dreary residence of nearly a year in Germany. Here, at least, there were no passport bureaus, no meddlesome police, no conceited and disagreeable habitues of public places with fierce dogs running at their heels, no Verbotener Wegs staring one in the face at every turn. Here all ways possible to be traveled were open ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... thought he was dead—and she was right. A thousand pities too! The next summer Captain Jim was in Havana—that was before he gave up the sea, of course. He thought he'd poke round a bit—Captain Jim was always meddlesome, just like a man—and he went to inquiring round among the sailors' boarding houses and places like that, to see if he could find out anything about the crew of the Four Sisters. He'd better have let sleeping dogs lie, in my opinion! Well, he went to one out-of-the-way place, and ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a simple yet difficult problem—to do as little harm to the place as possible, and to appease Portlaw at the same time, and curb his meddlesome ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... "You meddlesome bacon!" cackled the ungrateful bird; "if you don't take that orb directly back, I 'll sit on you till I hatch you out of ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... for Guly's wound, it was Wilkins' fault he had received it, and, altogether, they ought to have fought it out before yielding so easily. But though he had succeeded in leading Arthur to think that Guly was meddlesome and intrusive, he could not succeed in rousing his ire towards Wilkins; for Arthur was not so blind as to be unable to see that Wilkins was his truest friend. Still, there was a restless and undefined uneasiness in his breast, a fancy that his dignity had been insulted, yet ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... the moon afterward with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The greatest poet has less a marked style and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Blondet!" cried Bixiou, "thou hast set thy finger on the weak spot. Meddlesome taxation has lost us more victories here in France than the vexatious chances of war. I once spent seven years in the hulks of a government department, chained with bourgeois to my bench. There was a clerk in the office, a man with a head on his shoulders; he had set his mind upon making ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... labour of his hands. Do you see this table, Walter? He made it while he was yet a 'prentice. I remember how I used to sit and watch him at his work. It would be grand, I thought, to be able to do as he did, and handle edge-tools without cutting my fingers, and getting my ears pulled for a meddlesome minx! He used to give me his mallet to keep and his nails to hold; and didn't I fly when he called for them! and wasn't I proud to be ordered about with them! And then, you know, there is the tall cabinet yonder; that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... work to be done among those unhappy men that may be my purgation. The authorities shall hear me yet—though inquiry was stifled at Port Arthur. By the way, a Pharaoh had arisen who knows not Joseph. It is evident that the meddlesome parson, who complained of men being flogged to death, is forgotten, as the men are! How many ghosts must haunt the dismal loneliness of that prison shore! Poor Burgess is gone the way of all flesh. I wonder if his spirit revisits the scenes of its ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... unsuspecting girl went on. "The world, I know, would say that a poor clergyman was not a good match for me, but I do not care for that. Cousin Fanny favors it, I am sure, and Uncle Hetherton would not oppose me when he saw I was in earnest. Once the world, which is a very meddlesome thing, picked out Thornton Hastings, of New York, for me; but my! he was too proud and lofty even to talk to me much, and I would not speak to him after I heard of his saying that 'I was a pretty little plaything, but far too frivolous for a sensible man ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... the observant writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript, that under the administration of William Kieft the disposition of the inhabitants of New Amsterdam experienced an essential change, so that they became very meddlesome and factious. The unfortunate propensity of the little governor to experiment and innovation, and the frequent exacerbations of his temper, kept his council in a continual worry; and the council being to the people at large what yeast or leaven is to a batch, they threw the whole community ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... mankind. The latter, after having twice preferred to him modest and meritorious Grecian citizens, at length reminds him that his vast wealth and power are of a tenure too precarious to serve as an evidence of happiness; that the gods are jealous and meddlesome, and often make the show of happiness a mere prelude to extreme disaster; and that no man's life can be called happy until the whole of it has been played out, so that it may be seen to be out of the reach of reverses. Croesus treats this opinion as absurd, but "a great judgment from God fell ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... the endless negotiations, the interminable congresses, the innumerable treaties, which make up the history of Europe during the earlier half of the eighteenth century; nor is it easy to follow with patience the meddlesome activity of English diplomacy during that period, its protests and interventions, its subsidies and guarantees, its intrigues and finessings, its bluster and its lies. But wearisome as it all is, it succeeded in its end, and its end was ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... he was marrying her for her money; that Hetty was too old, and too independent in all her ways, to be married at all; that they would be sure to fall out quickly; and a hundred other things equally meddlesome and silly. But nobody so disapproved of the match that he stayed away from the wedding, which was the largest and the gayest wedding Welbury had ever seen. It went sorely against the grain with Hetty to invite Mrs. Deacon ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... that price, and he went home puzzled and fighting-mad. If, then, the Blue-grass people had handled with the firebrand corporate aggrandizement of toll-gate owners who were neighbors and friends, how would they treat meddlesome interference from strangers? Already one courteous emissary in one county had fled the people's wrath on a swift thoroughbred, and Burnham smiled sadly to himself and shook ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... word of it!" Dolly stood up and angrily grasped the bell-handle. "It's not true. It's a meddlesome lie. They are jealous. People are always like that—it makes them furious to see another person prosper. They ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... rejoiced, and sixty persons had cause to rejoice with them. So be it! There were plans evolved already as to national fetes and wholesale pardons when that impudent and meddlesome Englishman ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... comfortable domestic axioms, little schemes for the elevation of the masses by the classes, had, on their logical basis, no attraction for this sceptical, wayward girl. To be merely useful was, in her eyes, to make oneself meddlesome and absurd. The object of existence was to be heroic or nothing. She could imagine herself a Poor Clare: she could not imagine herself as a great young lady dividing her hours judiciously between district visiting and the ball-room, between the conquest of eligible ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... overjoyed at what appeared a new lease of life, that sleep, that "sweet restorer," was a stranger during the night. In the morning, however, a gloom was again cast over the spirits of some of the most superstitious by the remark of a meddlesome old West India captain, that undoubtedly Cochran, like the seers of olden times, made his calculations according to the "old style" of computing time. Thus twelve additional days were allowed to pass before they dared give a full loose to ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... I know? Because Chaldea was hiding under the studio window this afternoon and overheard all that passed between you and Garvington and that meddlesome Lambert. She knew that I was in danger and came at once to London to tell me since I had given her my address. I lost no time, but motored down here and dropped her at the camp. Now I've come to get you out ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... to hide everything when one has little meddlesome good-for-nothings like you.... But come, out with it, confess that you took it.... I would rather it was that.... I sha'n't tell daddy.... I ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Arthur H——, one of the two brothers reported to be starting the sawmill; and I afterward remembered that, though we saluted each other, and exchanged impotent criticisms on the weather, I had by this time obtained such ascendency over the meddlesome and querulous part of my nature that I had never once thought of asking him ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... his big wig, appeared deeply meditative, his look cast down and angry. Pelletier, very buoyant, simple, curious, looking at everything. Torcy, three times more starched than usual, seemed to look at everything by stealth. Effiat, meddlesome, piqued, outraged, ready to boil over, fuming at everybody, his look haggard, as it passed precipitously, and by fits and starts, from side to side. Those on my side I could not well examine; I saw them only by moments as they changed their postures or ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... who kept 'Bachelor's Hall' in fine style at the Ti. I had no doubt but that they regarded children as odious incumbrances; and their ideas of domestic felicity were sufficiently shown in the fact, that they allowed no meddlesome housekeepers to turn topsy-turvy those snug little arrangements they had made in their comfortable dwelling. I strongly suspected however, that some of these jolly bachelors were carrying on love intrigues with the maidens ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... refuse it to my guests, and have nothing of the kind in my house; not even those choice wines your uncle bought, Neither wine for myself nor ale for my servants! It was quite out of the question, you know. Mr. Warden was meddlesome to the very verge of impertinence about it, until I was compelled to give up inviting him to my house. He went so far as to doubt my being a Christian! And it was of no use telling him I followed ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... seven-and-a-half dollars. In his rage at the price he exclaimed: "As a public man I have given twenty of the best years of my life to bringing about a friendly understanding between capital and labor. I have succeeded, and may God have mercy on my meddlesome soul!" ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... more fruitful than distrust. I would like to emphasise that it was in no way from any desire to interfere in other people's affairs that young Bohun undertook these Quests. He had none of my own meddlesome quality. He had, I think, very little curiosity and no psychological self-satisfaction, but he had a kind heart, an adventurous spirit, and a hatred for the wrong and injustice which seemed just now to be ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... prevent Tanacharisson, Jeskakake, White Thunder, and the Hunter going with Washington. The latter understood very well that their object was to have an opportunity to win them over to the French. But Washington insisted upon their going with him, and rebuked Captain Joncaire for his meddlesome disposition. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... can't begin to tell you how much it means to me, and in so many different ways. Are you sure there won't come a time when you'll think, 'Oh, if only I had never asked that noisy, nervous, nosing, messy, meddlesome, moping, miserable, growling, grumbling, grouchy, greedy, galloping, galumphing Emma Dean ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... silent. Yet her grace had never been more evident. All the inmates of the little pension, the landlord's family, the servants, the visitors, as the days passed, felt the romance and thrill of her presence. Lady Blanche evoked impatience of ennui. She was inconsiderate; she was meddlesome; she soon ceased even to be pathetic. But for Julie every ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... means of defence on these coasts were for some years kept up to a very high standard. Mr Richard Champernowne,—who, it must be admitted, from the general tenor of his ways, seems to have been one of those well-meaning but egotistical and meddlesome people who are always being surprised and hurt because their good offices are not better received,—wrote to the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... perhaps. You've begun to care for something else than your old-fashioned habits. Pardon me if I seem rather meddlesome; you know we Americans are very rough and ready. It's a great moment. I wish ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... the highest rank and distinction. Universally honored and respected, she reached a good old age, and finally received at the hands of the Roman people a statue inscribed, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi. Notwithstanding her somewhat meddlesome and despotic temper, Queen Olympias seems to have maintained an intimate friendship with her son, Alexander the Great. He omitted no occasion, we are told, of showing his esteem and affection for her. When absent on his campaigns, he kept up a constant correspondence with ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... the court then proceeded, and when his evidence was taken, Tilly Troffater mounted the stand, with an affected hesitancy, and a genuine restlessness of his little earthen eyes; eager to indulge his meddlesome humor, anxious for revenge upon, he little cared whom, and yet awed to a look of shuffling shame, by the commanding mien of the justice. Clambering to his place, he ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... Parsee Judge who sentenced Tilak. The Kesari declared that "he had already settled the sentence in his own mind after a careful consideration of external circumstances," and "had made himself the laughing-stock of the whole world, like the meddlesome monkey in the fable who came to grief in trying to pull out the peg 'from a half-sawed beam,'" Now the Kesari was Tilak's own paper, and he was convicted on two seditious articles that had appeared in its columns, but the Kal, another Poona sheet, also maintained that everything was done ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... meaning of all this?" he thought, staring downwards at the headlong flow so smooth and clean that only the passage of a faint air-bubble, or a thin vanishing streak of foam like a white hair, disclosed its vertiginous rapidity, its terrible force. "Why has that meddlesome old Englishman blundered against me? And what is this silly tale of a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... meddlesome, but 'pears to me if you'd spoke out your feelings to Dick, you'd said, 'Tell Melinda Jones I don't want to see her, neither to-night nor any time.' Mebby I'm mistaken, but honest, do you want to ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... service to be done and the man who orders it), it was permanently organized under the constitutional government, which was, inevitably, the friend of all mediocrities, the lover of authentic documents and accounts, and as meddlesome as an old tradeswoman. Delighted to see the various ministers constantly struggling against the four hundred petty minds of the Elected of the Chamber, with their ten or a dozen ambitious and dishonest leaders, the Civil Service officials hastened to make themselves essential to the warfare by ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... personal frictions and dissensions in the Cabinet, and the more or less meddlesome attitude of leaders in the Senate and the House, at times sorely tried the strength and patience of the harassed President, compelling him to act the part of peacemaker, and sometimes of judge and arbiter as well. At one time Secretary Stanton threatened to resign; and Chase declared that ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... be overturned every twenty-four hours. But what security would there be for any calculations in life in a state of things in expectation of a revolution any moment? Compared with the freedom of action in such a government as ours, any form of communism is an iniquitous and meddlesome despotism. In a less degree an association to which a man surrenders the right to say when, where, and for how much he shall work, is a despotism, and when it goes further and attempts to put a pressure on all men outside ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... essential features of nature's reparative process. It is seldom necessary to disturb a sick child for the giving of food or medicine oftener than every second or third hour. Medicine may always be given with food. Meddlesome interference, talkative attendants, or excessive noise may exhaust a child and may prolong and render dangerous or fatal a condition that would ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... veritable product of the mighty sculptor's genius. That Michelangelo meant well to his illustrious ancestor is certain. That he took the greatest pains in executing his ungrateful and disastrous task is no less clear.[8] But the net result of his meddlesome benevolence has been that now for two centuries and a half the greatest genius of the Italian Renaissance has worn the ill-fitting disguise prepared for him by a literary 'breeches-maker.' In fact, Michael Angelo the poet suffered no less ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... family was alone again, there was a violent outburst of wrath against that meddlesome Aunt Teresa, and Mr. Meyer himself waxed so wroth that he felt bound to pour forth his grievances outside as well as inside the house. He still possessed two or three acquaintances whom he had learnt to know in his official days: they were now leading counsel in the ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... a sense, I am," said Carrington carelessly, "but I daresay you have found him yourself an arbitrary, meddlesome old boy, and I like to ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... "Of course it seems meddlesome," said Sir Julius, tugging at his white moustache, "but we're fond of Auriol. I've been much more of a father to her than that damned old ass Mountshire"—Evadne, again; though for once in her life she had exercised restraint—"and I hate to ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... To this end it was necessary to hold in check the Jeffersonian or French party, who sought to embroil us in a foreign quarrel. These two functions of the Federalist party were quite in accord; they involved the organizing and domestic instinct against the disorganizing and meddlesome; the strengthening against the enfeebling process; practical thinking against fanciful theories. Fortunately the able men had been generally of the sound persuasion, and by powerful exertions had carried the day and accomplished their allotted tasks ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the idea of herself being deputy to the lovely, meddlesome, and arrogant Countess of Chell that had ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Pattison goes on to describe in detail how, governed and possessed by one idea, and by a theory, to oppose which was "moral depravity," he proceeded to establish his intolerable system of discipline, based on dogmatic grounds—meddlesome, inquisitorial, petty, cruel—over the interior of every household in Geneva. What is there fascinating, or even imposing, in such a character? It is the common case of political and religious bigots, whether ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... be the last place in which to indulge in idle talk. Such indulgence is against all the idealism of student life. Idle or meddlesome talk never helps any one, either the one who talks or the one who is discussed. If you have anything to say about other people, and if going to them will help you, the only friendly thing to do—it is not an easy thing—is to speak to the people concerned. If we really ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... brought the deputation to him, for Harry and myself were persona grata with the natives, who all knew that Hayes had a great liking for us. But to my astonishment and indignation, "Bully" turned on me furiously, called me a meddlesome young fool, prefixing the "fool" with some very strong adjectives, and then, losing all control of himself, he sprang at one of the members of the deputation—the youngest and strongest—and lifting him up in his arms, literally forced the unfortunate ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... infernal cheek!" croaked the man. "So you have cut me down? You meddlesome idiot, by what right did you poke your ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... Cymbeline, there quoted, had betrayed an amount of obtuseness in the commentators which would be discreditable in a third-form schoolboy. To substantiate that assertion, and rescue the disputed word "Britaine" henceforth for ever from the rash tampering of the meddlesome sciolist, I beg to advertise the ingenuous ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... a day, Charles, I am sure that I could bring him back to me. There has been some other influence here, that meddlesome Jesuit or the pompous Bossuet, perhaps. Only one day to counteract their wiles! Can I not see them waving hell-fire before his foolish eyes, as one swings a torch before a bull to turn it? Oh, if I could but baulk them to-night! ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have you made for fastening your boat?" asked Uncle Gerald. "To guard against its being tampered with by meddlesome persons, as well as to prevent its drifting away, you ought to secure it to a stake near the bank by means ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... for a minute." It struck me that perhaps I was a meddlesome fool. Wilks, of all Grantline's men, was, I knew, most in his commander's trust. The signal could have been some part of this night's ordinary routine, for all ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... went down to the ship the next morning with Chilian Leverett. Elizabeth inspected the rooms. She was not meddlesome, nor over-curious generally, but with a feeling of possessorship and responsibility in the house, she wanted to know how far she could trust the newcomers. The beds were well made, but closets and drawers were rather awry. She did begrudge the best chamber, and wondered whether it ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... generations of practice. Even a government inspector is looked upon with deep disfavor as one result of the demoralization brought about by liberal and other loose ways of viewing public rights. The private, self-constituted one, it may then be judged rightly, is regarded as a meddlesome and pestilent busybody seeking knowledge which nobody should wish to obtain, and another illustration of what the nineteenth century is coming to. Various committees of inquiry, from the Organized Charities and from private bodies of workers, ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... this accuser of what the city intended for those in this condition? Do not, members of the Boule, pass this vote. For why should I find you of such a disposition? 24. Because some one in a trial ever lost his property through me? But no one could prove that. Because I am meddlesome, and harsh and quarrelsome? But I do not chance to have such conditions of life for such actions. 25. But that I am violent and disorderly? But not even he would say that if he did not wish to lie about this as the other things. But that being in power in the reign of the Thirty I ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... in the woodland] But whilst Sir Kay and his court thus rested themselves, Sir Dagonet must needs be gadding, for he was of a very restless, meddlesome disposition. So, being at that time clad only in half armor, he wandered hither and thither through the forest as his fancy led him. For somewhiles he would whistle and somewhiles he would gape, and otherwhiles he would ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... talks there occurred a singular contact of minds. It was very well for me to spin sonorous generalities, but I had never till now dreamed of being so vulgar as to translate them into practice. I had always detested the meddlesome alarmist, who veils ignorance under noisiness, and for ever wails his chant of lugubrious pessimism. To be thrown with Davies was to receive a shock of enlightenment; for here, at least, was a specimen of the breed who exacted respect. It is true he made use of the usual jargon, interlarding his ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... faintly recalled. Many of these prove to be fragments of pieces that are found in the McGuffey Readers. Quite lately Theodore Roosevelt made the public statement that he did not propose to become a "Meddlesome Matty." This allusion was perfectly clear to the millions of people who used the McGuffey Readers at ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... however, my pride has forsaken me, and I should like hugely to give expression to a little comfortable despair. I should like to say, 'My dear wise woman, you were right and I was wrong; you were a shrewd observer and I was a meddlesome donkey!' When I think of a little talk we had about the 'salubrity of genius,' I feel my ears tingle. If this is salubrity, give me raging disease! I 'm pestered to death; I go about with a chronic heartache; there are moments when I could shed salt tears. There 's a pretty portrait ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... best way to acquit himself of it, so as to avoid the risk of giving or of receiving serious affront, would be to push that whim of his into more than wonted exaggeration. Thus he could more decidedly and briefly come to the point; and should he, in doing so, appear too meddlesome, rather provoke a laugh than a frown-retiring from the ground with the honours due to a humorist. Accordingly, in his deepest nasal intonation, and withdrawing his eyes from ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of it, through his mediation, for Katharine, his eldest daughter. He gets it, and gives it to the "poor damsel," who is languishing, as he says, and who dies the next month,—all the sooner, I have little doubt, for this uncertain and violent drug, with which the meddlesome pedant tormented her in that spirit of well-meant but restless quackery, which could touch nothing without making mischief, not even a quotation, and yet proved at length the means of bringing a great ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... were undergoing an examination poorly prepared, and I think I must have answered very stupidly. I was out of sorts, too, for often what looks like sympathy is mere inquisitiveness, and theirs impressed me as the more meddlesome, since I have a long while yet to wait for the happy event. Some time in the summer, early in July, I think. You must come then, or better still, so soon as I am at all able to get about, I'll take a vacation and ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... with a laugh, "if you really want to know, I understand that every eighth of a mile is marked with a single small white rag; each quarter has a blue one; while the mile shows a plain red one. I hope some meddlesome fellow doesn't go to changing the signals on Brad, and make him think he's doing a record stunt. But I believe he's got some other secret sign of his own to depend ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... not quite know what he was going to do, but habit bade him first feed and water his horse. After that—well, he did not know. Dill might not have things straight, or he might just be trying to jolly him up a little, or he might be a meddlesome old granny-gossip. What had looked dear and straight, say at three o'clock in the morning, was at day-dawn hazy with doubt. So he led Barney down to the creek behind the hotel, where in that primitive little place ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... "He's a meddlesome, impertinent young scamp!" says Aunt Tillie, growin' red under the layers of rice powder. "Haven't I a right to marry without consulting him, ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... a safe and vacant room in your establishment where I could bestow this meddlesome priest for a ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... insulting way: he merely refused to share in his practices. But Helvidius had a grudge against Vespasian and would not let him alone either in private or in public. By what he did he invited death and for his meddlesome interference he was destined ultimately ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... you interferin' and puttin' in your meddlesome oar?" the Deacon said, turning to Waitstill. "The girl would never 'a' been there if you'd attended to your business. She's nothin' but a fool of a young filly, an' you're an old cart-horse. It was your job to look out for her as your mother told ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "Meddlesome midwifery is bad" with animals as with women. After labor pains set in, give a reasonable time for the water bags to protrude and burst spontaneously, and only interfere when delay suggests some mechanical ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... discussed, with a view to a more ambitious alliance. Persistent as the rumours of a divorce had been for seven years past, they seem to have emanated, not from the husband, but from jealous sisters-in-law, intriguing relatives, and officious Ministers. To the most meddlesome of these satellites, Fouche, who had ventured to suggest to Josephine the propriety of sacrificing herself for the good of the State, Napoleon had lately administered a severe rebuke. But now he caused Talleyrand and Caulaincourt to sound the Czar as to the feasibility ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... peep at other folks, and pry into people's affairs? I can't imagine where you get your meddlesome ways from. There aint none in my family. Next time I catch you at it, I'll spank you good." Then, after a pause, "Well what else did ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... this particularly mischancy posture of affairs the meddlesome Fates had elected to dispatch Cock-eye Flinks to serve as our deus ex machina. And just as in the comedy the police turn up in the nick of time to fetch Tartuffe to prison, or in the tragedy Friar John manages ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... French and Indian war right on her premises. It was here the children came, just as you say, and it's our duty to see 'em settled in good homes, but I shall take a few days more to think 'bout it, and I'll let her know by Saturday night what we've decided to do.—That's the most meddlesome, inteferin', gossipin' woman in this county," she added, as Mrs. Silas Tarbox closed the front gate, "and I wouldn't have her do another day's work at this house if I didn't have to. But it's worse for them that don't have her than for them that does.—Now there's the Baptist minister ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... moment Caldew might have realized the expediency of Phil's suggestion, but his professional dignity was affronted at what he considered the young man's attempt to interfere in the case and direct the course of the police investigations. It was the desire to snub what he regarded as a meddlesome interposition in his own business which ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... mean?" she asked. "I hope Austin is grateful to her now—an' that he'll say so. At first he didn't like her at all, an' he's never taken to her same as the rest of us have—seems to feel she's bossy an' meddlesome. Howard an' I have spoken of it a thousand times. He began by resenting everything she did, an' then got so he didn't even ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... that's worrying me. I shan't breathe freely till they're gone. And such an inquisitive, meddlesome set they are, too! You'd scarcely believe the trouble they give me. Two of them took it into their heads one day to go wandering on the upper landing. I actually found them inside ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... his story first. No doubt just before I met him he had been giving the squire a full and particular account—a la Henslowe—of my proceedings since I came. Henslowe lays it on thick—paints with a will. The squire receives me afterwards as the meddlesome pragmatical priest he understands me to be; puts his foot down to begin with; and, hinc illae lacrymae. It's as clear as daylight! I thought that man had an odd twist of the lip as he ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... worth waiting for, with his fine house and immense wealth; I shan't care so much about Uncle Nat's money then, though goodness knows I don't want him turning up here some day and exposing me, as I dare say the meddlesome old thing ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... connected with the disposition of the public lands were clearly exposed by one Robert Gourlay, a somewhat meddlesome Scotchman, who had addressed a circular, soon after his arrival in Canada, to a number of townships with regard to the causes which retarded improvement and the best means of developing the resources of ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... missing husbands, found to be entirely undesirable. And Lola, obviously imagining her summons to be from me, was at that moment speeding hither as fast as the Marechal Bugeaud could carry her. If I had discovered Captain Vauvenarde instead of Anastasius I would have anathematised him as the most meddlesome, crazy little marplot that ever looked like Napoleon the Third. But as the credit of the discovery belonged to him and not to me, I could only anathematise myself for my dilettanteism in the capacity of a ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... been sunk in them for a long time, seated before his desk, with his elbows resting upon it, when he heard a noise close by. He raised his eyes, and saw standing beside him the meddlesome Antonona, who, although of such massive proportions, had entered like a shadow, and was now watching him attentively with a mixture of pity and of anger in ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... island with loud tramping of feet on the little bridge, the young fox crept slyly from behind the cabin, and eyed them through cunningly narrowed slits of eyes. At last he was going to have the island all to himself; and he set himself to dig a burrow directly under the doorstep, where that meddlesome MacPhairrson had never permitted ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... should be a majesty, solemn, awful, unerring: just, as man hopes that God is just; and from its throne it should stretch out a mighty hand to seize and grasp the guilty, and the guilty only. But when the law is only a petty, meddlesome, cruel, greedy spy, mingling in every household act and peering in at every window pane, then the poor who are guiltless would be justified if they spat in its face, and called it by its ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... thought of this before. It had been coming to him from several different angles that he could not afford to gratify his desire to wipe this meddlesome young official from his path. He made a slow, ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... officer should: he saw all, said little, treated Jose as a subordinate officer, and left the handling of the crew entirely to him. His aloofness forestalled any of that familiarity which, with such a gang, would have led to contempt. On the other hand, his avoidance of any assumption of meddlesome authority prevented the irritation and dislike which free men inevitably feel for the self-important type of leader. Thus he cannily steered himself and his mates between the two rocks which might have wrecked the expedition before it was well started. And Knowlton, ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... she had been peculiarly meddlesome, putting chairs straight, moving vases, altering the lie of table-cloths and the angle of sofas, opening windows because it was 'so stuffy,' and closing them a minute later with complaints about the draught, forcing occupants of arm-chairs to get up because the carpet ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... voluntary societies of law students, was the cause, no doubt, of the attempts which were made during the Tudor and early Stuart periods to organise all the Inns of Court and Chancery into a University of Law. Those attempts failed; chiefly through the lack of wisdom displayed in issuing arbitrary and meddlesome Orders in Council, instead of allowing unification to mature on those natural and voluntary lines which had already ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... with the great words 'genius' and 'fame,' and others devoted to an indignant contemplation of the hassocks in the old pews, 'the touching and well-worn implements of prayer,' to quote his handsome description of them, which a meddlesome parson was about to 'hurl away,' out of mere hatred for intellect and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in your nice frock. Do let the furniture alone, child. Ring for Bridget, if any thing wants cleaning. You're a real Meddlesome ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Force, a meddlesome French commissary, i. 82; energy and activity of, i. 132; escape of, from prison at ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... better again by the time I got to him. Then he improved a little, and seemed to be convalescing. Then malaria chose to interfere with the running of her sister fever's course. This seemed extraordinarily meddlesome, and made things hazardous still, though they were as well as one expected, when the time of my going on ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... small legations in secluded spots of the Continent, in remote little duchies, without trade or commerce, far away from the sea, where no one ever heard of imports or exports, and the name of Gladstone had never been spoken. In such places as these, a meddlesome old envoy, with plenty of spare time on hand, often gets us thoroughly hated, always referring to England as a sort of court of last appeal on every question, social, moral, religious, or political, and dimly alluding to Lord Palmerston as a kind of Rhadamanthus, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... was away, Guy missed her terribly, wondering how he had ever lived without her, and sometimes working himself into a violent passion against the meddlesome neighbors who would not let her remain with him in peace, and who, now that she was gone, did not stop their talking one whit. Of this last, however, he was ignorant, as there was no one to tell him how people marveled more than ever, feeling confident now that ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... objected her mother, "don't you get meddlesome just because you're a old maid. Your great-aunt Betsy was meddlesome disposed that-a-way. I reckon single women as they get on in years is apt so to be. Every one of these children has been promised that they should be let ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... beauty of it, and by the fear that he saw in it of his own stern aspect. He had never looked upon any woman before. He had been proud of it,—proud of his strength and cleverness, that needed no meddlesome female creature coming in between him and his business, between him and his religion. He had not let his hair and beard grow, knowing nothing of such practices, but in heart he had been a Nazarite from his youth up,—serving God in his harsh, unloving way; loving God, ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... in the habit of making on a certain young lady, did not expect him—that is, Holmes—to notice anything beyond the limits of his work, or to recognize in any way his employer's secret intentions. But fortunately for us, this man Holmes is just one of those singularly meddlesome people whose curiosity grows with every attempt at repression; and when, coincident with that disastrous happening at the museum, all these loverlike attentions ceased and no calls were made and no presents sent, and ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina Haddox; but I reckon every livin' soul hev forgot' it but me. She is jes Meddlesome by name, an' ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... not detail the remarks of my cousin. She talked with me at least two hours. I was perfectly confounded by what she said. I began to hate her for the ridiculous advice she gave me. I put it down to a curious, meddlesome nature. I grew vexed, too, with Eudora, because my cousin said she did not love me. I did not reflect that I had done nothing to excite love. I had drawn perpetually on a heart overflowing and grateful,—selfish caitiff that I was! This, however, I did not then understand,—so completely were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... passed on the Revised New Testament, that there are doubtless some few changes for the better, so obvious and so demanded beforehand by all educated opinion that to have neglected them would at once have stamped the revisers as blockheads and dunces; but that the set-off in the way of petty and meddlesome changes for the worse, neglect of really desirable improvements, bad English, failure in the very matter of pure scholarship just where it was least to be expected, and general departure from the terms ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... inclination to set right the lives of other people, just as he could hardly refrain—in defiance of nautical etiquette—from interfering with his chief officer when the crew was sending up a new topmast, or generally when busy about, what he called, "a heavy job." He was meddlesome with perfect modesty; if he knew a thing or two there was no merit in it. "Hard knocks taught me wisdom, my boy," he used to say, "and you had better take the advice of a man who has been a fool in his time. Have another." ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Besides, what was she there for if not to look after the child of her ungrateful, selfish daughter who had not the slightest feeling of— But, all this time, Madame Rousseau was informing her mother that she was a meddlesome, stupid old blunderer, and that the fat was in the fire. She snatched the baby from the old lady's arms. The bottle crashed to the tile floor and painted a section of it white, its pristine hue. The infant was too surprised to cry. It maintained an open-mouthed ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... said his wife with decision. "Belgium is safe enough so far as that goes, but one certainly has to work hard here just to make ends meet and get food for all the hungry mouths! They say it is different in America; there you work less and get more, and are farther away from meddlesome neighboring countries besides. I sometimes wish we had gone there with my sister. She and her husband started with no more than we have, and now they are rich—at least they were when I last heard from them; but that was a long ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... knew how to profit by the national prostration. Enriched by the confiscation of ecclesiastical property in the sixteenth century and relieved of meddlesome interference on the part of the emperor or the Diet, they utilized the decline of the middle class and the dismal serfdom of the peasantry to exalt their personal political power. They got rid of the local assemblies or greatly curtailed their privileges, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... shook his head. "She will catch it," they said; "Serve her right for her meddlesome way!" Said the farmer, "Come here, little bossy, my dear! You have done what I cannot repay, And your ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the back parlour—that she had had an interview with Morris Townsend; and on receiving this news the girl started with a sense of pain. She felt angry for the moment; it was almost the first time she had ever felt angry. It seemed to her that her aunt was meddlesome; and from this came a vague apprehension that ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... this it would be needless to report, and not only needless, but a vast deal worse—shabby, interloping, meddlesome and mean, undignified, unmanly, and disreputably low; for even the tanner and his wife (who must have had right to come forward, if anybody had) felt that their right was a shadow, and kept back as if they were a hundred miles away, and took one another by the hand and nodded, as much as to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... this undertaking," I heard Mr. Bainrothe say; "her own moody and excitable condition of late—the absence of her physician (meddlesome people, those conscientious medical men sometimes prove, even when not asked for an opinion!)—Mrs. Austin's testimony as to those lethargies, which would be conclusive of itself—our own disinterestedness, so fully proved by our devotion to her and Mabel, under difficulties—her mother's mysterious ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Amiens, Roland was promoted to the same duties at Lyons, his native place. In winter he dwelt in the town, and the rest of the year was passed in the country in his paternal home, where his mother still lived, a respectable old woman, but meddlesome and overbearing in her household. Madame Roland, in all the flower of youth, beauty, and genius, thus found herself tormented and beset by a domineering mother-in-law, a rough brother-in-law, and an exacting husband. The most passionate ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... reprove mankind for what it is, or praise it for what it is not, or—generally—to teach it how to behave. Being neither quarrelsome, nor a flatterer, nor a sage, I have done none of these things, and I am prepared to put up serenely with the insignificance which attaches to persons who are not meddlesome in some way or other. But resignation is not indifference. I would not like to be left standing as a mere spectator on the bank of the great stream carrying onward so many lives. I would fain claim for myself the faculty of so much insight as can be expressed ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... of taste which would have made the houses and manners of modern stock-jobbers intolerable to them. Renaissance millionaires could be vulgar and brutal, but they were great gentlemen. They were neither illiterate cads nor meddlesome puritans, nor even saviours of society. Yet, if we are to understand the amazing popularity of Titian's and of Veronese's women, we must take note of their niceness to kiss and obvious willingness to be kissed. That ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... (2) "Meddlesome Midwifery" is not so much a temptation for the midwife as the doctor, though she also may want to do too much. Patience combined with accurate knowledge when interference is urgently needed, is ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... craze in most women. They have such an obstinate faith in their own good intentions. If they find half a dozen fools to believe in them, they will start a crusade to found a new Utopia. Women are the most meddlesome things in creation: they never let well alone. Their pretty little fingers are in every human pie. That is why we get so much unwholesome crust and so little meat, and, of course, our digestion ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... more. I guess I'm not the only meddlesome person in the world. One half the people I know need nothing more to make them take all possible pains to learn about a thing than to know the person whom it concerns wishes it kept secret. But where have you been, pray? and what have you in that bundle?" and ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... with sweat and his flanks were palpitating with fatigue when Lone rode up to the corral and dismounted. Pop Bridgers saw him and came bow-legging eagerly forward with gossip titillating on his meddlesome tongue, but Lone stalked by him with only a surly nod. Bob Warfield he saw at a distance and gave no sign of recognition. He met Hawkins coming down from his house and ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... one's legs, at call; up and doing, up and stirring. busy, occupied; hard at work, hard at it; up to one's ears in, full of business, busy as a bee, busy as a one-armed paperhanger. meddling &c v.; meddlesome, pushing, officious, overofficious^, intrigant^. astir, stirring; agoing^, afoot; on foot; in full swing; eventful; on the alert, &c (vigilant) 459. Adv. actively &c adj.; with life and spirit, with might and main &c 686, with haste &c 684, with wings; full tilt, in mediis rebus [Lat.]. Int. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... character was composed of a little indolence, some disdain, and a shrinking from contests with certain forms of vulgarity—like a man who would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid a toad. His intercourse with the meddlesome journalist was that merely outward intimacy without sympathy some young men get drawn into easily. It had amused him rather to keep that "friend" in the dark about the fate of his assistant. Renouard had never ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... her head and frowning, "of course you and he are on the same side. My father is a Patriot now, and cries, 'Down with the king!' I suppose your meddlesome general has ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... 'Mediterranean' which included the coast of Tunis, the coast of Tripoli, and even, Lord Lansdowne added, the Adriatic." (Sir Charles Dilke in the English Review, October, 1909: "On the Relations of the Powers.") On this subject see Crispi Memoirs, vol. ii., chap. v.] The meddlesome intrigues of Russian partisans, and a long series of political outrages culminating in the murder of M. Stambouloff, were gradually forming an Austro-German party in Bulgaria; while the wise and progressive ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... answer such a meddlesome question, but he said to Marie Louise, as he brushed past ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... connection with the peculiar circumstances of the time. It was an era of High Church reaction, which was fast becoming a shameful persecution. The two moderate prelates, Abbot and Williams, had for years been in disgrace, and the Church was ruled by the well-meaning, but sour, despotic, meddlesome bigot whom wise King James long refused to make a bishop because "he could not see when matters were well." But if Laud was infatuated as a statesman, he was astute as a manager; he had the Church completely under his control, he was fast filling it with his partisans and ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... should blow his nose strongly while the empty nostril is compressed. Unless this removes it a physician should be called. Meddlesome ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt |
