"Nuisance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been Tiny herself, or her puppy," which just came rolling out of its basket over Cook's feet. "You little wretch! You and your mother are the greatest nuisance ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Hindu allows no man to enter his home; the women of a Mohammedan household are kept in seclusion, the teachings of the priests are contrary to modern sanitary regulations, and if the municipal authorities should condemn a block of buildings and tear it down, or discover a nuisance and attempt to remove it, they might easily provoke a riot and perhaps a revolution. This has happened frequently. During the last plague a public tumult had to be quelled by soldiers at a large cost of life ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... the Bar I should of course have known that contracts are apt to turn round on those who make them; but now I am only a plain soldier and I am unable to understand why I should be made to stay at home when I desire to go and make a nuisance of myself abroad. But the real trouble comes from this, that some six weeks ago I received written and explicit orders to the effect that I was to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... "It's a nuisance, and that's a fact!" said mother. "Brother says he won't have dinner in the middle of the day, but between six and seven, as they do in Petersburg. I am simply distracted with worry! By seven o'clock the dinner will be done to rags in the oven. Really, men don't understand anything about housekeeping, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... A parent who sends his son into the world without educating him in some art, science, profession or business, does great injury to mankind, as well as to his son and his own family, for he defrauds the community of a useful citizen, and bequeaths to it a nuisance. That parent who trains his child for some special occupation, who inspires him with a feeling of genuine self-respect, has contributed a ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... Returning from Bermuda, he travelled in the United States and Canada; not without some poetical record of his movements. In 1806 he published his Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems, which called down the righteous wrath of the Edinburgh Review: Jeffrey denounced the book as "a public nuisance," and "a corrupter of public morals." For this harsh judgment, Moore challenged him; but the duel was stopped by the police. This hostile meeting was turned to ridicule by Byron in ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... besides great numbers in all other parts of America where open pastures offered suitable conditions. Asses, about fifty years after their introduction, ran wild and multiplied so amazingly in Quito, that the Spanish traveller Ulloa describes them as being a nuisance. They grazed together in great herds, defending themselves with their mouths, and if a horse strayed among them they all fell upon him and did not cease biting and kicking till they left him dead. Hogs ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the rustle of silk, and the pit-a-pat of dainty slippers. Only two or three households were unrepresented. It was the first hop Mrs. Stone had missed. It was something that the chaplain and his wife did not care for. It was a nuisance to Leonard, who loved his books and his home. It bored more than one old warrior, who went, however, on account of his wife and daughters, but Captain and Mrs. Devers were on hand, as befitted the official heads, temporary, of post and martial society, and the Cranstons with Agatha Loomis, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... appointed committees to remonstrate with her. But she stood by her principles regardless of their remonstrance. The excitement in that town ran high. A town meeting was called to devise means to remove the nuisance. In 1833 Miss Crandall opened her school against the protest of an indignant populace. Another town meeting was called, at which it was resolved, "That the establishment of a rendezvous, falsely denominated a school, was designed by its projectors as the theater to promulgate ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... talked. General conversation is all right in English country houses where nobody had much to do, but casual chatterers who insist on talking when you're busy are a disgusting nuisance in Canada. However, I don't think ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... rather a nuisance. His bright, chatty way and deference please the Rajah; and I suppose you are right, for he's always proposing something that amuses the stolid Malay, while my prosing about business matters ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... tied up outside, Doctor, and 'sensed' your whereabouts, as McFadyen says. Can the ladies spare you for a moment? Sorry to be a nuisance, but one of my fellows has got winged on our way to relieve the garrison at Maxim Outpost South, and though he swears he is as fit as a fiddle, I don't believe he ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... solve the problem of bill-board advertising, and while in some parts of the country it is a more flagrant nuisance to-day than ever before, he had started the first serious agitation against bill-board advertising of bad design, detrimental, from its location, to landscape beauty. He succeeded in getting rid of a huge bill-board which had been placed at the most picturesque spot at ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... suddenly disappeared. Next morning I said Lauds in A [1]. I had no difficulty in utterance; the sense of other presences was not strong, and I had no feeling of hostility [on their part], but rather of their having to put up with a slight nuisance which would soon be over. These subjective feelings are in no way evidential, nor would I mention them were they not confined to one place out of five, and occurred whenever I went there, at three most varying hours.... My servant, ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... them to camp out for two nights in the open. By this time the nights were cold, and on the height of land between these two waterways the water froze almost an inch in the water-pails at night, although the sun in the daytime was as warm as ever. To their great comfort, the mosquito nuisance was now quite absent; so, happy and a little hungry, at length they rode into the scattered settlement of Grouard, or Little Slave Lake, passing on the way to the lower town one more of the old-time posts of the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... body of the theatre and listened to the principals working at their scenes, the elongated Pilkington had suddenly appeared in the next seat and conversed sheepishly in a low voice. Could this be love? If so, it was a terrible nuisance. Jill had had her experience in London of enamoured young men who, running true to national form, declined to know when they were beaten, and she had not enjoyed the process of cooling their ardor. She ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... stuff to me! Just take away the sixteen hundred or two thousand dollars that you make by the law; and you'd curse it for a nuisance. It would become obsolete, and the poor devils of stewards would do what they pleased; you'd never trouble your head about them. Now, Grimshaw, be honest for once; tell us what you would do if circumstances compelled the Captain to ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... to show the observer how the reputation was acquired. It is a solemn fact that what would appear in England as "No spitting allowed in this car" is translated in the electric cars of Boston into: "The Board of Health hereby adjudges that the deposit of sputum in street-cars is a public nuisance."[28] The framer of this announcement would undoubtedly speak of the limbs of a piano and allude to a spade as an agricultural implement. And in social intercourse I have often noticed needless celerity ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of her own good luck in being anonymous, but did not express it, only saying, 'Autograph-hunters are a great nuisance. I know several ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... besides the travelling costume, are all sufficient. Washing can be done in a few hours anywhere. A lady had better wear a dress of strong dark stuff, and have a black silk for a change. She will need no more, even if months are spent abroad. Even in England a trunk is a nuisance; for luggage cannot be checked, and continual care is necessary. In some remote stations even labels cannot be had, and porters are scarce. I have known passengers, when no porters came to take their trunks to the van, compelled to thrust them ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was there ever a time when the great souls on whom we must feed, if we are to live at all, were proclaimed aught else but cranks and nuisances? The children of Darkness are ever abroad, and the messengers of Light are never welcome unto them. Such a nuisance was the noblest of the Greeks to his countrymen, that they could not wait for his peaceful departure, even though he was already on the brink of the grave; and the old man of seventy had to drink the poison to rid ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... so bad," Go told Rip. "The base is comfortable and we only work a two hour shift out of each ten. We've had a plague of silly dillies recently. They got into one man's suit while we were working, but mostly they're just a nuisance." ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... death, or about dead folks. In the catechism, in the history books, they are always shouting: 'Mourir pour la Patrie!' It is either popery or patriotism, whichever you please; and then this life of the present day is a perfect nuisance; it looks as if it was made expressly to take the backbone out of a man. There is no more initiative. We are all nothing but machines, but with no real system; we only do pieces of work, never knowing where our work will fit in; most often it doesn't fit at all. It is ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... worst effect of this punishment came upon Sam Crandon himself. Very much disliked as his wicked ways had made him before, he was now considered as a town nuisance. Everybody avoided him, and when forced to speak to him did so in the coldest, and often ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... silence of his listeners. He demanded absolute silence from conversation whenever he put his fingers upon the pianoforte keys to play. If this was not forthcoming, he rose up, publicly upbraided the offenders, and left the room. This mode of resenting a nuisance—one not yet extinct—was once illustrated at Count Browne's, where Beethoven and Ries were engaged in playing a duet, yet during which one of the guests started an animated conversation with a lady. Exasperated at such an affront to his artistic honour, Beethoven ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... drag its tail through the dirt in the way these creatures do their dresses. Because a queen or a duchess wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of-all-work or a factory-girl thinks she must make herself a nuisance by trailing through the street, picking up and carrying about with her—pah! that's what I call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow. Making believe be what you are not is the essence of vulgarity. Show over dirt is the one attribute of vulgar people. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... to try for a seat in the Legislature," said Abe. "I reckon it's rather bold. Old Samuel Legg was a good deal of a nuisance down in Hardin County. He was always talking about going to ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... while not dangerous, is decidedly a nuisance and can be exterminated in the same way—by draining the swamps and pools, or by flooding them with crude petroleum,—or by draining swamps or pools into fresh-water ponds and then putting minnows or other fish into ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... he answered unenthusiastically. "But it's possible to be amusing even when you're making rather a nuisance of yourself to several ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... native rat, so the European fly drives away our own; and as the clover kills our fern, so will the Maori disappear before the white man himself." The hog placed ashore by Captain Cook has now overrun one side of the island, and is such a nuisance that a large farmer of 100,000 acres has given sixpence per head for the destruction of some 20,000, and without any sensible diminution; this would be no benefit here, for the wild hogs abound and do much damage, besides affording ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... another who was to be loved wherever she went; but nothing is worth having that is had so easily, and this child got so sick of being kissed and fondled and loved, that it was the greatest nuisance to her possible, for disagreeable people loved her just as much as nice ones, and for her part she hated them all alike. It was ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... highest and largest of which had, it seems, been time out of mind in quiet possession of certain tenants, called the Ancients; and the other was held by the Moderns. But these disliking their present station, sent certain ambassadors to the Ancients, complaining of a great nuisance; how the height of that part of Parnassus quite spoiled the prospect of theirs, especially towards the east; and therefore, to avoid a war, offered them the choice of this alternative, either that the Ancients would please to remove themselves ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... yourself, Ettie; there's plenty more where that came from. Flossy never liked the boy, and always wanted to get rid of him, but couldn't afford to. He's a dreadful queer, old-fashioned little kid, and so smart that he's gettin' to be a reg'lar nuisance round the house. But you see he and the baby,—Gabrielle's her name, but they call her Lady Gay, or some such trash, after that actress that comes here so much,—well, they are so in love with one another that ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the motors were very light and elegant in appearance, and those intended for conveying only a single person were but little larger than our motor tricycles. There was not the slightest noise from the machinery, nor any fumes emitted like those we had found so great a nuisance on the earth. The Martians had evidently overcome all such difficulties, if they had ever experienced them; and their methods were doubtless far in advance of the ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... Improvements came by degrees, until they set in very rapidly, but probably by 1750, when hunting had progressed a good deal, and pace was increased in all pastimes, the old-fashioned Pointer was voted a nuisance through his extreme caution ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... easily enough; the trouble is that his successor or successors would do exactly the same thing," replied Sir Robert. "When the Barons rose, they neglected to provide a remedy for an unforeseen nuisance, and I suppose this literary partnership of Master & Servant, Limited, will always exist. I wrote a note once to Beazely (my man), addressed to myself, and told him that if he disapproved of the Conservative ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... much; only I suppose I'm in for a lecture again! Helen says: 'Ronald'—" Ronnie lifted his eyes from the paper. "What a nuisance it is to own that kind of name. As a small boy I was always 'Ronnie' when people were pleased, and 'Ronald' if I was in for a wigging. The feeling of it sticks to ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... than being adored," he answered, toying with some fruits. "Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as Humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... of the preliminary situation of things are another nuisance. They generally consist of choicely turned disclosures to the confidants, delivered in a happy moment of leisure. That very public whose impatience keeps the poets and players under such strict discipline, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... hearing. If by any means, however, such a hearing can be obtained, the world is usually just, and often quite generous. But in the main it says to all: "Keep your proper places in the ranks. If you fall out, we must leave you behind; if you make trouble, we must abate you as a nuisance." This certainty has the effect of keeping many in their places who otherwise would drop out and make trouble, and is, so far, wholesome. And yet, in spite of this warning truth, the wayside of life is lined with those who, for ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... they sang songs of peace and contentment. Bard, scald, minstrel, gleeman, with their heroic rhymes and long metrical romances, gave way in the evolution of song and harmony to the ballad-monger with his licence. However, in turn they became an intolerable nuisance, and a wag wrote of ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... to go on as far as they could that night. They ran until almost dark, and made camp on the top of a high bank on the left side of the river where once an old lumber camp had been. Here they found the breeze good and the mosquito nuisance much diminished. ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... to try for coal on the spot, by sinking a mine in the middle of Belgrave Square, when, on arriving at a depth of 2500 feet, they come across an active volcano, which proves such a nuisance to the neighbourhood, that the Vestry is applied to by several parishioners to put a stop to it. On their sending the Sanitary Inspector to investigate the matter, he orders the mine to be closed. On this being done, the scheme collapses, several of the Syndicate, as a consequence, in despair ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... most egregious nuisance of modern times—has come to grief. We have the pleasure of announcing that (for the present at least) we are relieved from our very natural anxiety lest TRAIN should re-appear on the American tapis. It seems that he is even more intolerable ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... international agreement, which, they thought, might be brought about through threats of tariff discrimination against nations refusing to adhere to the arrangement. A silver convention in Nebraska in 1894 was attended by a thousand delegates. From the point of view of party harmony the subject was a nuisance. Democratic state conventions were badly divided. Thirty of them adopted resolutions distinctly favorable to free coinage and fourteen opposed. Ten of the latter committed themselves definitely to the gold standard. The fourteen included all the northeastern states, together ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... go by land to-day, which is a nuisance, for it takes so much longer," he declared, as he sat down to breakfast, which at this time of the year had always to ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... first time to-day," he gasped, between the paroxysms. "I'm quite well really. It's the cigarette. They often have that effect. Don't look so worried, or I shall think you hate me for being a nuisance." ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... sort of convention and I could see by the way they all looked at me that they were passing resolutions inviting me to break up the bob cat business. The manager of the menagerie told pa he wished the confounded bob cat would escape, 'cause he was a blooming nuisance, so I thought I would help get rid of the beast, and save the show from disgrace. So when we got to Oberlin I thought that was a pious community that could stand a wild bob cat, so I put several sheets of sticky tanglefoot fly paper ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... "They were just mounted robbers, and gave us a good deal of trouble in hunting them down. But none of them had shed blood during their career, and they did not even draw a pistol when we captured them. That style of bush ranger is a nuisance, but no more. Men seldom carry much money about with them here, and no ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... from the parent article when posting a followup helped solve what had been a major nuisance on USENET: the fact that articles do not arrive at different sites in the same order. Careless posters used to post articles that would begin with, or even consist entirely of, "No, that's wrong" or "I agree" ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... formal nods, important sneers, Thy whisperings foisted in all ears, (Which are, whatever you may think, But nonsense wrapt up in a stink,) Have made thy presence, in a true sense, To thy own side, so d—n'd a nuisance, That, when they have you in their eye, As if the devil drove, they fly. T. My good friend Mullinix, forbear; I vow to G—, you're too severe: If it could ever yet be known I took advice, except my own, It should ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... can't arrest a man unless he's done something! What would you charge 'em with? Loitering with intent to commit a nuisance?" ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... watch, like a cat, and when people's backs were turned, to snatch something, carry it off, and devour it in secret. Detected in these little pilferings, to which she was almost driven, she was regarded as even a greater nuisance than her mother. ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... was just going. Christine had dropped a little batch of black and red Treasury notes on to the dressing-table with an indifferent if not perhaps an impatient air, as though she held these financial sequels to be a stain on the ideal, a tedious necessary, a nuisance, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... of the cold water seemed to revive the wounded lad. He opened his eyes and attempted to smile, although his lips were twitching with pain. "What a nuisance I am, old chap," ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... legion, but poetry was rare and Apollo was compelled, as always when so many throng towards Parnassus, to make very short work. The long poems never were worth anything, the short ones seldom. Even in this literary age the poetry of the day had become a public nuisance; it sometimes happened that one's friend would send home to him by way of mockery as a festal present a pile of trashy verses fresh from the bookseller's shop, whose value was at once betrayed by the elegant binding and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a nuisance!" for I shared the common antipathy to his country and his creed. Nor was his appearance prepossessing—one of Froude's "tonsured peasants," as I looked down at the square shoulders, the stout, short figure and the broad beardlessness of the face of the padre. ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... fear. Nor was it at all certain, in any one instance, where this exemplary chastisement overtook him, that the apparent unanimity of the actors went further than the practical conclusion of "abating" the imperial nuisance, or that their indignation had settled upon the same offences. In general the army measured the guilt by the public scandal, rather than by its moral atrocity; and Caesar suffered perhaps in every case, not so much because he had violated his duties, as because ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... kept a little school for young children in Rue Polonceau. Anna Coupeau was her pupil, and made herself such a nuisance that twice Mademoiselle Josse sent her away, taking her back each time in order not to lose the small ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... selection, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on people's fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would enable me to hurry the thing through and get something else. Did you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse's finger, or how back-breaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe? And did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in Jerico long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as if these ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... motive to this study is nothing better, and who have the further disadvantage of becoming a nuisance very often to society, in proportion to the progress they make. The former do not improve their reading to any good purpose; the latter pervert it to a very bad one, and grow in impertinence as they increase in learning. I think I have known most of the first kind in England, and most of the last ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... "He's a confounded nuisance!" growled the purser. "He wants to show us he knows Adolph Meyer; wants to put Meyer under an obligation. It means a scene on the wharf, and newspaper talk; and," he added with disgust, "these smoking-room rows ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... blue of my ribbon is certainly very pretty and becoming," she thought. "I hope Dorothy will notice it and will get a gold ornament for my hair. I like to be a toy, but sometimes it is a great nuisance not to be able to tell your little girl and boy parents what you would like to have ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... because I want to get rid of Shakespeare by assimilating all that was fine in him, while giving all that was common and vicious in him as spoil to oblivion. He is like the Old-Man-of-the-Sea on the shoulders of our youth; he has become an obsession to the critic, a weapon to the pedant, a nuisance to the man of genius. True, he has painted great pictures in a superb, romantic fashion; he is the Titian of dramatic art: but is there to be no Rembrandt, no Balzac, no greater Tolstoi in English letters? I want to liberate Englishmen ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... which this territory has in common with the greater part of the West, and in fact of the civilized world. It is not only a drawback, but a nuisance anywhere; I mean drinking or whiskey shops. The greater proportion of the settlers are temperate men, I am sure; but in almost every village there are places where the meanest kind of intoxicating liquor ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... two miles away! How sounds do travel in the silence of night-time; probably a gust of wind from that direction had brought me this tale of their devotion to their new friend! Well, if so, they must be a terrible nuisance to the village, thought I, if this has ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... system of the officering and personnel of the army and navy of these States, and the spirit and letter of their trebly-aristocratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous exotic, a nuisance and revolt, and belong here just as much as orders of nobility, or the Pope's council of cardinals. I say if the present theory of our army and navy is sensible and true, then the rest of America ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... seven-thirty was our perchin' time before Bill took a hand, but after that we got so convivual that sometimes we'd sit up till purt' nigh half-past nine, playin' cut-throat an' swappin' tales. Sleep allus was a kind of a nuisance to Bill. Purt' nigh every night when me an' the Kid would stretch ourselves out, Bill would speak a piece about "God bless the man what first invented sleep"; but he was only joshin', an' all the time he was sayin' it he'd ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... almost every nation of Catholic Europe, in its being stigmatized by Pope Benedict XIV., in 1741, as made up of "disobedient, contumacious, captious, and reprobate persons," and at last in its being suppressed and abolished by Pope Clement XIV., in 1773, as a nuisance to Christendom. We need, indeed, to make allowance for the intense animosity of sectarian strife among the various Catholic orders in which the charges against the society were engendered and unrelentingly ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... erratic and assure us that he is inspired; if we cannot well gainsay it, we are at least not obliged to read his works. An architect or a sculptor, however, or a public performer of any sort, that thrusts before us a spectacle justified only in his inner consciousness, makes himself a nuisance. A social standard of taste must assert itself here, or else no efficacious and cumulative art can exist at all. Good taste in such matters cannot abstract from tradition, utility, and the temper of the world. It must make itself an interpreter of humanity and think ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... want her to go," answered Spencer, "she's a perfect gold-mine to them but I gather the lady is difficult... in fact, to put it bluntly she's making such a damn nuisance of herself with her artistic temperament that they can't get on with ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... "Darling, don't be a nuisance! If I succeed I shall make money. And if this isn't a success I don't know what is." He pointed to the letters on his lap, an impatient gesture which dislodged a certain number of them, so that they came rustling to ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... alone raised his voice for moderation, proposing to give the offenders a few days' notice, and to assess a fine of $300 for every libel. W. W. Phelps (who was back in the fold again) held that the city charter gave them power to declare the newspaper a nuisance, and cited the spilling of the tea in Boston harbor as a precedent for an attack on the Expositor office. Finally, on June 10, this ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Bedlam and Pandemonium, my dear! Thank goodness Mrs Pansey is the sole specimen of her kind. Nature broke the mould when that clacking nuisance ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... use of stones, where tiles cannot be used with greater economy. Stone drains are, doubtless, as efficient as any, so long as the water-way can be kept open. The material is often close at hand, lying on the field and to be removed as a nuisance, if not used in drainage. In such cases, true economy may dictate the use of them, even where tiles can be procured; though, we believe, tiles will be found generally cheaper, all things considered, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... his business as an excuse for such absence,—or by having such a plea made for him. Of course he must appear at last. But as to that she had no fear. His timidity, and his conscience also, would both be too potent to allow him to shirk the nuisance of Gatherum altogether. He would come, she was sure; but she did not much care how long he deferred his coming. She was, therefore, not a little surprised when he announced to her an alteration in his plans. This he did not many hours after the ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... instructed not to kill or molest them in any manner, and to do nothing that will alarm them. They come down occasionally to the lower ground, attracted by the lucerne, as are also the deer, which sometimes prove quite a nuisance by getting into the growing crops. The sheep spend most of their time in the cliffs not far away. When first seen, about 1894, there were but five sheep in the bunch, while in 1899 twenty were counted. This information was very kindly sent to me by Mr. C.H. Blanchard, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... say that we robins are a nuisance, and that we destroy so much fruit that they wish we would never come near them. The fact is, we do more good than harm to your orchards and berry patches. Just think how many insects we destroy! If it were not for us I think much more fruit would be destroyed by insects. And worms and ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... mine to come to Paris, and I am likely to get subjects enough to last for a life-time, though I don't know that battle scenes are altogether in my line. It does not seem to me that I have any line in particular yet. It is a nuisance having to decide on that, because I have heard Wilson say an artist, like a writer, must have a line, and when he has once taken it up he must stick to it. If a man once paints sea pieces the public ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Mildred was being a damned nuisance, he said to himself, and he insisted upon accompanying Theodora to the bottom of the great staircase, which rose to magnificent galleries in the ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... cut. I don't remember a thing after coming down the stairs of the club and you and the hall-porter helping me up here. I say, old chap, you have strapped me up all safe and tight. It was good of you to take charge of me. I hope I haven't been a beastly nuisance!' Harold answered grimly: ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... rendezvous. As they drew near to San Diego, their Indian allies began to desert, evidently in fear of the Dieguenos, whom they began to meet in numbers and who proved a rascally lot. They thronged the camp and became a perfect nuisance with their begging and stealing. They begged from Junipero his robe and from the governor his cuera, waistcoat, breeches, and all he had on. One of them succeeding in inducing Junipero to take off ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... reverence, or to honour nonsense with the ceremony of a confutation. As knavery, so folly, that is not reclaimable, is to be speedily despatched; business is to be freed from obstruction, and society from a nuisance. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... made himself a nuisance in countless ways, and while neither member wished any harm to come to Max, they felt that it would be a great relief if he and his mother would leave Cliffmore, and ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... He never begs no tobacco, nor gives away none either. However, he ain't such a general nuisance as the other one, and he pays spot cash. I'll have to say that much for him. But in spite o' everything and all, I can't seem to make myself care for ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... Nisi Prius nuisance, who just now is rather rife, The Judicial humorist—I've got him on the list! All funny fellows, comic men, and clowns of private life— They'd none of 'em be missed—they'd none of them be missed. And apologetic statesmen ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... want you as a son-in-law. And, dammit," exploded Lord Marshmoreton, "I won't have you as a son-in-law! Good God! do you think that you can harry and assault my son Percy in the heart of Piccadilly and generally make yourself a damned nuisance and then settle down here without an invitation at my very gates and expect to be welcomed into the bosom of the family? If I were a young man . ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... man a public nuisance and a common enemy.—He gets his living out of other people. Whatever wealth he gets, some honest man who has earned it is compelled to go without. Dishonesty is the perversion of exchange from its noble function as a civilizing agent and a public benefit, into the ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... nuisance,' the eldest and ugliest of the two observed—she was a high-born lady, with a distinctly cantankerous cast of countenance. She had a Roman nose, and her skin was wrinkled like a wilted apple; she wore coffee-coloured point-lace in her bonnet, with a complexion to ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... 'Oh!' if on the deck, she thinks the water is rushing in below; if down below, and there is a noise, she is convinced there is danger; and if it be perfectly still, she is sure there is something wrong. She fidgets herself and everybody, and is quite a nuisance with her pride and ill-humour; but she has strict notions of propriety, and sacrifices herself as a martyr. She is ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... are all unpaved; and in summer time the sand and dust in them are as great a nuisance as the mud is in the rainy season, during which they are scarcely passable after a shower; for in the interior of the town the water does not run off, but remains till it is dried up. It may be ascribed to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... serious. "I learned very early in life that I was beautiful; and I suppose if I were suddenly to cease being beautiful, I'd miss it; yet I often think it's a nuisance. It makes one dependent on externals. Most of the beautiful women I've known make a sort of profession of it—they live to shine and be looked ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... approach of a new revolution. The men of Pope and Addison's time looked upon country squires as bores incapable of intellectual pleasure, and, therefore, upon country life as a topic for gentle ridicule, or more frequently as an unmitigated nuisance. Probably their estimate was a very sound one. When a true poet like Thomson really enjoyed the fresh air, his taste did not become a passion, and the scenery appeared to him as a pleasant background to his Castle of Indolence. Cowper's peculiar ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... and he accompanied the commission to the scene of disturbance. He was on a hill near Lawrence when he saw the passe comitatus of the United States Marshal of the Territory batter down the Free State Hotel, it having been indicted as a nuisance by the Grand Jury. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Townsend was taken prisoner by General Stringfellow, but on ascertaining ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... century after their institution, they were the ablest and perhaps the best soldiers of the Pope, and did what the Jesuits afterwards performed, and perhaps the Methodists a hundred years ago,—gained the hearts of the people and stimulated religious life; but in the fourteenth century they were a nuisance. They sold indulgences, they invented pious frauds, they were covetous under pretence of poverty, they had become luxurious in their lives, they slandered the regular clergy, they usurped the prerogatives ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Steve commented. "If it was any one but Gay I'd send condolences for loading the office nuisance onto him." ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... might be a good idea," he answered slowly, for he regarded rabbits as a nuisance, and was not anxious to see any such pests in his neighborhood. "Stewed rabbit makes ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... picture himself as upon the point of death here in this foreign city. It was a very sad, a melancholy thing to speak about. He might call until he was hoarse, and no one would answer except possibly the night clerk or a gendarme. And they would look upon him only as something of a nuisance. It is really pathetic—the depths of misery into which a healthy man may, in such a ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... on the five o'clock train. Packing those "Early English Poets" was a confounded nuisance. They had to be stuffed here, there and everywhere amid my wearing apparel and Hephzibah ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln |
