"Waspish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hole with a waspish swiftness, though there was a wild, frightened look in his eyes; and as he advanced towards the barricade he drew out a bulldog pistol and held ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... word for it. But, after all, it consists chiefly in the knack of the thing. One must have the wit 'from such a sharp and waspish word as No to pluck the sting.' I do it every day, and I really think ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... proving shy Of merit that had not yet clipt its shell. Day after day, in weather foul or fair, With lackeys, hucksters, and the commoner sort, At Whitehall and Westminster he stood guard, Reading men's faces with most anxious eye. There the lords swarmed, some waspish and some bland, But none would pause at plucking of the sleeve To hearken to him, and the lad had died On London stones for lack of crust to gnaw But that he caught the age's malady, The something magical that was in air, And made men poets, heroes, demi-gods— Made Shakespeare, Rawleigh, Grenvile, ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... astonishment, dread, or whatever the feeling was which moved him, to ooze forth in a cold and deathly perspiration which robbed his cheeks of colour, and cast a bluish shadow over his narrow and retreating temples; while the thin and waspish man, caught in the same trap (for trap I saw it was), shouted aloud in his ill-timed mirth, the false and cruel character of which would have made me shudder, if all expression of feeling on my part had not been held in check by the interest I immediately experienced in the display ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... that the worthy squire is quite disconcerted at the unlucky result of his hawking experiment, and this unfortunate illustration of his eulogy on female equitation. Old Christy, too, is very waspish, having been sorely twitted by Master Simon for having let his hawk fly at carrion. As to the falcon, in the confusion occasioned by the fair Julia's disaster the bird was totally forgotten. I make no doubt she has made ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... fairer I could find than she. And still she is so lovely in my eyes, Her equal cannot anywhere be found. You'd take her for a flow'r. Yet when arise Her storms of anger, long it takes to calm Her mind, so waspish is her character. The thought of this doth sadden me. Should one Not satisfy her heart's desire, she flies Into a passion and attempts to kill Herself. But 'tis my destiny—'tis writ. The Queen is like a gem with ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... looked on all his associates as wretches of depraved taste and narrow notions. Their conversation was, therefore, fretful and waspish, their behaviour brutal, their merriment bluntly sarcastick, and their seriousness gloomy and suspicious. They were totally ignorant of all that passes, or has lately passed, in the world; unable to discuss any question of religious, political, or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... to complete his happiness. Mrs. English, her eyes fairly dancing with delight, could only exclaim at intervals, "Bless the boy!" or, "What a pair of children!" then fondly pass her arm about the waist of Miss. Juno—which was not waspish in girth—or rest her hand upon Paul's shoulder with a show of maternal affection peculiarly grateful to him. It was with difficulty the half-dazed young fellow could keep apart from Miss. Juno. If he found she had wandered into the next room, while he was engaged for a moment, he followed ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... inherit this family peculiarity that he had not been a year in the government of the province before he was universally denominated William the Testy. His appearance answered to his name. He was a brisk, wiry, waspish little old gentleman; such a one as may now and then be seen stumping about our city in a broad-skirted coat with huge buttons, a cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin. His face was broad but his features were sharp, his cheeks were scorched into a dusky red by ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... with a sigh of deep content, the girl tied it around a waist by no means waspish. Then off came the little cuffs, and up the sleeves were rolled to ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... were as ever came from Germany!"—the falconers were in despair, and Churchill saw that the fault was his; and it looked so like cockney sportsmanship! If Horace had been in a towering rage, it would have been well enough; but he only grew pettish, snappish, waspish: now none of those words ending in ish become a gentleman; ladies always think so, and Lady Cecilia now thought so, and Helen thought so too, and Churchill saw it, and he grew pale instead of red, and that looks ugly ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the day in posting to the opera, or shaking your heels at Willis's rooms, and your elbows at the Union Club. If I felt pleased at finding you at home, how was my satisfaction increased, by hearing from a yellow-bellied waspish footman that you were busy with the first tragedian of the day? Good! said I to myself, this must be Kemble: there is no man better able to appreciate my labours—I'll break in upon them without ceremony. On approaching your worship's ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... if I can make him prosperous." And he had been very glad of an opportunity which had presented itself of providing the notary with a temporary post as an extra cancelliere or registering secretary under the Ten, believing that with this sop and the expectation of more, the waspish cur must be quite cured of the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... as if he had no care in the world. He hummed snatches of song. Mr. Jones raised his waspish eyebrows, at the sound. The secretary got down on his knees before an old leather trunk, and, rummaging in there, brought out a small looking-glass. He fell to examining his physiognomy in it with ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... tremble. Must I budge? Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch Under your testy humour? By the gods! You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Though it do split you; for from this day forth I'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, When you are waspish. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... him as going about with this knowledge, in addition to the knowledge of so much else, in his mind,—this care, in addition to so many other cares, ever weighing upon his heart. Little did jealous, intriguing Lee know of these things; petulant, waspish Izard still less. A mind less sagacious than Franklin's might have grown suspicious under the influences that were employed to awaken his distrust of Vergennes. And a character less firmly established would have lost its hold upon Vergennes amid the constant efforts that were made to shake his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... wise at all: and even her good wits are not always left unaffected by her bad temper. It is really amusing to read Mrs. Carlyle's rather mischievous account of Mrs. Butler (F. K.'s married name) calling and carrying a whip "to keep her hand in": and then to come on F. K.'s waspish resentment at these words, when they ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... assisted me to the utmost of his power in the business which had brought me to Spain. Shortly after the ministry was formed, I went to him and said, "that now or never was the time to mike an effort in my behalf." "I will do so," said he, in a waspish tone; for he always spoke waspishly whether to friend or foe; "but you must have patience for a few days, we are very much occupied at present. We have been outvoted in the cortes, and this afternoon we intend to dissolve them. It is believed that ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... One can enjoy Shakespeare or Shelley without a note: one is inclined even to resent the intrusion of the commentator into the upper regions of poetry. But Pope's verse is a guide to his age and the incidents of his waspish existence, lacking a key to which one misses three-fourths of the entertainment. The Danciad without footnotes is one of the obscurest poems in existence: with footnotes it becomes a perfect epic of ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... real nature. Sexual relations are brief, but love and care of offspring are long. The elimination of maternity is one of the great calamities, if not diseases, of our age. Marholm[4] points out at length how art again to-day gives woman a waspish waist with no abdomen, as if to carefully score away every trace of her mission; usually with no child in her arms or even in sight; a mere figurine, calculated perhaps to entice, but not to bear; incidentally degrading the artist who depicts her to a fashion-plate ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... would appear that M. Heger has less cause for resentment, for, although in "Villette" he (or his double) is pictured as "a waspish little despot," as fiery and unreasonable, as "detestably ugly" in his anger, closely resembling "a black and sallow tiger," as having an "overmastering love of authority and public display," as basely playing the spy and reading purloined letters, and in the Bronte epistles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... rang out and went rolling away in a thousand echoes through the wood. Two others followed in sharp succession, and there went close by Mary's ear the waspish whine of a minie-ball. At the same moment she recognized, once,—twice,—thrice,—just at her back where the hoofs of her companion's horse were clattering—the tart rejoinders of ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... being an heiress; but he, after the manner of sons, falls in love with the raven-haired Kate, the heiress's portionless cousin; and, moreover, Grace herself shows every symptom of perfect indifference to Horace. In such cases sons are often sulky or fiery, mothers are alternately manoeuvring and waspish, and the portionless young lady often lies awake at night and cries a good deal. We are getting used to these things now, just as we are used to eclipses of the moon, which no longer set us howling ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... forego this work which raised him, in a way, to a position of dominance over these people. Now the sight of presumably so efficient a person in need of aid or exercise, to be built up, was all that was required to spur him on to the most waspish or wolfish attitude imaginable. In part at least he argued, I think (for in the last analysis he was really too wise and experienced to take any such petty view, although there is a subconscious "past-lack" motivating impulse in all our views), that here ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... the schoolroom, pink and plump and pert, Bedizened, bouncing, artful and alert, No victim she of vapours and of moods Though the sky falls she's "ready with the goods"— Will suit each client, tickle every taste Polite or gothic, libertine or chaste, Supply a waspish tongue, a waspish waist, Astarte's breast or Atalanta's leg, Love ready-made or glamour off the peg— Do you prefer "a thing of dew and air"? Or is your type Poppaea or Polaire? The crystal casket of a maiden's dreams, Or the last fancy in cosmetic creams? The dark and ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... then, if she is young and handsome? And what if she plumes herself somewhat on the lustre of her race? Have not chaste women often something of the morose and peevish in their character almost past bearing? Do they not sometimes get called waspish and shrewish by virtue of their very chastity? Would it be best then to marry off the street some Thracian Abrotonus, or some Milesian Bacchis, and seal the bargain by the present of a handful of nuts? But we have known even such turn ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... poet were far from numerous: the book for which he expresses his thanks, was the work of the waspish Ritson.] ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to alleviate that drawback. She fancied herself as cold, hard, analytical, and ruthless; actually she was waspish, arrogant, overbearing, and treacherous. What she considered in herself to be scientific detachment was really an isolation born of fear and distrust of ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... her Deity Cutting the clouds towards Paphos, and her son Dove-drawn with her. Here thought they to have done Some wanton charm upon this man and maid, 95 Whose vows are, that no bed-right shall be paid Till Hymen's torch be lighted: but in vain; Mars's hot minion is returned again; Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows, Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows, 100 And be a boy ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... Clifford Du Bois in the office of the Inquirer, and reflecting how little his private telephone message had availed him, was in a waspish, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... proprietor of two of the largest hotels in New York, and half a dozen enormous winter and summer places, looked no more like a boniface than he did like a little girl on communion Sunday. He was a small, wispy, waspish fellow with a violently upright, raging pompadour, a mustache which, in spite of careful attempts at waxing, persisted in sticking straight forward, and a sharp hard nose which had apparently been ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... of Mrs. Baines flowed and ebbed, during the next three months, influenced by Sophia's moods. There were days when Sophia was the old Sophia—the forbidding, difficult, waspish, and even hedgehog Sophia. But there were other days on which Sophia seemed to be drawing joy and gaiety and goodwill from some secret source, from some fount whose nature and origin none could divine. It was on these days that the uneasiness of Mrs. Baines ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... athwart, transverse, intersecting; adverse, baffling, contrary, perverse; petulant, peevish, cynical, surly, unamiable, inaffable, crabbed, crusty, captious, fractious, churlish, vixenish, querulous, fretful, choleric, touchy, waspish, morose, sullen, ill-natured, irascible acrimonious, irritable; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... loss, I can tell you," said Tom, pleased that the ground was clear for him. "I never was amongst such a set of waspish, dogmatical, over-bearing fellows ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... indeed "see," for the waspish little boat emerged from the deluge she had raised and, steaming swiftly on, turned round and retraced her track. On reaching about the same position as to the Nettle, she repeated the experiment ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... and his "eight several kinds of classical numbers," that the matter was finally settled, and the English tongue left to go the road on which Heaven had started it. So that we may excuse Raleigh's answering somewhat waspish to some quotation of Spenser's from the three letters of "Immerito and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... pravigebla. Warren kuniklejo. Warrior militisto. Wart veruko. Wary atenta, singardema. Wash lavi. Wash one's self sin lavi. Washerwoman lavistino. Wash-house lavejo. Washstand lavtablo. Wasp vespo. Wasp's nest vespejo. Waspish malgxentila, ekkolerema. Waste (squander) malsxpari. Waste (grow thin) konsumigxi, malgrasigxi. Waste (rubbish) forjxetajxo, difektajxo. Waste (untilled) senkultura. Wasteful malsxparema. Watch observi, spioni. Watch (guard) gardi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... this wedding-party led Bouvard and Pecuchet to talk about women, whom they declared to be frivolous, waspish, obstinate. In spite of this, they were often better than men; but at other times they were worse. In short, it was better to live without them. For his part, Pecuchet ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Nassaus and their adherents by public appeals and private conversation to defeat all schemes of truce. The people were stirred by the eloquence of the two stadholders. They were stung to fury against Spain and against Barneveld by the waspish effusions of the daily press. The magistrates remained calm, and took part by considerable majorities with Barneveld. That statesman, while exercising almost autocratic influence in the estates, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... faltering courage. Then panic-stricken, as wiser people have been before her, over the dreadful spookish remoteness of a perfectly normal human being who refuses either to answer or even to notice your wildest efforts at communication, she raised her waspish voice in its shrillest, harshest war-cry. "Fat Father! Fat Father! F-a-t F-a-t-h-e-r!" she screeched out frenziedly at the top ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... not," said Poole. "Those are nasty waspish things, those shells. There she goes again. I wonder whether we could do anything with rifles ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... little man— I'll sketch him if I can, For he clung to mine and me Like the old man of the sea; And in spite of taunt and scoff We could not pitch him off, For the cross-grained, waspish elf Cared for no one ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... our people. They complaine to me, & alass! I can doe nothing for them; if I speake to him, he flies in my face, as mutinous, and saith no complaints shall be heard or received but by him selfe, and saith they are forwarde, & waspish, discontented people, & I doe ill to hear them. Ther are others y^t would lose all they have put in, or make satisfaction for what they have had, that they might departe: but he will not hear them, nor suffer them to goe ashore, least they should rune away. The sailors also ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... platform, there seemed to be some danger that they might blunder and fall through one of the windows into the space behind the court; and at a time when Sir Herbert and Dr. —— were at open variance, that waspish advocate had on one occasion the bad taste to keep his seat at the rising of the court, and with characteristic malevolence of expression to say to the footmen, "Mind, my men, and take care of that judge of yours—or, by Jove, you'll pitch him out ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... his studies, and to ride daily; and he prudently followed the advice. Many years afterwards, he repaid the benevolent Abbe by procuring for him, through Sir Robert Walpole, the nomination to an abbey in Avignon. This is only one of many proofs that, notwithstanding his waspish temper, and his no small share of malice as well as vanity, there was a warm ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... unclean, and plaguily pestilentious rake-hells, black beasts, dusk, dun, white, ash-coloured, speckled, and a foul vermin of other hues, whose obtrusive importunity would not permit me to die at my own ease; for by fraudulent and deceitful pricklings, ravenous, harpy-like graspings, waspish stingings, and such-like unwelcome approaches, forged in the shop of I know not what kind of insatiabilities, they went about to withdraw and call me out of those sweet thoughts wherein I was already beginning to repose myself and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... but no arguments, commands, or entreaties could draw them away. If SHE did not see them, some one else did—a gentleman on horseback had entered the gate and was proceeding up the road; at the distance of a few paces from us he paused, and calling to the children in a waspish penetrating tone, bade them 'keep out of that water.' 'Miss Grey,' said he, '(I suppose it IS Miss Grey), I am surprised that you should allow them to dirty their clothes in that manner! Don't you see how Miss Bloomfield has soiled her frock? and that Master Bloomfield's socks are quite wet? ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... essential power greater than that of the First Minister. The terrible Atossa, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, shrank from contact with Pope, while for a long time the ablest men of the political sets approached Swift like lackeys. One power was made manifest by the waspish verse-maker and the powerful satirist, and each was acknowledged as ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... their laborious way along the platform, there seemed to be some danger that they might blunder and fall through one of the windows into the space behind the court; and at a time when Sir Herbert and Dr. —— were at open variance, that waspish advocate had, on one occasion, the bad taste to keep his seat at the rising of the court, and with characteristic malevolence of expression say to the footmen, 'Mind, my men, and take care of that judge of yours; or, by Jove, you'll ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the draughty staircases, until the inmates shivered with horror and the terrified neighbours fled the haunted castle as a lazar-house. Once in possession of a family secret, he felt himself secure, and henceforth he was free to browbeat his employer and to flog his pupil to the satisfaction of his waspish nature. Moreover, he was endowed with all the insight and effrontery of a trained journalist. So sedulous was he in his search after the truth, that neither man nor woman could deny him confidence. And, as vinegar flowed in his veins for blood, it was his merry sport to set wife ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Miss Dale, who had disapproved the waspish snap at Colonel De Craye, were in wonderment of the art of speech which could so soothingly inform a gentleman that his behaviour had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mistake, it is a mistake; and that no man lives who has a grander and nobler scorn of every mean and dastard action. I would to Heaven it were decorous to pay him some public tribute of respect . . . O'Connell's speeches are the old thing: fretty, boastful, frothy, waspish at the voices in the crowd, and all that: but with no true greatness. . . . What a relief to turn to that noble letter of Carlyle's" (in which a timely testimony had been borne to the truthfulness and honour of Mazzini), "which I think ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... varry gooid order, shoo puts her mait into a better skin nor th' mooast; they didn't hit it soa well at th' furst, for shoo wor varry waspish, an' tha knows awr Joa's as queer as Dick's hatband, when he's put aght a bit. One morning, abaght a wick after they wor wed, Joa woran't varry weel, an' had to ligg i' bed a bit,—shoo gate up to muck th' beeas,—(for shoo can do a job like that, tha knows, ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... notaries public, and other townspeople bright in local fame has been made a jest by urban persons of a humorous inclination, who take scorn of merit because it is not vast merit. Pleasing to contemplate in contrast to this waspish spirit is the noble nature of the country obituary, inspiration to humanism. Here was a man, to the seeing eye, of sterling stamp: "He attended public grammar school where he profited by his opportunities in obtaining ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... stronger man. For Pope was deformed and sickly, dwarfish in soul and body. He knew little of the world of nature or of the world of the human heart. He was lacking, apparently, in noble feeling, and instinctively chose a lie when the truth had manifestly more advantages. Yet this jealous, peevish, waspish little man became the most famous poet of his age and the acknowledged leader of English literature. We record the fact with wonder and admiration; but we do ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Memoirs one now buys from Mudie for 2s. 6d. or so. And well—well—worth to those who recollect him. I only knew him by Face—and Voice—at your Father's, and your Sister's: and used to think what a little waspish Dilettante it was: and now I see he was something very much better indeed: and I only hope I may have Courage to face my Death as he had. Dickens loved him, who did not love Humbugs: and Chorley would have two strips of Gadshill Yew {54} put with him in his Coffin. Which again reminds ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... In reality he made a rather poor job of the buttoning. As soon as the back of the dress promised to hold together, he stopped. Then, firmly clutching Margery's arm in one hand and holding his seine and tin can of minnows in the other, he faced his waspish ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore |
