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Wrangle   Listen
verb
Wrangle  v. i.  (past & past part. wrangled; pres. part. wrangling)  
1.
To argue; to debate; to dispute. (Obs.)
2.
To dispute angrily; to quarrel peevishly and noisily; to brawl; to altercate. "In spite of occasional wranglings." "For a score of kingdoms you should wrangle." "He did not know what it was to wrangle on indifferent points."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wrangle" Quotes from Famous Books



... miserable room, destitute of furniture, crowded with his wife and children, pale, hungry, and emaciated; the man cursing their lamentations, staggering to the tap-room, from whence he had just returned, followed by his wife and a sickly infant, clamouring for bread; and heard the street-wrangle and noisy recrimination that his striking her occasioned. And then imagination led us to some metropolitan workhouse, situated in the midst of crowded streets and alleys, filled with noxious vapours, and ringing with boisterous ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... of sober indifference, and muttering that he would not have allowed himself to be betrayed into giving up such a prize so cheaply had it not been that he had an especial regard for the imperator Sergius Vanno, and that the house of Porthenus had never nourished mere traders to wrangle ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... drawn in from the walls, composed a very brilliant circle around the throne, each one curious to hear the stranger as he had been to see him; and they were quick to point his last sentence; for most of them had been with the Emperor in the voyage to Therapia, which was still a theme of wager and wrangle scarcely less interesting than in its first hour. By one impulse they ventured a glance at the royal face, seeking a revelation; but the countenance was steady ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... affairs which were entirely outside of the proper scope of his office. "It is hard," said he, "that I, who give others no trouble with my quarrels, should be plagued with all the perversities of those who think fit to wrangle ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... or have thoughte me worthy to have byn acqueynted with these matters, (whiche yo{u} might well have donne without anye whatsoeuer dispargement to yo{ur}selfe,) you sholde haue understoode before the impressione, althoughe this whiche I here write ys not nowe uppon selfe will or fonnd conceyte to wrangle for one asses shadowe, or to seke a knott in a rushe, but in frendlye sorte to bringe truthe to lighte, athinge whiche I wolde desire others to use towardes mee in whatsoeuer shall fall oute of my penne. Wherefore I will here shewe ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne

... damn everlastingly all those who doubted that consubstantiality he himself had doubted at the beginning of the conference. It is quite clear that Constantine did not care who was damned or for what period, so long as the Christians ceased to wrangle among themselves. The practical unanimity of Nicaea was secured by threats, and then, turning upon the victors, he sought by threats to restore Arius to communion. The imperial aim was a common faith to unite the empire. The crushing out of the ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... tears to her eyes, and almost to his, till he suddenly declared she had stolen a card, and with that they came to soft blows and laughing again. So did the two sit and wrangle, seizing the pack out of turn, feigning rage at being cheated, until he juggled to make her win three times out of five; and when chance had thus settled for the guitar, they played for kisses, and so forgot the cards at last. And at last Genesmere began ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... right to their service or labor. This idea is recognized in the Constitution, and this right is secured. We ask no more. As Mr. Madison, and the whole South, had the thing, he did not care to wrangle about the name. We are told, again and again, that the word slave does not appear in the Constitution. Be it so. We care not, since our slaves are there recognized as "persons held to service" by those to whom "such service is due." It is repeated without end that ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... (after partly filling it with gunpowder and iron filings) and sought to duck him in the fountain in the court, it was Benham, in a state between distress and madness, and armed with a horn-handled cane of exceptional size, who intervened, turned the business into a blend of wrangle and scuffle, introduced the degrading topic of duelling into a simple wholesome rag of four against one, carried him off under the cloud of horror created by this impropriety and so saved him, still only slightly wetted, not ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... of course; it left the question whether slaves are population or chattels for theorizers to wrangle over, and for future events to decide. It was easy for James Wilson to show that there was neither rhyme nor reason in it: but he subscribed to it, nevertheless, just as the northern abolitionists, Rufus King and Gouverneur Morris, joined with ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... other feeling away, marvelously mastering the sense of pain that had ground mercilessly at every nerve. Then came that small voice which a man hears sometimes in the night stillness and sometimes in the blare of daylight wrangle. And all suddenly I knew that He who notes the sparrow's fall knew that I was alone with death, slow-lingering, inch-creeping death, out on that wide, lonely plain. The glare on the waters softened. The ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... continual wrangle. Madam Imbert could hardly get away from Mrs. Maroney long enough to eat her meals. Mrs. Maroney and Josh. dealt exclusively in brandy. Toward evening Josh. proclaimed his intention of "raising" the money, and starting with it ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... lawyers to wrangle amongst each other—a practice which of late years has become so much a legal fashion, that some of our Westminster Hall heroes, forgetting their clients' quarrels in their own, suddenly convert themselves ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various

... which I had a glimpse of while a friend of mine was preparing a review, I was greatly interested, and could write and wrangle for a year on every page; one passage particularly delighted me, the part about Ulysses - jolly. Then, you know, that is just what I fear I have come to think landscape ought to be in literature; so there we should be at odds. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... are smitten by the heat of the room and nearly suffocated by clouds of steam. We find at last an empty bench, and surround ourselves with a semicircle of wooden pails, collected from all around the room. Sometimes two women in search of pails lay hold of the same pail at the same moment, and a wrangle ensues, in the course of which each disputant reminds the other of all her failings, nicknames, and undesirable connections, living, dead, and unborn; until an attendant interferes, with more muscle than ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... described found themselves at a disadvantage, while those who carried merely the pick, shovel, and small personal equipment were enabled to make a flying start. On the beach there was invariably an immense wrangle over the hiring of boats to go up the river. These were a sort of dug-out with small decks in the bow and in the stern, and with low roofs of palmetto leaves amidships. The fare to Cruces was about fifteen dollars a man. Nobody was in ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... A snarling wrangle instantly began, Sanchez objecting to rubies and demanding more emeralds, and Picquet complaining violently concerning the smallness of ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... largely a history of wars between states, and literary history is no less the record of quarrels in print between jealous authors. Poets and artists, more susceptible than practical men, seem to live a life of perpetual wrangle. The history of these petty feuds is not healthy intellectual food, it is at best amusing scandal. But these quarrels of authors do not degrade the authors in our eyes, they only show them to be, what we knew, as vain, irritable, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... Reproach; Pleasure, Honour or Riches, are things for which he has no taste. But notwithstanding all this and what else he may defend himself with, as that the Lady is too old or too young, of a suitable Humour, or the quite contrary, and that it is impossible they can ever do other than wrangle from June to January, Every Body tells him all this is Spleen, and he must have a Wife; while all the Members of the Inquisition are unanimous in a certain Woman for him, and they think they all together are better able to judge, than he or ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Luck let them wrangle humorously over their agricultural deficiencies, and drifted off into open-eyed dreaming. Into his picture he began to fit these two speculatively, with a purely tentative adjustment of their personalities to his requirements. ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... I used to believe in the inevitable European war," Mr. Britling explained to Mr. Direck, "but it's been threatened so long that at last I've lost all belief in it. The Powers wrangle and threaten. They're far too cautious and civilised to let the guns go off. If there was going to be a war it would have happened two years ago when the Balkan League fell upon Turkey. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... shops, counting-rooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, alehouses; on the exchange, in the tennis court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker dropped a kettle half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... educate this being a little lower than the angels; this being thus separated from the rest of the world, and divided off, by the finger of God writing it upon her nature, to a peculiar and most noble office-work in society? It is not as a lawyer, to wrangle in courts; it is not as a clergyman, to preach in our pulpits; it is not as a physician, to live day and night in the saddle and sick room; it is not as a soldier, to go forth to battle; it is not as the mechanic, to lift the ponderous sledge, and sweat at the burning furnace; ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... quarrelled about was worth while, and treated it all with a well-bred contempt. Spurling was usually the one who was unjust, and I the one who complained; so I was usually the one to start the wrangle. Therefore, though he despised Spurling, he always seemed to blame me ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... of Firefly's accomplishments; her sister Glow-worm is equal to her. You shall have a large tent where they can dwell together in harmony, for among their other perfections their tongues are never addicted to wrangle. Take them, then, my friend: be my son, ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... mention her name. Nobody did in those excited days, and Betty had no means of learning whether her sudden good health had been final or temporary. Sally Carter did not allude to her again. When she and Betty met, it was to wrangle on the Cuban question, for Miss Carter was all ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... The term 'Gnoll' (from Dungeons & Dragons) is also reported. 2. A curmudgeon attached to an obsolescent computing environment. The combination 'ITS troglodyte' was flung around some during the Usenet and email wringle-wrangle attending the 2.x.x revision of the Jargon File; at least one of the people it was intended to ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... transplanted to London.' Piozzi Letters, i. 326. He is pleasantly alluding to the fact that he was a Staffordshire man. In the Dialogue in The Gent. Mag. for 1791, p. 502, Mrs. Knowles says that, the wrangle ended thus:—'Mrs. K. "I hope, Doctor, thou wilt not remain unforgiving; and that you will renew your friendship, and joyfully meet at last in those bright regions where pride and prejudice can never enter." Dr. Johnson. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... waist. On the fall of a mutineer, a rush would be made by the men to secure the coveted loot, a race taking place sometimes between a European and one of our native soldiers as to who should first reach the body. The kammerbund was quickly torn off and the money snatched up, a wrangle often ensuing among the men as to the division of the booty. In this manner many soldiers succeeded, to my knowledge, in securing large sums of money; one in particular, a Grenadier of my regiment, after ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... lowest dregs of such a race would have been lawyers spending their span of life on this mysterious earth studying the long dusty records of dead and gone quarrels. We simians naturally admire a profession full of wrangle and chatter. But that is a monkeyish way ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... courtesy which belonged to their former condition, and asserted their own will and way in the round, unvarnished phrase which they supposed to be their right as republican citizens. Life became a sort of domestic wrangle and struggle between the employers, who secretly confessed their weakness, but endeavored openly to assume the air and bearing of authority, and the employed, who knew their power and insisted on their privileges. From this cause domestic service in America has had less of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... honor due when custom asks, Nor wrangle for this lesser claim; It is not to be destitute To have ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... Besides, between the Addicks scandal and that other which we agreed must unquestionably lurk in the hasty appointment of the receiver, the whole affair must eventually be ventilated in court. It is always hard for Mr. Rogers to forego an advantage, but by this time he was tired of the wrangle and wanted peace, and, moreover, he did not relish the thought of court proceedings, so he admitted that my reasoning was good, and promised to do anything in his ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... can scratch and scold, And boys will fight and wrangle, And big, grown men, just now and then, Fret o'er some fingle-fangle, Vexing the earth with grief or mirth, Longing, rejoicing, rueing— But by the sliprails stands ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis

... hundred years hence, what a change will be made, In politics, morals, religion and trade, In statesmen who wrangle or ride on the fence, These things will be altered a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... on the outer threshold. Mrs. Flanagan had, somehow, got there before him, with a lamp, and he followed her down through the dancing shadows, with blurred eyes. On the lower landing he stopped to hear the jar of some noisy wrangle, thick with oaths, from the bar-room. He listened for a moment, and then turned to the staring stupor of ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... wrangle, children," says Algy from the window; "but, Nancy, if you have not told us before the clock gets to the quarter" (looking impressively at the slowly-traveling hands), "I shall ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... found himself in the cool of the evening on the bare heath, where the slanting sunbeams cast a red light, he was reminded by every object that met his eye of the harsh and rebellious sensations that he had allowed to reign over him at his last arrival there, which had made him wrangle over the bier of one so loving and beloved, and exaggerate the right till it wore the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... How on earth did any living man pull it off as well as that? I remember arguing with a man who very genuinely thought the talent of Shakespeare was exaggerated in public opinion, and discovering at the end of a long wrangle that he was not considering Shakespeare as a poet. But as a poet, then, how on earth did he ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... Alban would not wrangle with him, and for a little while he ate in silence, watching the sparkling throng and listening to such scraps of conversation as floated to him from merry tables. Down in Union Street it had been ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... fool. Nothing would please them better. I've convinced him of that. A wrangle in the courts now over such an issue would postpone its settlement indefinitely. The Supreme Court of the United States has sustained the South on every issue that has been raised. The North is leading a revolution. The South is entrenched behind the law. They can't be ousted ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... not very effective in the contest of tongue between his mother and himself. As the talk went on he foresaw that he was to be beaten; yet he persisted, for he loved a joy-wrangle, as he called it, with his mother. He had argued with her many a time, just to see her in a harmless passion, and note how the youth of her came back, giving high colour to the wrinkled face, and how the eyes shone with a brightness which had been constant in them long ago. They were now quarrelling ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... writers it is most fortunate that our design has taken so wide a scope. These can go on with their perennial wrangle over the petty question of penal and educational flagellation, while we grapple with the higher problem, and unfold the broader philosophy of an universal walloping. Reflections upon the Beneficent ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... is he wholly destitute of the arts. Grammar he has enough to make termination of those words which his authority hath endenizoned rhetoric-some; but so little that it is thought a concealment. Logic, enough to wrangle. Arithmetic, enough for the ordinals of his year-books and number-rolls; but he goes not to multiplication, there is a statute against it. So much geometry, that he can advise in a perambulatione fadenda, or a rationalibus divisis. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... search of a job, while Mrs Gulching, thoroughly cross and worried, is doing the housework with one hand and dangling a fractious teething baby from the other. The rest of the family are engaged in playing games of skill and chance (on the win, tie, or wrangle principle), in the middle of the street outside; and piercing screams testify to the fact that John William Gulching, aged two, had just been uprooted by Mary Kate Gulching, who wants to lay out a new Hop-Scotch court, from the flagstone upon ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... on his precious box. It seemed an eternity before he could get anywhere near the ticket-office window, and he completely lost what little temper he had when a garrulous woman blocked his way and took fifteen minutes of additional time in an interminable wrangle ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard

... of all," said Melnichansky, "we had to organise while we were fighting. The other side knew just what it wanted; but here the soldiers had their Soviet and the workers theirs.... There was a fearful wrangle over who should be Commander-in-chief; some regiments talked for days before they decided what to do; and when the officers suddenly deserted us, we had ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... destroying—not of Heaven, but of Hell—not of self-denial, but of reddest orgy. Constantinople—beware!' I tossed the chair aside, and with a stamp was on my feet: and as I stood—again, again—I heard: the startlingly sudden wrangle, the fierce, vulgar outbreak and voluble controversy, till my consciousness could not hear its ears: and one urged: 'Go! go!' and the other: 'Not there...! where you like, ... but not there...! for ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... crushed out, and their properties joined in huge lines under the ownership of a few controlling men, while in the West, extensive systems, thousands of miles long, had recently been built. Having stamped out most of the small owners, the railroad barons now proceeded to wrangle and fight among themselves. It was a characteristic period when the railroad magnates were constantly embroiled in the bitterest quarrels, the sole object of which was to outdo, bankrupt and wreck one another and seize, if possible, the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... of his mine men were hammering stakes into the ground on all sides of the discovery claim, and Clark and Johnson were in a loud wrangle as to who reached the spot first. Leading his mule up to the cliff wall where he had built a shelter, Bidwell unpacked his outfit, and as he stood his rifle ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... A wrangle is the disinclination to each other of two boarders that meet together, but are not on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... lovers' quarrel after it's over?" he snarled, pacing the room angrily. "A silly wrangle over the size of the moon or the depth of a river, maybe—it might as well be, so far as its having any real significance compared to the years of misery that follow them! Never mind the quarrel! So far as I am concerned, I am willing to say there was no quarrel. Pendleton, I must ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter

... impartially heard, and yet an equal meed should not be assigned to both of them; but to the wiser a higher meed should be given, and a lower to the less wise. And I as well as Critias would beg you, Protagoras and Socrates, to grant our request, which is, that you will argue with one another and not wrangle; for friends argue with friends out of good-will, but only adversaries and enemies wrangle. And then our meeting will be delightful; for in this way you, who are the speakers, will be most likely to win esteem, and not praise only, among us who are your audience; for esteem ...
— Protagoras • Plato

... to poke 'im with. She used to say nice things about me to egg him on, and he often went with her for no other reason than to keep me away. Well, you can see how it was. She wanted to beat the other gals, and he wanted to outdo me, and, in the wrangle, they got married one ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... to the group who abstained, the great mass of the Peerage, too proud to wrangle where they could not win, too wise to knock their heads uselessly against a wall, too loyal not to do their utmost to spare their King. More than three hundred followed Lord Lansdowne's lead, taking for their motto, perhaps, the "Cavendo tutus" of his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... men of your high calling, Men, separated by the choice of Providence From the gross heap of mankind, and set here In this assembly, as in one great jewel, T' adorn the bravest purpose it e'er smiled on; Should you, like boys, wrangle for trifles? ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... fearing she would be seen, and not wishing to be thought an eavesdropper (although the conversation had so surprised and terrified her that she had not thought what she did, before) the girl ran lightly up the hill, leaving the two old men to their wrangle. When Uncle Jabez came in to supper that evening his scowl was heavier than usual, if that were possible, and he did not speak to either Ruth or Aunt ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson

... the abstract the right course seems quite natural and easy, but in fact it is not so. A man finds another act towards him with unconscious impudence or arrogance, and at once flies into a rage; there is a fierce wrangle, and at the end he finds no purpose served, for nothing was at stake. He has lost his temper for nothing. In his heat he may tell you "he wouldn't let so-and-so do so-and-so," but on the same principle he should hold a street-argument with every ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... this trite reflection was borne in on her by a loud wrangle between the bridge players. A woman had revoked, and was quite wroth with the man who ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... water set in, that all Israel might know that only owing to the merits of the pious prophetess had they been spared a lack of water during the forty years of the march. [602] While Moses and Aaron were now plunged in deep grief for their sister's death, a mob of the people collected to wrangle with them on account of the dearth of water. Moses, seeing the multitudes of people approaching from the distance, said to his brother Aaron: "What may all these multitudes desire?" The other replied: "Are ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... While this wrangle was going on. Capt. Hunt, of San Bernardino (our guide from Salt Lake in 1849), came along and stopped where I stood, shaking me heartily by the hand, inquiring where I was from, and when I told him I was from the mines ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... living with all these years? Do you see through me? Do you know me?—No: don't speak: I see your answer already—Your own love blinds you! Ha! I am a good man!—I don't drink, I don't swear, I am respectable, I don't blaspheme like Bletchley! Oh yes, and I am a scholar: I can cackle in Greek: I can wrangle about God's name: I know Latin and Hebrew and all the cursed little pedantries of my trade! But do you know what I am? Do you know what your husband is in the sight of ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... to wrangle with me, husband," said Teresa; "I speak as God pleases, and don't deal in out-of-the-way phrases; and I say if you are bent upon having a government, take your son Sancho with you, and teach him from this time on how to hold a government; for sons ought to inherit ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... said a second; "let them wrangle as much as they may with one another, for their dice, their women, or their wine; in this at least they all agree, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... what the regime, the traditions of mediocrity and wretchedness long since adopted by my family. The law pleased me but little. I thought that the Code had been purposely maldirected in order to furnish certain people with an opportunity to wrangle, to the utmost limit, over the smallest words; even today it seems to me that a phrase clearly worded can not reasonably bear ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans

... administration of justice should be kept clear of any sinister temptations. Yet the Lord Chancellor, our chief judge, sits in the Cabinet, and makes party speeches in the Lords. Lord Lyndhurst was a principal Tory politician, and yet he presided in the O'Connell case. Lord Westbury was in chronic wrangle with the bishops, but he gave judgment upon "Essays and Reviews". In truth, the Lord Chancellor became a Cabinet Minister, because, being near the person of the sovereign, he was high in court precedence, and not upon a political ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... The greatest things have a way of coming "all so still" into the world. We wrangle—that is, those of us who are not content simply not to know—about the composition of Homer, the purpose of the Divina Commedia, the probable plan of the Canterbury Tales, the Ur-Hamlet. Nobody put preliminary advertisements in the papers, you see, about these things: ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... prices and plenty of work, we might probably come out a little ahead the next six months; but it wouldn't pay for the trouble and the capital invested. Then when trade slackened, we should be running at a loss, and there'd be another wrangle over a reduction. We ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... bed to die in, with the best medical advice in the world. Plenty of people are starving and freezing to-day that we may have the means to die fashionably; ask THEM if they have any cause for complaint. Do you think I will wrangle over her body about the amount of money spent on her illness? What measure is that of the cause she had for complaint? I never grudged money to her—how could I, seeing that more than I can waste is given to me for nothing? Or how could you? ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... the witch-wife in the chamber, though her bed looked as if it had been slept in. Birdalone accounted little thereof, whereas the dame would oft go on one errand or another much betimes in the morning. Yet was she somewhat glad, for she was nowise wishful for a wrangle with her. Withal, despite her valiancy, as may well be thought, she was all a-flutter with hopes and fears, and must needs refrain her body from overmuch quaking and restlessness if ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... Fan did not know what to do to save herself; then all at once the memory of some old violent wrangle came to her aid, and springing forward she blew out the candle and softly retreated to a corner of the room, where she remained silent ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... afraid, my soule; goe cheerefully To thy owne Heaven, from whence it first let downe. Thou loathly[82] this imprisoning flesh putst on; Now, lifted up, thou ravisht shalt behold The truth of things at which we wonder here, And foolishly doe wrangle on beneath; And like a God shalt walk the spacious ayre, And see what even to conceit's deni'd. Great soule oth' world, that through the parts defus'd Of this vast All, guid'st what thou dost informe; You blessed mindes that from ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... he got the blacks out. They must be growin' old by now.... Grand hosses, they was. But Jane had another hoss, a big devil of a sorrel. His name was Wrangle. Did Venters ever tell you about him—an' thet race with ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... Buel, sit down. What's your favourite brand of wine? Let's settle on it now, so as to have no unseemly wrangle when the waiter comes. I'm rather in awe of the waiter. It doesn't seem natural that any mere human man should be so obviously superior to the rest of us mortals as this waiter is. I'm going to give you only ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... Governor of Sierra Leone, and his wife. They were homeward bound from his African post for a vacation when the Moewe took the Appam. All of the persons aboard, save the Germans, were released and the ship interned. Then followed a long wrangle as to the status of the vessel, Germany claiming the right of asylum for a prize by the terms of an old Prussian treaty with the United States. Great Britain protested this claim and demanded that the ship be released. Without actually ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... a year now they wrangle, Ah! yes, for quite three seventy-two, Being ruled now by this king, now that one, As ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... come with me, newly-married bride, For, if you hear him, you grow like the rest: Bear children, cook, be mindful of the churn, And wrangle over butter, fowl, and eggs, And sit at last there, old and bitter of tongue, Watching the white stars war ...
— The Land Of Heart's Desire (Little Blue Book#335) • W.B. Yeats

... they went on to a thoroughly embittering wrangle. Mr. Stanley used his authority, and commanded Ann Veronica to come home, to which, of course, she said she wouldn't; and then he warned her not to defy him, warned her very solemnly, and then commanded her again. He then said that if she would not obey him ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... metal brought into contact with it, so in the life of Gordon we see, that not only had the Redeemer a distinct influence on his whole nature, but that he was himself so charged with Divine love, that he was able to exert a magnetic influence over others. Ecclesiastics may fight and wrangle about names and terms; we have to deal with facts. It matters little by what name we call it, the fact remains that a distinct spiritual change came over Gordon, leaving him a man who had power with ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... the newspapers, setting forth the terms of a most admirable letter, in which General Joubert explained the grounds which prompted him generously to restore my liberty. I am inclined to think that the Boers hate being beaten even in the smallest things, and always fight on the win, tie, or wrangle principle; but in my case I rejoice I am not beholden to them, and have not thus ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... spirit rages, old feuds come to life and men remember all the ugly doings and sayings of their neighbors and are hot to pay off old scores and get even, as they say. Suddenly, at the height of the wrangle, the whole matter is dropped, peace reigns and the regular business is resumed as if nothing had happened. These tempests clear the air for a year, and everybody is in better humor having discharged his accumulation of grudges and animosities. I have heard closer speech, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... anybody else in Pleasant Valley. And there were some that disputed Mr. Crow's statement. Jasper Jay even went out of his way to tell Mr. Crow that he had heard of his remark, and that he was mistaken. And they had such a wrangle that they annoyed Mr. Hermit Thrush, way over on the other side of Cedar Swamp. Old Mr. Crow and Jasper Jay were cousins. And everybody knows that there is nothing worse ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... began to drink again, and to judiciously wrangle as to which was the better, a woman with a gamy odour or a woman who soaped herself well all over; a thin one or a stout one; and as the company comprised the flower of wisdom it was decided that the best was the one a man had all to himself like a plate ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... midst of the wrangle somebody finds out that Johnny Pym has a piece of red glass, and then they begin fighting for turns looking through it at the snow and the court-house. But not for long. They fall to bragging about what they are going to get for Christmas. Eddie Cameron was pretty sure ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... system of divinity, he would have left out most of the things which many put into such books, and put in many which most leave out. It would have been a book to help people to live right and feel right, and not to dream, or speculate, or wrangle. If he had been a preacher, he would have filled his sermons with the living words of Moses and the Prophets, of Christ and His Apostles, and pressed them on the consciences of his hearers with all his might. He would often have "reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come," ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... on her, shake her out of the cowardly refuge of sleep, and resume the wrangle that had ended ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... a wrangle at once began as to the form of the trial. We held very strongly that we should continue our usual custom of open meeting; but Morton insisted with equal vehemence that the prisoners should have jury trial. The discussion grew very ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... and a bunch of curls. For some reason my idea of self has never advanced beyond this point. The long dress and the hair piled high will never seem natural. Sometimes I enjoy this duality and again I do not. Sometimes the two parts mingle delightfully together, again they wrangle atrociously, while I (there seems to be a third part of me) sit off and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... grey sea; not even the gleam of red tiles; not even the greenness of a tree. The southerly heights, when I came here, were black with people, fishers waiting on wind and night. Now all the S.Y.S. (Stornoway boats) have beaten out of the bay, and the Wick men stay indoors or wrangle on the quays with dissatisfied fish-curers, knee-high in brine, mud, and herring refuse. The day when the boats put out to go home to the Hebrides, the girl here told me there was "a black wind"; and on going out, I found the epithet as justifiable as it was picturesque. A cold, black southerly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a wrangle five minutes long between this curious, handsome, still-faced woman and the porter who, after the eastern fashion, lashed himself into a frenzy over the sum she offered, and at length began to call her by ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... Fish, now the dignified Adjutant-General of State, with his bang grown long and his hair brushed back, spent hours with him in the heavy shades of the garden, or tormenting a monkey on the other side of the fence. Madison came at once to wrangle with him over the temporary seat of government, and demanded the spare bedroom, protesting he had too much to say to waste time travelling back and forth. He was a welcome guest; and he, too, sat on the floor ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... an element as the rumsellers themselves," declared the General—"men of that type! I'm speaking now of the interests of true reform—reform that gets to the individual and is something else than this everlasting wrangle and racket between factions. I like fighting, but I like to have a natural fighter admit he's in it just for the sake of fighting—not claim it's all ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... Lantern will never fail to shed the light of its loyal approval upon any unworthy act by which our country shall secure an adequate and permanent advantage. When the great heart of England is stirred by quick cupidity to profitable crime, far be it from us to lift our palms in deprecation. In the wrangle for existence nations, equally with individuals, work by diverse means to a common end—the spoiling of the weak; and when by whatever of outrage we have pushed a feeble competitor to the wall, in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... themselves. In the second, no maid would covet him whom fate had given to another, it were too fatiguing, or if such a thing DID happen, then one of them would waive his claims, for no man or woman ever born was worth a wrangle, and it is allowed us to ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... subject further, had not Miss Asenath, with gentle diplomacy, interrupted such pursuit. She did not feel as if she could listen to Miss Eliza and Arethusa wrangle over Timothy when the child had just barely got home, ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox

... before known such an auspicious day, such record-breaking gate receipts, nor such sure promise of success. The game was called for half-past two. It was three o'clock now and the line-up had not been formed. Even the gentle wrangle over details and eligibility could hardly have spun out so much time as seemed to the waiting throng to be uselessly wasted now. Evidently, something was wrong. The crowd grew impatient and demanded the cause. Out in the open, the two ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... amber-white skin, of the thick, wavy, dark hair, was in his nostrils. And in a languorous murmur she soothed his subjection to a deep sleep with, "As long as you give me what I want from you, and I give you what you want from me why should we wrangle?" ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... Catherine,' he said; without any anger in his voice, but with much sorrowful despondency. 'I shall not stay. I am neither come to wrangle nor be reconciled; but I wish just to learn whether, after this evening's events, you intend to continue your ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... Uncle Henry Grey was talked of as a delegate to the Democratic Convention to meet next year. Now her newspapers remain unopened. They are feeding these dissensions North and South. No wonder she is tired of it all. I am with Uncle Jim, but I hate to wrangle over politics like Senator Davis and this new man Lincoln—oh, and the rest. No good comes of it. I can't see it ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... are the bones of conversation, opinions are certainly its sinews; and we might add, that whisky toddy is its nervous fluid. These youths, though unwilling to acquire solid information, could wrangle even to quarrelling; but such were their affinities, that they adhered again in a short time, and were as firm friends as ever. They had raised a subject—no other than the question whether highwaymen are necessarily or ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... as he stood in the half-darkness by the window watching the baker, he wished that he himself might become thoroughly stirred by something, even by the fits of sullen anger for which Baker Groff was noted. "It would be better for me if I could become excited and wrangle about politics like windy old Tom Willard," he thought, as he left the window and went again along the hallway to the room occupied ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... be seen; no women at all, except an odd peasant come in to sell her produce; no loud talk, laughter, and singing, as in the Italian towns. Sometimes, under the shade of a tree on the public promenade, a dozen armed peasants will play at cards or watch each other play; they never shout or wrangle; if they get hot over the game, pistol shots ring out, and this always before the utterance of any threat. The Corsican is grave and silent by nature. In the evening, a few persons come out to enjoy the cool air, but the promenaders on the Corso are nearly all of them foreigners; the islanders ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... and I could ride back and forth again almost daily, it was Mr. Randall who had one of the boys on the ranch wrangle me a range pony which, he said, was "broke" to ride. He was broke to ride. The only difficulty was to mount him. It was all right once one got on his back, but only an expert bronco buster could do it. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... not; it makes me almost ready to wrangle with mine own honesty. I'll entertain myself like one that I am not acquainted withal; for, sure, unless he know some strain in me that I know not myself, he would never have boarded me ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... like most Maryland-bred horses, he had wonderfully clean, flat legs: after the hardest day's work, I never saw a puff on them; he was not sulky or savage, but had a temper and will of his own; both of these, however, yielded, after a sharp wrangle or two, to the combined influence of coaxing and a pair of sharp English rowels: in the latter days of our acquaintance we never had a difference of opinion. Considering the scarcity of staunch horse-flesh, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... Korolevich told them that he was of the poor class, and that his mother got her living by washing linen for strangers. When the sailors heard this they wondered that he should look so handsome, and bethought them how they might keep him with them. They began to wrangle as to who should be his master, but as soon as Bova perceived their intention, he told them not to quarrel for his sake, for that he would serve them ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various

... and even Anna Thedorovna and my father had come to loggerheads with one another, owing to the fact that he owed her money. In fact, our only visitors were business callers, and as a rule these came but to wrangle, to argue, and to raise a disturbance. Such visits would make my father look very discontented, and seem out of temper. For hours and hours he would pace the room with a frown on his face and a ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... we were treating under fire and all were silent, those who had the best nerves were the speakers. If you want to make peace treat under fire; for me it will become a maxim. However after about two hours' wrangle, the General came up to me and said, "Are you not 'accord' with me? that you do not speak," so much had I gained of his mind that he would not act without me. In short I may now say, the 48 hours were granted. The deputation went to Turin, they got 48 hours more, and the city was ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... "Historians will wrangle for a long time respecting the propriety of the methods by which the war was brought about, but once begun it was eminently desirable for the interests of the world, and even, perhaps, ultimately ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... of the attempt of members to do it by irregular and summary methods. When Mr. Delano of Ohio made the customary motion to proceed to the nomination, Simon Cameron moved as a substitute the renomination of Lincoln and Hamlin by acclamation. A long wrangle ensued on the motion to lay this substitute on the table, which was finally brought to an end by the cooler heads, who desired that whatever opposition to Mr. Lincoln there might be in the convention should have fullest opportunity of expression. The nominations, therefore, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... out was not devoured; another was looked for, then another; then all were cut up in proper lengths and beaten and bruised, and finally packed into a bundle and carried off. Rooks, too, were there, breeding on the cathedral elms, and had no time and spirit to wrangle, but could only caw-caw distressfully at the wind, which tossed them hither and thither in the air and lashed the tall trees, threatening at each fresh gust to blow their nests to pieces. Small birds of half a dozen kinds were also there, and one tinkle-tinkled his spring song quite ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... lovely along The strong by the strong; Soft under his breath Singeth sword in the sheath, And shield babbleth oft Unto helm-crest aloft; How soon shall their words rise mid wrath of the battle Into wrangle unheeded of clanging and rattle, And no man shall note then the gold on the sword When the runes have no meaning, the mouth-cry no word, When all mingled together, the war-sea of men Shall toss up the steel-spray round fourscore ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... believed to include some Beria gipsies. The Goyandas are employed in making gloves, socks and strings for pyjamas, having probably taken to this kind of work because the Thug approvers were employed in the manufacture of tents. Their women are quarrelsome, and wrangle over payment when selling their wares. This calling resembles that of the Kanjar women, who also make articles of net and string, and sell them in villages. Some of the Goyandas are employed in Government and railway service, and Mr. Gayer notes that the latter ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... trail." The Com mender of the Faithful forthright gave orders to mount, and the twain, escorted by their host, rode forth on the traces of the grain till they drew near the house, when the youth heard the jingle and jangle[FN256] of horses' tramp and the wrangle and cangle of men's outcries. Upon this said the Cook to the Warlock, "Here they draw near to seize me, O my lord, what is there now for me to do?" and said the other, "Rise and fill me an ewer with water then mount therewith to the terrace-roof and pour ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... others speak sometimes of predestination to damnation, following the example of Fulgentius and of St. Augustine himself: but that signifies the same as destination to them, and it avails nothing to wrangle about words. That pretext, notwithstanding, was in time past used for maltreating that Godescalc who caused a stir about the middle of the ninth century, and who took the name of Fulgentius to indicate that he ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... to encounter in my amicable adversaries. They must not be pontiffs holding doctrine, but huntsmen questing after elements of truth. Neither must they be boys to be instructed, but fellow-teachers with whom I may wrangle and agree on equal terms. We must reach some solution, some shadow of consent; for without that, eager talk becomes a torture. But we do not wish to reach it cheaply, or quickly, or without the tussle ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated. But by addressing them from their tenderest years in a language they cannot understand, you accustom them to be satisfied with words, to find fault with whatever is said to them, to think themselves as wise as their teachers, to wrangle and rebel. And what we mean they shall do from reasonable motives we are forced to obtain from them by adding the motive of avarice, or of fear, or ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... confessed That wisdom infinite must form the best, Where all must full or not coherent be, And all that rises, rise in due degree; Then, in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain, There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man: And all the question (wrangle e'er so long) Is only this, if God has placed ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... privately relinquished all his rights to Lauderdale, thus leaving the latter free to deal with Claverhouse on his own terms. This bit of sharp practice was effected in August 1683; and it was not till the following March that the business was finally settled, after a long and tedious wrangle before the Court, in the course of which Claverhouse seemed to have found occasion to speak his mind pretty sharply to the Chancellor. On the question of the former's right to demand Dudhope on the terms of twenty years' purchase ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... were alike and the intuitions of the human race were constant. We know that it is not so. Faith means to say that you entirely believe a thing which you cannot prove. One man says: "My faith is THIS." Another says: "My faith is THAT." Neither can prove it, so they wrangle for ever, either mentally or in the old days physically. If one is stronger than the other, he is inclined to persecute him just to twist him round to the true faith. Because Philip the Second's faith was strong and clear he, quite logically, killed a hundred thousand Lowlanders in the hope that ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle

... be two boarders on the same flat, and the amount of side of the one be equal to the amount of side of the other, each to each, and the wrangle between one boarder and the landlady be equal to the wrangle between the landlady and the other, then shall the weekly bills of the two boarders be equal also, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... very words of their argument, but now it degenerates into a mere noisy wrangle with much polysyllabic scientific jargon upon each side. It is no doubt a privilege to hear two such brains discuss the highest questions; but as they are in perpetual disagreement, plain folk like Lord John and I get little that is positive from the exhibition. They neutralize each other ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Is it nothing to crawl like a serpent before your wife, to lick her mother's feet, to descend to dirty actions that would sicken swine—faugh!—never mind if you at least make your fortune. But you will be as doleful as a dripstone if you marry for money. It is better to wrestle with men than to wrangle at home with your wife. You are at the crossway of the roads of life, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... is something in that, Laelius, but by no means all. For instance, the story is told of the answer of Themistocles in a wrangle with a certain Seriphian, who asserted that he owed his brilliant position to the reputation of his country, not to his own. "If I had been a Seriphian," said he, "even I should never have been famous, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... whole Convention; and if we want to consult them, let us adjourn sine die. If we are loyal to our highest convictions, we need not care how far it may lead. For truth, like water, will find its own level. No, friends, in the name of consistency let us not wrangle here simply because we associate the name of woman with human justice and human rights. Although I always like to see opposition on any subject, for it elicits truth much better than any speech, still ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... dissidence, discrepancy; unconformity &c. 83; incongruity, incongruence[obs3]; discongruity[obs3], mesalliance; jarring &c. v.; dissension &c. 713; conflict &c. (opposition) 708; bickering, clashing, misunderstanding, wrangle. disparity, mismatch, disproportion; dissimilitude, inequality; disproportionateness &c. adj[obs3].; variance, divergence, repugnance. unfitness &c. adj.; inaptitude, impropriety; inapplicability &c. adj.; inconsistency, inconcinnity[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... kept up a perpetual wrangle. The cavaliere was cool, sardonic, smiling, and provoking—Baldassare hot and flushed with a concentration of rage he dared not express. The cavaliere, thanks to his court education, was an admirable whist-player. His frequent observations ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... certainly apart. Our bodies, indeed, are nigh each other, but our souls are sundered. It never seems to strike any one, it is true, that we are not a happy couple; indeed, it would be very absurd if it did. We never wrangle—we never contradict each other—we have no tiffs; but we are two and not one. Whatever may be the cause, whether it be due to his shaken confidence in me, or (I myself assign this latter as its chief reason) to the constant ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... a business-like foam about her bows. Spreckel's man was getting fidgety, as this was one of the opposition boats, and he expected soon to be quoting a competitive figure. To his pleased surprise, the Old Man came over to leeward, and, after a last wrangle about the hawser, took him on at the satisfactory figure ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... See you not that to keep men of one opinion, the only way is to slay them that be of the contrary? Living men must differ. Only the dead ne'er wrangle touching aught." ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... by Southey to a class of writers headed by Byron and Shelley, because, according to him, their productions were "characterised by a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety," and who, according to Carlyle, wasted their breath in a fierce wrangle with the devil, and had not the courage to fairly face and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... has influenced the world since his time far more than men equally famous in their day. It was this "invisible power" behind his ideal which triumphed over all opposition at last, and which continues to triumph in spite of the pigmy-souled crowd of party politicians who still wrangle in the political arena. Nothing lasting is ever accomplished without "vision," and the spiritual, though long in coming, will yet triumph over ignorance and prejudice and selfishness, even though it ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... said to Florent, when Lacaille had gone off with the carrots in his sack. "That old rogue runs things down all over the markets, and he often waits till the last peal of the bell before spending four sous in purchase. Oh, these Paris folk! They'll wrangle and argue for an hour to save half a sou, and then go off and empty their purses at ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... scenes and homely details of daily life. To many, nay, to most, life would not be one continuous communion service; the holy awe would of necessity fade away; the hymns and prayers be exchanged for the harsh wrangle and barter of a work-day world; temptation was awaiting many of those new church members in unexpected places, and the evil nature within, not yet wholly subdued by divine grace, would make the pathway of holiness a very narrow one, along which untrained feet would often stumble. But the memory ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... The poor people they yoke With sumners and citacions, And excommunications. About churches and markets The bishop on his carpets At home soft doth sit. This is a fearful fit, To hear the people jangle. How wearily they wrangle! But ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... the gods, and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of an atheist under the sacerdotal robe. Reasoners of such a temper were scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes of faith or of worship. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume, and they approached with the same inward contempt and the same ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... house is full of pretty things,' he wrote, when on a visit; 'but Mrs. -'s taste in pretty things has one very bad fault: it is not my taste.' And that was the true attitude of his mind; but these eternal differences it was his joy to thresh out and wrangle over by the hour. It was no wonder if he loved the Greeks; he was in many ways a Greek himself; he should have been a sophist and met Socrates; he would have loved Socrates, and done battle with him staunchly and manfully owned his defeat; ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... misery; we stop, and with dry and gaping lips he tells us how he dreams day and night of the brooks of clear water that in cool dewy channels gush down the green Casentine hills. Sinon, the false Greek of Troy, mocks at him. He smites him in the face, and they wrangle. We are fascinated by their shame, and loiter, till Virgil chides us and leads us away to that city turreted by giants where great Nimrod blows his horn. Terrible things are in store for us, and we go to meet them in Dante's raiment ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... at Hall's, Tom was at once involved in a wrangle with the manager as to the amount of damage done to the tub; which the latter refused to assess before he knew what had happened to it; while our hero vigorously and with reason maintained, that if he knew his business it could not matter what had happened to the boat. There she was, and he must ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... day Pepper had a sharp wrangle with Josiah Crabtree. The dictatorial teacher accused Pepper of copying an example in algebra from another cadet, and ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield

... quarrel? I forget. Seems funny to think I had enough time on my hands to wrangle with an innkeeper. But I like Missis Northover's. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... said, "will not enter a tottering state nor dwell in a disorganized one. When right principles of government prevail he shows himself, but when they are prostrated he remains concealed." And carrying out the same principle in private life, he invariably refused to wrangle. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... were dark because religion was supreme, and to keep it pure they had to subdue every one who doubted it or hoped to improve upon it. So wrangle, dispute, faction, feud, plot, exile, murder and Sherlock Holmes absorbed the energies of men and paralyzed spontaneity and all happy, useful effort. The priest caught us coming and going. We had to be christened when we were born and given extreme unction when we died, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... furious wrangle over this point; but the prosecuting attorney succeeded in having ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... varry, Which when we oft haue fetcht from farre, With us they neuer tarry: Some worldly crosse doth still attend, What long we haue in spinning, And e'r we fully get the end We lose of our beginning. 330 Our pollicies so peevish are, That with themselues they wrangle, And many times become the snare That soonest vs intangle; For that the Loue we beare our Friends Though nere so strongly grounded, Hath in it certaine oblique ends If to the bottome sounded: Our owne ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... that led to a sharp answer from Hal. Helen replied again, and a hot wrangle went on across the ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler

... well-earned disgrace, as filth, as the badge of immorality, as a necessary defense against the loathesomeness of promiscuity, as a fearful warning against prostitution, and our advantage slips from us. The disease continues to spread wholesale disaster and degeneration while we wrangle over issues that were old when history began and are progressing with desperate slowness to a solution probably many centuries distant. Think of syphilis as a medical and a sanitary problem, and its ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... long wrangle which ended in a discourse by the "father," a strange thing happened. Larmy and It were contending as to whether It was merely a hypnotic influence on the boy, of someone living whom they did not know, or what It claimed to ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... give a curious story under the year 1213. O'Donnell More sent his steward to Connaught to collect his tribute. On his way he visited the poet Murray O'Daly, and began to wrangle with him, "although his lord had given him no instructions to do so." The poet's ire was excited. He killed him on the spot with a sharp axe—an unpleasant exhibition of literary justice—and then fled into Clanrickarde for safety. O'Donnell determined to revenge the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... deformities of her temper, which, always violent, had now become soured by adversity. She had no indulgence left for others. Dissatisfied with her friends, her children, and everything about her, she was disposed to wrangle and ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... What now a wife, now father," &c. These doubts, anxieties, suspicions, are the least part of their torments; they break many times from passions to actions, speak fair, and flatter, now most obsequious and willing, by and by they are averse, wrangle, fight, swear, quarrel, laugh, weep: and he that doth not so by fits, [5304]Lucian holds, is not thoroughly touched with this loadstone of love. So their actions and passions are intermixed, but of all other passions, sorrow hath the greatest share; [5305]love to many ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... mankind? I am young, I grant, and know but little of the barbarity which it is pretended is universal. I cannot think the accusation true. Or, if it be, I am convinced it must be the result of some strange perversion of what may be called the natural propensities of man. I own I have seen children wrangle for and endeavour to purloin, or seize by force, each others apples and cherries; and this may be a beginning to future rapacity. But I know the obvious course of nature would be to correct, instead of to confirm, such mistakes. I know too that there are individual instances ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... religious points, that was almost as bitter as the differences of opinions between their husbands on the subject of alternatives. In that distant day, homoeopathy, and allopathy, and hydropathy, and all the opathies, were nearly unknown; but men could wrangle and abuse each other on medical points, just as well and as bitterly then, as they do now. Religion, too, quite as often failed to bear its proper fruits, in 1793, as it proves barren in these, our own times. On this subject of religion, we have one word to say, and that is, simply, that it never ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Wrangle" :   row, fuss, conflict, spat, haggling, bicker, bargaining, run-in, difference, wrangling, herd, argufy, haggle, wrangler, bust-up, words, squabble



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