"Hankering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Also that hankering after an overt or practical effect seems to me an apostasy. In good earnest I am willing to spare this most unnecessary deal of doing. Life wears to me a visionary face. Hardest roughest action is visionary ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... pride, in the love which now made all other matters of life so insignificant, Mayo was afraid of himself; he knew his limitations in the matter of submission; even then he felt a hankering to walk aft and jounce Julius Marston up and down in his hammock chair. He did not believe he could stand calmly in the presence of Alma Marston and listen to any unjust berating, ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... next time you go into the disciple business I recommend that you take boys who really need to know something about farming, and not fine-as-fiddle young women that you might as well be ballet-dancing with as raking with, for all the hankering after ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... ordered some benzoin and cucumber-cream, and think a little more about how I'm doing my hair, and argue with myself that it's a woman's own fault if she runs to seed before she's seen thirty. I may be the mother of three children, but I still have a hankering after personal power—and that comes to women through personal attractiveness, disquieting as it may be to have to admit it. We can't be big strong men and conquer through force, but our frivolous little bodies ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... The dream was true on its face, a belated perception awakened by bitterness of soul, and Madame, as she sat dumbly marvelling at its tardiness, chafed the more against each minute's present delay, seeing that now to know if Kincaid, or if Anna, held the treasure was her liveliest hankering. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... so much compunction at Dan's disappointed countenance as an irresistible hankering after a good bargain that ultimately led the postmaster to sweep this uninviting remnant together, and fix upon it the price of sixpence. The charge was exorbitant, considering the small quantity and damaged state of the goods, yet Dan carried ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... from righteousness. He that fondly followeth the lead of his senses, and is desirous of obtaining happiness and avoiding misery, betaketh himself to action which in its essence is nothing but misery. He that hankers after pleasure causeth his body to suffer; one free from such hankering knoweth not what misery is. As an enkindled fire, if more fuel be put upon it, blazeth forth again with augmented force, so desire is never satiated with the acquisition of its object but gaineth force like unkindled fire when clarified butter is poured upon it. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... not this phrase or that procession in particular that has displeased the Whigs. It is the abandonment of a policy which they dared not proclaim in India, and which they could not justify in England. They are always hankering after it still. Mr. Vernon Smith: "Considered it most absurd for any Governor General to declare publicly that our Indian empire had reached the limits which nature had assigned to it. Why, what were the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... all, the best form of government is government by good men: and the voice of some small man faintly protesting 'But I don't want to be governed by business men; because I know them and, without asking much of life, I have a hankering to die with ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... abandon that great work you have done, as the only body in Christendom that occupies the position of absolute and perfect liberty, with some measure of Christian faith, or you must continue to occupy that position and thank God for it without hankering after some immediate victories that are so strong a temptation to many in our denomination." When the resolution in favor of a creed was brought to a vote, it was "defeated by a very large majority." By this act the Unitarian ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... But I saw, too, eyes turning from the austere sacrifice to lonely hill-top groves and towers and images, where dwelt some subtle and evil mystery. I saw the fierce prophets, scourging the votaries with rods, and a nation Penitent before the Lord; but always the backsliding again, and the hankering after forbidden joys. Ashtaroth was the old goddess of the East. Was it not possible that in all Semitic blood there remained transmitted through the dim generations, some craving for her spell? I thought of the grandfather in the back street at Brighten ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... satisfaction of poor Rose's fancy, he took care to season his discourse with scraps of mercantile information, which kept the old merchant always expectant and hankering for more, and made it worth his while to ask the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... guess the rest," said Captain Hamilton, with a quiet smile. "And then you both got a hankering to see what was in ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... nothing to give back. I do believe I have kept up a sort of girlish hankering for you. And now, if I can do any thing, if you are ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... series the chief note is joyousness, high spirits, the pleasure of being alive. There is no Weltschmerz in his happy world, where all is for the best—no hankering after the moon, no discontent with the present order of things. Only one little lady discovers that the world is hollow, and her doll is stuffed with bran; only one gorgeous swell has exhausted the possibilities of this life, and finds out that he is at loss for ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... Swiss tables d'hote, rice and prunes divided the dinner into two rival factions, and merely by the looks of hatred or of hankering cast upon those dishes it was easy to tell to which party the guests belonged. The Rices were known by their anaemic pallor, the Prunes by their ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... only of their being taken up by another ship in company; and this was but mere possibility indeed, for I saw not the least sign or appearance of any such thing. I cannot explain, by any possible energy of words, what a strange longing or hankering of desires I felt in my soul upon this sight, breaking out sometimes thus: "O that there had been but one or two, nay, or but one soul, saved out of this ship, to have escaped to me, that I might but have had one companion, one fellow-creature to have spoken to me, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... guess it's just a kind of hankering, though mortal mind does set up a howl, now and then, in spite of me, and says ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... displacement of an arrow-point; no, nor in the head of a boil. Bazzi is a sensualist: as his palate grows stale he whets it by stronger meat; thinks to provoke appetite by disgust; would draw you on by a nasty inference, as a dog by his hankering after faecal odours. What nearness to Art in his plumpy boy stuck with arrows like a skewered capon? Causes nuns to weep, hey? and to dream dreams, hey? Nature would do that cleanlier; and waxwork more powerfully! Form, my good sir, ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... old, we do not find him improve in consistency. In his letter, dated the 21st of October, 1353, it is evident that he had a return of his hankering after Vaucluse. He accordingly wrote to his friends, requesting that they would procure him an establishment in the Comtat. Socrates, upon this, immediately communicated with the Bishop of Cavaillon, who ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... curious circumstance, in the account of the setter, will be mentioned, of an impression made upon the mind of a bitch of that sort by the attention of a cur, which never had access to her, and yet her whelps were always like him, and possibly this hound bitch had a violent hankering ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... that I am not a great man, and that, at any rate in the earlier part of my career, I had a hankering after the homage which is paid to greatness. I would fain have been a popular orator, feeding myself on the incense tendered to me by thousands; or failing that, a man born to power, whom those around him were compelled to respect, and perhaps to fear. I am not ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... greatly regret leaving it unexplored. Our object was commercial, and not scientific; our motive was pounds, shillings, and pence: and where this failed us, we lost all excitement and curiosity. I fear that we were yet weak enough to have a little hankering after the view from the top of the pass, but we treated such puerility with the contempt that it deserved, and sat down to rest ourselves at the foot of a small glacier. We then descended, and reached the ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... Christian fathers, says: 'It is not the quantity or the quality of the meat, or drink, but the love of it that is condemned;' that is to say, the indulgence beyond the absolute demands of nature; the hankering after it; the neglect of some duty or other for the sake of the enjoyments ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... you're not hankering for a cold bath on a frosty morning, laal man, I don't know as you've got any call ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... mind, marm, she's better off up there out of the way of temptation than she would be if left at home alone hankering after the grog bottle. Maybe by the time she gets ashore she'll be cured, and happier than she was ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... throw away starships," said Jones coldly, "for a publicity feature, I don't play. I won't take the credit for the field away from Dabney. I sold him that with my eyes open. But starships are more important than a fool's hankering to be famous! He'd never try it! He'd be afraid it ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... this town, all inclination to do any kind of work;—and left in lieu thereof, an impudent appearance, a strong and continued thirst for high wages, a gossiping disposition for all sorts of amusement, a leering and hankering after persons of the other sex, a desire of finery and fashion, a never ceasing trot after new places more advantageous for stealing—with number of contingent accomplishments that do not suit the wearers. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... individual, who, heedless of his master's fate, was actively employed in cooking for himself a choice steak from the dainty rump of the eland. That night I slept beneath the blue and starry canopy of heaven. My sleep was light and sweet, and no rude dreams or hankering cares disturbed the equanimity ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... trust herself to advisers not supported by a majority of the House of Commons, would plainly be guilty of usurping the powers of the State. He threw from him with disdain the charge which had been brought against himself of hankering after the sweets of office. He indulged and gloried in indulging the highest ambition of an English subject. But he gloried much more in the privileges and power of that House, within the walls of which was centred all that was ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... to take me for a fish! You great polar bear—but I know what you wish; You're sick of a wife that your hankering balks, You want to go ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... reading the letters in "The Readers' Corner" I noticed that almost everyone has a hankering for Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories. Believe it or not, I'm wild about his stories myself and I'm looking forward to reading his stories in Astounding Stories. It won't make any difference if they'll be originals or reprints, so long ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... disorderly behavior, public indecency, contempt of court, sedition, they proceeded against them distinctly as Quakers, thus putting themselves in the wrong and conceding to their adversaries that crown of martyrdom for which their souls were hankering and to which they were ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... squire's anger was heated hot again. Their talk had all been against him till he had opened his hand in regard to the allowance. And now when there was something again to be got they could be civil. There was none of that love of him for himself for which an old man is always hankering,—for which the sick man breaks his heart,—but which the old and sick find it so difficult to get from the young and healthy. It is in nature that the old man should keep the purse in his own pocket, or otherwise he will have so little to attract. He is weak, querulous, ugly to look at, apt ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Over on the black shore I made out two lights in a village, like a pair of eyes watching. Lonely? My, yes! Lonely and nervous. I had a horror of her, sir. The dinghy-boat hung on its davits just there in front of the door, and for a minute I had an awful hankering to climb into it, lower away, and row off, no matter ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... you to bear it in mind. Nor do I see the use, or sense, of keeping a great deal of company as it is called. What company can a man and woman want more than their two selves, and their children, if they have any? If here be not company enough, it is but a sad affair. This hankering after company proves, clearly proves, that you want something beyond the society of your wife; and that she is sure to feel most acutely; the bare fact contains an imputation against her, and it is pretty sure to lay the foundation of jealousy, or ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... I find that when a man quits tobacco he hasn't anything to look forward to. I quit for three days once, and on the third day, about the time I got up from the dinner table, I asked myself: 'Well, now, got anything to come next?' And all I could see before me was hours of hankering; and, I gad, I slapped a negro boy on a horse and told him to gallop over to the store and fetch me a hunk of tobacco. And after I broke my resolution I thought I'd have a fit there in the yard waiting for that boy to come back. I don't believe that it's right for a man to kill any appetite ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... at him for having. And yet he might have been a good man (for I have known very good men so fortified by their own strange ideas of God): I say that he might have seemed a good man, but for the cold and cruel hankering of his ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... relief to Max in this confident assertion, but not much. Judging Dick by his own feelings, he was sure that person had not reached the stage of intimacy at which Carrie called him by his Christian name without hankering after ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... a thoroughly competent way. Back of the cold precision of his undoubted scientific attainments lurked, unexpected by most, a strong ambition and a less admirable hankering for the lime-light. His opportunity to gratify all these appetites—science, advancement, and fame—was too good not to cause him the ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... few things wherein the wickedness of the heart of man shews itself?—A. Yes; by its secret hankering after sin, although the Word forbids it; by its deferring of repentance; by its being weary of holy duties; by its aptness to forget God, by its studying to lessen and hide sin; by its feigning itself to be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Christopher Boreman fought and perhaps fell in the army of the commonwealth. But why did so many of the early settlers, quickly leave the Atlantic coast for the Connecticut valley? Their first historians say there was even then "a hankering for new land." They wished also to secure it from occupation by the Dutch who were entering it. Reports of its marvelous fertility, says Bancroft, had the same effect on their imagination, as those concerning the Genesee ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... leave this place the end of this week; and go, I suppose, to Boulge; though I have yet a hankering to get a week by the sea, either at Yarmouth or Southwold. . . . Don't you think 3 pounds very cheap for a fine copy of Rushworth's Collections, eight volumes folio? I was tempted to buy it if only for the bargain; for I only want to look through ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... not pleased. "So you are already hankering after those huzzies! And you think them better looking than I am! And you tell me ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... exist is entirely consonant with reason and experience; but only a hankering tenderness for superstition, a failure to appreciate the function both of religion and of science, can lead to reverence for such oracular gibberish as these influences provoke. The world is weary of experimenting with magic. In utter seriousness and with ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... cynical delight in this fellow's doing his duty, such was his arrogant, overbearing attitude toward the helpless peasant prisoners, that I know my prayers for the end of the war were not motivated entirely by selfless considerations. I am hankering to get into the neighborhood of this fellow when he doesn't hold all the trump cards. In justice to Javert, I must say that he reciprocated my feeling magnificently, and, inasmuch as he was the cat and I the mouse, and a very small one at ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... singing his psalms. And every night, before he lay down to sleep, he cut boughs, and stuck them up for a ring fence round him and the ass, to the discomfiture of the wolves, which had, and have still, a great hankering after asses' flesh. It is a quaint picture, no doubt; but let us respect it, while we smile at it; if we, too, be ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... gathering of her guests round the tea-table on this particular afternoon. And, in spite of the blankness of the season and the triteness of the occasion, there was no trace in the company of that fatigued restlessness which means a dread of the pianola and a subdued hankering for auction bridge. The undisguised openmouthed attention of the entire party was fixed on the homely negative personality of Mr. Cornelius Appin. Of all her guests, he was the one who had come to Lady Blemley with the vaguest reputation. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... I'm married to that patched-and-painted creature? She's hankering for the stage again, ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... woman's whim; but if you don't like it, it shan't stand. Nobody knows of it, and nobody'll be disappointed. I had a longing to leave some kind of a happy life behind me, if I could, in the Old House. It's only an earthly clinging and hankering, maybe; but I'd somehow like to feel sure, being the last of the line, that there'd be time for my bones to crumble away comfortably into dust, before the old timbers should come down. I meant, once, you should have had it all; but it seemed as if you wasn't going to need it, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... set out from Laurel Hill, and began its tedious tramp across the fifty miles of wilderness that lay between that point and Fort Duquesne. It was headed by Major Grant, a noisy, blustering braggart, who, hankering after notoriety rather than seeking praise for duty well and faithfully done, went beyond the limits of his instructions; which were simply to find out all he could about the enemy, without suffering the enemy to find out more than he could help ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... that Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral and polyglot system of buncoing. That man had a vocabulary of about 10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband sophistries and parables when they ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... it there yourself if you like! You've a hankering for smut, but you're weak when it comes to settling up, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... it stains with its blood the knives perhaps before seen by it in the limpid water. Immediately, they examine the entrails snatched from its throbbing breast, and in them they seek out the intentions of the Deities. Whence comes it that men have so great a hankering for forbidden food? Do you presume to feed {on flesh}, O race of mortals? Do it not, I beseech you; and give attention to my exhortations. And when you shall be presenting the limbs of slaughtered oxen to your palates, know and consider that you are devouring your {tillers ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... approachable. They gave her more liberty after a week or two. They guarded her from every menace. The Dogs were taught to respect her. No man or boy about the place would have dreamed of throwing a stone at the famous pedigreed Cat. She had all the food she wanted, but still she was not happy. She was hankering for many things, she scarcely knew what. She had everything—yes, but she wanted something else. Plenty to eat and drink—yes, but milk does not taste the same when you can go and drink all you want from a saucer; it has ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was more baleful than any sounds he could have uttered; it was a sort of ominous, canine silence, covering a hankering to get in a good bite if ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... my lad!" interrupted the inventor, shaking his finger at his son, who seemed somewhat confused. "You have a nice rowing skiff and a sailboat, yet you are hankering for a motor-boat. Come now, ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... not often. Priggism, or whatever the substantive is, is as essentially a Teutonic vice as holiness is a Semitic characteristic; and if an Italian happens to be a prig, he will, like Tacitus, invariably show a hankering after German institutions. The idea, however, that the Italians were ever a finer people than they are now, will not pass muster with those ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... sternly-cultured and emotional persons who "yearn" a great deal. The "yearnest" man or woman always has an ideal which is usually the vaguest thing in the cloudland of metaphysics. I fancy it means that one must always be hankering after something which one has not and keeping a look of sorrow when one's hankering is fruitless. The feeling of pity with which a "yearnest" one regards somebody who cares only for pleasant and simple or pathetic books is very creditable; but it weighs on the average human being. Why on earth ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Desmond with some hesitation. "He thought I was hankering after the squire's property—aiming at becoming his heir. 'Twas ridiculous, sir; such an idea never ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Rajputana!" he cried, and even through the thickness of his utterance his sincerity rang clear as a bell. "You can stretch yourself here. The cities! Live in the cities and you can only wear yourself out hankering to do what you like. Here you can do it. Do you see that, Mr. Thresk? You can do it." And he thumped the ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... with your rooms; but I should like to know why you so particularly want this actor here. One would think he was a dear friend of yours to hear you talk. Is it the ten shillings a week he pays for his room and the few pence you make out of his breakfast you're hankering after?' ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... is of our mercy that he does not die, as many others have died before him. Let my orders be obeyed if Ramonja is guilty. Let him be a warning to others in the palace, for it has come to my ears that some of our courtiers are hankering after this religion that seems to have turned my people mad. Indeed it is said that some related to yourself are ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... nearly an hour of tattoo. Already the arriving couriers, their mission executed, their wearied horses turned over to willing hands at stables, their hunger appeased at the troop kitchen, and the pent-up hankering for beer still unassuaged, were "filling up" at the expense of their fellows at the store, and wistfully looking on at ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... far from human life. Farm succeeds farm, for the land around Athens has a goodly population to maintain, and there is a round price for vegetables in the Agora. Truth to tell, the average Athenian, though he pretends to love the market, the Pnyx, the Dicasteries, and the Gymnasia, has a shrewd hankering for the soil, and does not care to spend more time in Athens then necessary. Aristophanes is full of the contrasts between "country life" and "city life" and almost always with the advantage given ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Brooks!" he remarked. "We found the sort of place the girls were hankering after, to let furnished, and we've took it for a year. We moved in a ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ballet figure. In this opening chorus of knights and retainers in the Second Act (scene ii) the musical inspiration is intense; but words are repeated as irrationally as in a Handel oratorio chorus; and the same is the case in the bridal procession music. Wagner still had a hankering after imposing spectacle and brilliant choral writing. That bridal procession and chorus are, of course, supremely beautiful music: music and spectacle were aimed at and achieved, not music and drama, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... They knew also that farming was not a spiritual adventure, but a business, and that Theodore, with his generous habit of giving away a few thousands here and a few thousands there, was not exactly a business man. He had yielded to their abjurations; but his hankering for ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... he said decidedly. Then he went on quietly, but with neither doubt nor hesitation: "There's a real big change coming here—when Beasley gets back. These men want drink, they are getting restless for high play. They are hankering for—for the flesh-pots they think their gold entitles them to. Beasley will give them all those things when he ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... in each of us like cords that draws a man to the old home. 'Tis nature, as the Almighty 'as planted deep in our hearts, a-workin' in the wust of us and in the best of us alike. Why, 'tis the same thing, that hankering, we—some of us—has for a further-away home still, ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... mode of life—that of a locum tenens, or minder of other men's practices—which had, when I was following it, seemed intolerably irksome, now appeared to possess many desirable features; and I found myself occasionally hankering to sit once more by the bedside, to puzzle out the perplexing train of symptoms, and to wield that power—the greatest, after all, possessed by man—the power to banish suffering and ward off the approach of ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... no further use for it," he was told, "and there's always a small chance that some soldier would be sent this way on an errand, when he might get a whiff of the smoke, and take a notion to investigate. For one I'm not hankering to be sent a prisoner of war to some ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... white has never had much of a hankering after "book larning." He's better than the "nigger" and that's all he cares to know. To be white means license to trample upon the rights of others. The cat's paw—the tool of the aristocrat, he stands ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... ancient history to complete her history group, the other girls having wisely completed theirs the previous year. Jessica wanted to take physical geography, Anne rhetoric, and Grace boldly announced a hankering for zooelogy. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... family, though not in actual possession of excessive affluence and honours, was, nevertheless, in their district, conceded to be a clan of well-to-do standing. As this Chen Shih-yin was of a contented and unambitious frame of mind, and entertained no hankering after any official distinction, but day after day of his life took delight in gazing at flowers, planting bamboos, sipping his wine and conning poetical works, he was in fact, in the indulgence of these pursuits, as happy as a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... "That's why I'm not hankering for it," said Werner under his breath. "And the fellow who carries it through is going to wear a bigger jewel in his crown, so to speak?" he ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... voyagers are always hankering after the far north," said Leo to Benjy, one magnificent morning, as they rowed towards the outlying islands over ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... whose Anglo-Saxon blood Gave him a hankering after mud, Wavered a moment, then consented, And, when the cash was paid, repented; To make the new land worth a pin, Thought he, it must be all fenced in, For, if South's swine once get the run on 't No kind of farming can be done on 't; If that don't ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... thinker." To a reader of our day the History of St. Kilda appears to be innocent of any trace of such pretension; unless it be that the author speaks slightingly of second-sight, a subject for which Johnson always had a strong hankering. In 1773 Johnson paid a visit to Mr. Macaulay, who by that time had removed to Calder, and began the interview by congratulating him on having produced "a very pretty piece of topography,"—a compliment which did not seem ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... it was made clear whom this young donkey was hankering after—this is Sally's way of putting it—as Miss Peplow failed to get her usual place through being late, and had to sit in a side-aisle, instead of the opposite of her to the idiot—we are again borrowing from Sally—and now the Idiot would have to glare round over his shoulder ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... three stylish sort of men seemed as if they were hankering to speak to me as I sat there all alone on deck; but I didn't seem to see it, and they contented themselves with looking at me as if I was the most cruel creature on earth; which I meant to be. The loss of one satchel full of doughnuts ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... are anxious about the little critter. They're kind of hankering, pard, and, mum, if you are willin', and ain't 'fraid to trust her with us, why, we'd be mighty glad to tote her—just for a few minutes—over to camp. The boys are stiddy, all of 'em, stiddy as churches. They hain't soaked a mite to-day, mum, and they ain't goin' to; they've hove the jug into ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... serious about her art," put in Cicely; "she's studied a good deal abroad and worked hard at mastering the technique of her profession. She's not a mere amateur with a hankering after the footlights. I fancy she ...
— When William Came • Saki
... reappeared bearing a soup tureen, which she set down before her husband. "I don't dare ask Mary to wait on the table," said she. "If I did, she's just in the humor to up and light out, too; and your mother's got no hankering for hanging over a hot ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... about Vesey's successor; some think Lord Chandos or Herries; I think Frankland Lewis, but that Lord Chandos will have some place before long; the Duke has a great hankering after that set. In the meantime all accounts concur in admitting the great and increasing distress; and, as such a state of things not unnaturally produces a good deal of ill-humour, the Duke is abused for gadding about visiting and shooting ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of old England. I knocked about all that time in different climes and vessels, herding with the roughest and most abandoned class of seamen, till I became almost as abandoned and rough as they were. Still, during all my wanderings, I had a hankering for the associates and the refinements of society I had so long quitted. Thoughts of home would come back to me even in my wildest moments, although I tried hard to keep them out. At length I returned to England with more money in my pocket than I had ever again expected ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... to pace, looking worried, and did not reply to several questions that Mayo put to him. So the young man accepted Captain Dodge's invitation and climbed to the tugboat's pilot-house. He had a very human hankering to know what the coming of that tug from the main signified, and decided to hang around a little while longer, even at the risk of ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... it should be. Certainly she puts too much "psychology" into the character of the fond, gentle lady, whose simple humanity at pathetic odds with Fate wins sympathy from the audience without effort or emphasis; while a hankering after the latest subtleties has led her to misunderstand completely the passage (580-95 in the acting edition) in which she supposes the queen to be justifying herself to a reluctant chorus, whereas, in fact, she is justifying herself to the Universe, and giving the audience a hint. The meek ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... except myself, seems afraid to open his mouth about it. Of course the inference suggests itself that other people have more sense than I have. I readily admit it; but why have so many of our leaders shown such a strong hankering after the theory, if there is nothing ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... been visiting, looking sadly at a spring-cart, which the owner thereof, one of the Rood Warren farmers, had managed to upset and damage considerably. He was giving Austyn a lift home when the spill took place. So, remembering your hankering and Lindy's for the society of this young Ritualist, I persuaded him that instead of tramping six miles through the wet he should come here and put up for the night with us; so, leaving the farmer free to get home on his pony, I clinched the matter by promising to send him back to-morrow ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... was ever punished—by shutting me in a room alone for a whole day. I came out of it a full-blown linguist. I have never spoken any other language to him, or to my mother, who always speaks to me in Hindustani. I don't think I had any special hankering to write poetry as a little child, though I was of a very fanciful and dreamy nature. My training under my father's eye was of a sternly scientific character. He was determined that I should be a great mathematician or a scientist, but the poetic instinct, which I inherited from him and also from ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... drawback—at least, for Henry Burns and Harvey, who were hankering for the grip of a tiller and the thrill of a boat under sail. There wasn't a sailboat to be hired on the pond. There were not many, and they were all engaged. Coombs, who owned the slip and the boats, said he hadn't done such a business in years. He could only let ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... a hankering to be made a member of Parliament, and got Mr. Charles Argent to speak to my father about it, but neither he nor my mother would hear of such a thing, which I was very sorry for, as it would have been so convenient to me for getting franks; ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... of "Thyrsis" was not himself free from a certain melancholy hankering after "categorical imperatives," and beneath the cap and bells of his theological fooling, Shaw is, of course, as gravely moralistic as any ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... of original ideas, the new Secretary of State was in a somewhat restless mood. He took so keen an interest in some wonderful scheme in connection with Russian railways (about which I was freely consulted) that he evidently was hankering after going on a mission to that part of the world himself. He no doubt believed that a visit from him would be an equivalent for the visit by Lord Kitchener which had been interrupted so tragically. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... have left Ranelagh without having time to tell me he was going, and I should have gone back to London feeling perfectly certain that I had only seen his earthly shape. Should I have been disabused if I had seen him a few days after? Possibly; but I am not sure of it. I have always had a hankering after superstition, of which I do not boast; but I confess the fact, and leave the reader to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... hesitate, was that the boy might be thrown with low associates later on if he were to be encouraged in his taste for music—a taste which Theobald had always disliked. He had observed with regret that Ernest had ere now shown rather a hankering after low company, and he might make acquaintance with those who would corrupt his innocence. Christina shuddered at this, but when they had aired their scruples sufficiently they felt (and when people begin to "feel," they are invariably going to take what they ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... and I want to have this meeting all to ourselves. Then the servant that shows Merriwell up, if one does, may see us, and I calculate that I ain't hankering to meet up with any of your servants ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... this is probably the first time that ever a Lord Chancellor rode a race with a Quaker!" But a stranger rencontre was one which befel Mr. Reynolds on Blackheath. Though he declined Government orders for cannon, he seems to have had a secret hankering after the "pomp and circumstance" of military life. At all event's he was present on Blackheath one day when George III. was reviewing some troops. Mr. Reynold's horse, an old trooper, no sooner heard the sound of the trumpet than he started off at full ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... to be acquitted? Yes, upon the whole he did;—to be acquitted of that special sin. His desire to make Miss Dunstable temporarily subject to his sway arose, not from a hankering after her fortune, but from an ambition to get the better of a contest in which other men around him seemed to ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Armour since her return home; not from the least view of reconciliation, but merely to ask for her health, and to you I will confess it, from a foolish hankering fondness, very ill placed indeed. The mother forbade me the house, nor did Jean show that penitence that might have been expected. However, the priest,[15a] I am informed, will give me a certificate as a single man, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... assented. "My virtue has been its own reward—and punishment. If I had allowed you to go your way to the proverbial dogs, after whose society gilded youths like yourself appear to be always hankering, I should not be sitting here with cold water running down my back and surrounded by Nature in her gloomiest and dampest aspects. Only once have I deviated from the life of consistent selfishness at which every ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Bowen, with a smile, in which lurked a suspicion of a sneer. "Thee may say what thee likes about the old man, and the cows, and the cawl, but I know thee, Gethin Owens! Ever since I told thee what a fine lass Morva Lloyd has grown thee'st been hankering after Garthowen slopes." ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... words after his task was completed are often very full of weariness—sometimes pious, sometimes hankering after fleshly lusts, occasionally quite too dreadful to repeat. "May Christ recompense for ever him who caused this book to be written." At the end of a Life of St. Sebastian: "Illustrious martyr, remember the ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... or 'good-bye.' I did feel vexed, I confess, for I was quite sure she had joined a tribe of Indians that had been loafing about here for some time. I had more than once noticed her at work over a wampum belt, as if she had a hankering after her old life. 'What's bred in the bone is sure to come out in the flesh,' I said to Bibi, and 'you can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.' However, as she seems to have had some hand in your escape, I'll not ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... or wild animals—fact is, I'm just hankering to kill a bear, but I don't want anything to do with spooks or witches or anything of that sort," returned John. "I'll keep my eyes wide open for ghosts and robbers if we stay at ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... and thought his legs were shot off. You've got to get up and learn to walk again. We're all suggesting the wrong thing to you. Go where people don't know, don't care a damn for you. Take to the road. That ink-slinging self that you are hankering after is just ahead. You'll overtake it, but it will never turn back for you—the self that ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... purpose of extending slavery. There are few signs in the proceedings of Americans, nationally or individually, that the desire of territorial acquisition for their country as such has any considerable power over them. Their hankering after Cuba is, in the same manner, merely sectional, and the Northern States, those opposed to slavery, have never in ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... the world—a rounded and complete governmental revolution without bloodshed. The result to be a republic. Well, I may as well confess, though I do feel ashamed when I think of it: I was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first president myself. Yes, there was more or less human nature in me; I found ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Curly," says he, solemn. "Seeing what he has done for us, I'm just hankering for some chance of doing him ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough |
