"Irritating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he rebelled against it in vigorous fashion. Leaving Colonel Fry to follow with the main body of troops, Washington set out on April 2, 1754, with two companies from Alexandria, where he had been recruiting amidst most irritating difficulties. He reached Will's Creek three weeks later; and then his real troubles began. Captain Trent, the timid and halting envoy, who had failed to reach the French, had been sent out by the ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... irritating of girl—men is assuredly the Parisian and the boulevardier, in whom the appearance of intelligence is more marked and who combines in himself all the attractions and all the faults of those charming creatures in an exaggerated degree in virtue of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... you, Bill?" reiterated the irritating voice, and Farnsworth's never very patient temper ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... the sun seem to me to be confusing the issue," he said at last. "Windows must always reflect light in a certain direction at a certain time, and though they may be irritating they could not possibly produce even temporary blindness. Still, we won't forget them, Mr. Ewart, though we had better put them aside for a moment. Now, how soon can you bring ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... that an important point was gained if they could settle once for all, by a solemn compact, the matters which had, during several generations, been in controversy between Parliament and the Crown. They therefore most judiciously abstained from mixing up the irritating and perplexing question of what ought to be the law with the plain question of what was the law. As to the claims set forth in the Declaration of Right, there was little room for debate, Whigs and Tories were generally agreed as to the illegality of the dispensing power and of taxation imposed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... suffered at all from a lack of stirring news. Bonaparte's wonderful campaigns, (Austerlitz had just been heard of in New York,) the outrages on our sailors by English cruisers, our merchantmen plundered by French and Spanish privateers, the irritating behavior of the Dons in Louisiana, kept them abundantly supplied with this staff of mental life. But they did not care much for news in the abstract as news, unless they could work it up into political ammunition and discharge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... water over my horse's legs. "You'd better look out for your elephant; those drunken Bretons are irritating him," I said. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... want him now,' he answered, with one of his irritating sniggers, and I fully understood the significance of his words. I try to do the Turtons no injustice, reminding myself that, to begin with, they were far from rich, and that they had lost the forty pounds or more which should have been paid for the last term's ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... am, as I said, wise in my generation, and stick to phenomena. I venture to think the conjurers unwise in irritating the spiritualists, who are a growing body, by placarding their entertainment as exposes, even though such announcements may "draw" the non-spiritual public. I suppose, however, they understand the science of advertising better than I do; but I feel sure the spiritualists ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... thinking as much of her own good name as of Jay's. For there was a most irritating similarity between Jay's present apparent practices and Mrs. Gustus's own much-expressed theories. The beauty of a free life of simplicity had filled pages of Anonyma's notebooks, and also, to the annoyance of Cousin Gustus, had overflowed into her conversation. Cousin ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... irritating. Charles was never sure what impression he made on this quiet brother, whose very unresponsiveness had driven him to disclosures he had not meant to make. He had managed the interview clumsily; he was not up to the mark, or he would not have made so many false ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... parents should realise that the disturbing and irritating element in the child's environment is nearly always provided by the intrusion of the adult mind and its contact with the child's. Some supervision and some intrusion, therefore, is of course absolutely necessary, but the best-regulated nursery is that in which it is least evident. ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... hills, they found themselves in a more broken country. They climbed and descended with a rather irritating regularity. The spurs of the Pyrenees keep their form right down to the plains and the road to Torre Garda passes over them. Juanita leant sideways out of the carnage and stared upwards into the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... would stir them into chaos. He would leave his clothes about for her to pick up, and his towels in a messy heap on the bathroom floor, and he never scrubbed out the tub. And she, on her side, was awfully unresponsive and irritating,—she realized it fully,—she got to the point where she wouldn't laugh ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... Doctor Lefebre the change in his life became for Max more intimately real than it had been before. The fact that he was travelling second-class, though an insignificant thing in itself, brought it home to him in a curious, irritating way. He felt that he must be a weak, spoiled creature, not worthy to call himself a soldier, because little, unfamiliar shabbinesses and inconveniences disgusted him. He remembered how he had revelled in his one trip abroad with Rose and some friends of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... two hundred and fifty years, and which, after the lapse of four centuries, left the policy of Scotland a serious difficulty to English ministers, can scarcely receive credit for practical sagacity, however wise its aim. It created for England a relentless and irritating (if not always a dangerous) enemy, invariably ready to take advantage of English difficulties. England had to fight Scotland in France and in Ireland, and Edward IV and Henry VII found the King of Scots the ally of the House of Lancaster, ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... starve the mind a little, and nourish the heart more, you would be less of a philosopher, and more of a—" The Parson had the word "Christian" at the tip of his tongue: he suppressed a word that, so spoken, would have been exceedingly irritating, and substituted, with inelegant antithesis, "and more ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... be remarked that Mrs Brown was out of temper—not that that was an unusual thing; but she had found the expedition more trying than she had anticipated, and the torments of mind and body to which Jacky had subjected her were of an uncommonly irritating nature. ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... difficult to graft upon them. Their cooking, especially, is generally execrable. But once properly trained, they make the best of servants. They are generally contented, almost always cheerful and good tempered, and have little of that irritating pertness and 'independence' so characteristic of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... somewhat abstract character, suddenly broke in upon it as follows. He had a great fund of optimism and what is sometimes called common sense, which to me was rather pleasant and refreshing, though some of the others, and especially Leslie and Ellis, were apt, I think, to find it irritating. His present speech was characteristic ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... 9, is the first one of those tone studies of Chopin in which the mood is more petulant than tempestuous. The melody is morbid, almost irritating, and yet not without certain accents of grandeur. There is a persistency in repetition that foreshadows the Chopin of the later, sadder years. The figure in the left hand is the first in which a prominent part is given to that member. Not as noble ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Mary said deliberately, "that it is one of those cases where you should have exercised a little more discrimination. This is a small neighborhood, and I find it irritating to be continually running up against ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... confused. A stolen will was of course inevitable, and so were prison dungeons; but the characters had an irritating trick of revealing at critical moments that they were long-lost relatives. It must have been a tedious age when poor relations were never safely buried. However, youth and beauty were at last triumphant and villainy confounded, virtue was crowned with orange blossom and vice died a miserable death. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... she was helpless, as though she had been drugged to a point when she could move and think, but only through a mist, and she felt that his ease, approaching impudence, was as indecent as Aunt Rose's calm. It was both irritating and pleasing to know that she could have shattered both with the word she was incapable of saying, but her nearest approach to that was an inquiry after the health of Mrs. Sales. He replied that she was looking forward to Henrietta's ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... especially of the books she had read. Her spare time was devoted to reading books, mostly of the blood-curdling variety; and she read them to herself aloud in the kitchen in a very disjointed fashion, which was at first amusing, and then irritating. We never knew her real name, nor did the people at the orphanage. She had three or four very romantic ones she had borrowed from novels while she was with us, for ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... the third person; but so much of it consists of my own personal intercourse with Mr. Smith, that the use of that circuitous form of expression became as irksome to the writer, as he thinks it would have proved tedious and irritating to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... of rhymed prose, the scholar will observe that, despite the immense copiousness of assonants and consonants in Arabic, the strain is often put upon it intentionally, like the Rims cars of Dante and the Troubadours. This rhymed prose may be "un English" and unpleasant, even irritating to the British ear; still I look upon it as a sine qua non for a complete reproduction of the original. In the Terminal Essay I ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... mentioning a sudden rush of scarlet to the cheeks, is as lamentable as may be. But! But with the universal use of cosmetics and the consequent secernment of soul and surface, upon which, at the risk of irritating a reader, I must again insist, all those old properties that went to bolster up the ordinary novel—the trembling lips, the flashing eyes, the determined curve of the chin, the nervous trick of biting the moustache, aye, and the hectic spot ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the young people unusually polite to each other. Irritating subjects were carefully avoided the next day. When they set out for the Captain's, Sherm gallantly handed Katy in to the front seat to sit beside Ernest, while he sandwiched himself between Jane and Gertie. The boys had finally concluded that the real ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... this a-way," replied the trapper, almost irritating me with the prolixity of his style. "'Ee see them Injuns on t'other side o' ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... of an hour he figured that he had covered half the distance. He was plodding doggedly, every muscle aching from the unaccustomed strain. His feet, which burned and itched where the irritating soap rubbed into his skin, had swollen until the boots held them in a vise-like grip of torture. At each step he lifted pounds of glue-like mud which clung to the legs of his leather chaps in a thick grey smear. And each step was a separate, conscious, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... seaweed. After which there are little fish dried in sugar, crabs in sugar, beans in sugar, and fruits in vinegar and pepper. All this is atrocious, but above all unexpected and unimaginable. The little women make me eat, laughing much, with that perpetual, irritating laugh which is peculiar to Japan—they make me eat, according to their fashion, with dainty chop-sticks, fingered with affected grace. I am becoming accustomed to their faces. The whole effect is refined—a refinement so entirely different from our own that at first ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... violent, that at last it could be induced by touching any part of its body.... The dog had no reason of hatred against any individual; ... both sight and hearing had been destroyed; and many persons the animal had never seen, provoked its rage by irritating the wound." ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... Laigs, looking at her with his most irritating smile, as he sat down at the kitchen table, "I don't find I git thru any more work by tumblin' out o' bed 't sun-up 'n I dew 'f I lay a spell 'n' let the univarse git het up 'n' runnin' a leetle mite. 'Slow 'n' easy goes fur in a day' 's my motto. Rhapseny, she used to say she should think I'd ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... been very irritating to Saint-Gaudens when he fell a victim to that extraordinary official Puritanism which sometimes exercises a petty censorship over works of art in America. The medal that he made for the World's Fair was rejected at Washington because it ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... England, which often happens, is more and more an offence to Queen Sophie. Seckendorf studies to be polite, reserved before the Queen's Majesty at her own table; yet sometimes he lisps out, in his vile snuffling tone, half-insinuations, remarks on our Royal Kindred, which are irritating in the extreme. Queen Sophie, the politest of women, did once, says Pollnitz, on some excessive pressure of that lisping snuffling unendurability, lose her royal patience and flame out. With human frankness, and uncommonly kindled eyes, she signified to Seckendorf, That none who was not himself ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... be his advantage. If Matthews were another Hickok the situation would have been vastly different. If there were any real fighting men on Hardman's side Pan would recognize them in a single glance. He was an unknown quantity to them, that most irritating of newcomers to a wild place, the man ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... fantastic notion of treating Lucian's Zeus as a tragic figure. He sketched a sympathetic picture of the fallen despot, and of the smokeless altars, girdled by a jeering rabble of so-called philosophers, and of how irritating it must be to anybody to have your actual existence denied. Did I not see the pathos of poor Zeus's situation with the god business practically "cornered," and the Jews ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... anything like it in Italy before. The illness at Genoa was the mere tail of what began in England, and was increased by the Alpine exposure. Our weather has been very severe—wind and frost together—something peculiarly irritating in the air. I am loth to blame my poor Florence, who never treated me so before (and how many winters we have spent here!)—and our friends write from Pisa that the weather was as trying there, while from Rome the account is simply 'detestable weather.' At Naples it is sometimes furiously cold; there's ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... parks,—the theatres,—the newest actress, and the newest remedies for indigestion,—these sort of subjects were bandied about from one to the other with a vaguely tame persistence that was really irritating,—the question of remedies for indigestion seemed to hold ground longest, owing to the variety of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... good deal, took long walks with his dog, but beyond that he seemed to do nothing but lounge in a chair on the lawn, shabbily clad, with a pipe between his lips and a book, generally unopened, on his knee. His political views seemed to Owen to be as vague as were Toni's; and he had an irritating habit of setting aside any recognized standard of perfection as though the world's seal of ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... present, or go to the limit of two small cigarettes in twenty-four hours. Any good effects of tobacco become with me uncertain in proportion to the frequency of smoking. The good effects are those commonly ascribed to it: it seems to soothe away small worries, and to restore little irritating incidents to their true proportions. On a few occasions I have thought it gave me a mental fillip, and enabled me to start with work I had been pausing over; and it nearly always has the power to produce a pleasant, and perhaps wholesome, retardation of thought—a half ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... his esteem; you, in return, owe him the same affection and confidence; I desire it of you as a friend, and demand it of you as a parent and a sovereign. Make good use of the pity that pleads in my breast in your behalf—-and dread irritating me, lest I throw aside the father, and act wholly as a prince." This discourse, so far from softening the Princess, redoubled her distraction, and she discovered so much rage of temper to the Count, that he deferred, till a more favourable opportunity, ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... as he mixed up his acids. Crofter and Wales mooned about under the trees in the field somewhat limply, but showed no outward signs of distress. Altogether, speculation was baffled, and it was almost irritating to find the chief actors in the drama refusing to take ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... with the government of the province, and finally, from the royal authority and whole English dominion. "With an arrogant and self-sufficient manner, constantly identifying himself with the authority of which he was merely the representative, and constantly indulging in irritating personal allusions, he entirely lost sight of the courtesy and respect due to a co-ordinate branch of the government, and made himself ridiculous, while he was ruining the interests of the sovereign whom he was most anxious to serve. Even Hutchinson, as we learn from the third volume of his History, ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... Mr. CALHOUN at the time was to play into the hands of a combination which had been formed to break down the Administration of John Quincy Adams, and to cripple Henry Clay. The instrument used was the sarcastic, irritating, and personal rhetoric of John Randolph, then a member of the Senate. To this end, Randolph was suffered to deliver in the Senate a long succession of tirades, disgraceful to the Senate, abusive of New England and of Henry ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... stake at Grimsby; but the animal proving too tame, one William Hall put a spike or brad into his stick, and goaded the poor creature until the blood flowed copiously from several parts of his body; and at length, by continually irritating the lacerated parts, the bull became enraged, and roaring in the extremity of his torture, succeeded in tossing his assailant, to the infinite gratification of his cruel persecutors. It is recorded, to the credit of Mr. Alderman ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... cove held between the bold jaws of its headland. "The old sir who named that Hue and Cry Island must have smelt into the future so as to know what was going to happen there some day—and this is the day!" He chewed on, and his silence became irritating. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... or early spring, they are nearly or quite under water. As the lake is reached, small islands of dense willow trees grow out of the water, and in these islands are vast colonies of waterfowl. The effect is decidedly pretty, but very irritating to the sportsman, as the birds hide in the centre, and it is nearly impossible to force one's way ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... I'm glad to say," she quickly replied. "It was about three hundred years before his time. And though he had some quite irritating tricks as a young man, murdering slaves wasn't one of them. To be sure, they tell strange tales of him here, as I make no doubt Nevill has already mentioned, because he's immoral enough to be proud of what he calls the romance. I mean the story of the beautiful Arab lady, whom James is supposed ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... upon them the increased contempt of their assailants. There remained therefore nothing but silence and the feeble hope that this first fury of the disunion onset might spend itself in angry words, and be followed by calmer counsels. Nevertheless, it was difficult to keep entirely still under the irritating provocation. On the third day of the session, Senator Hale, of New Hampshire, replied to both the President's message and Clingman's speech. Mr. Hale thought "this state of affairs looks to one of two things; it looks to absolute submission, not on the part of our Southern friends ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... barely to be supposed that he should understand what in her love for him she sacrificed in giving up Italy, as she phrased it. He had some little notion of the sacrifice; but, as he did not demand any sacrifice of the sort, and as this involved a question perplexing, irritating, absurd, he did not regard it very favourably. As mistress of his fancy, her prospective musical triumphs were the crown of gold hanging over her. As wife of his bosom, they were not to be thought of. But the wife of his bosom must take her place by virtue of some wondrous charm. What was it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... always present to the mediaeval mind. In its broadest and coarsest jests, in its most laborious and (as we are pleased to call them) dullest expansions of stories, in its most wire-drawn and most lifeless allegory, in its most irritating admixture of science and fable, there is always hard by, always ready to break in, the sense of the great and wonderful things of Life, and Love, and Death, of the half-known God and the unknown Hereafter. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... escort the ladies Aurelia and Isolde Danvers to Danvers Castle, and leave Miss Ethel to find a partner for her last dance, a decision that favored John Thomas, greatly relieved Ethel, and bestowed upon himself that most irritating of all ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Mitchell's stimulating work, The Childhood of Animals, in which the secretary of the Zoological Society of London says: 'I have attempted to avoid the use of terms familiar only to students of zoology and to refrain from anatomical detail, but at the same time to refrain from the irritating habit assuming that my readers have no knowledge, no dictionaries and no ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... strive. After all I am persuaded that they get a fair amount of happiness. Simple pleasures are the greatest, perhaps the only real pleasures. We all like to be free of responsibilities. There is no rent-day coming round with dread certainty and irritating monotony to the nomads. No rate collector irritates them with his imperious "demand note." No school-board officer rouses them to a sense of duty by his everlasting efforts to force their children to school. No butcher, no baker, no milkman ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... some jumped to the conclusion that Huxley was offering a general recantation of evolution, others that he had discarded his former theories of ethics. On the one hand he was branded as a deserter from free thought; on the other, hailed almost as a convert to orthodoxy. It was irritating, but little more than he had expected. The conditions of the lecture forbade any reference to politics or religion; hence much had to be left unsaid, which was supplied next year in the Prolegomena prefacing the re-issue of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... heart and caused him that delightful sensation of uneasiness to which he had been a stranger in connection with his many later easy love adventures. A light, penetrating and sweet odor floated around Marianne, reminding Lissac of the intoxicating perfume of vanished days, an irritating odor as of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... to Susan, in justice to Rothsay, I insisted on silence. "No more of it!" I said. "Take care how you provoke me. Don't you see that I am ill? don't you see that you are irritating me to no purpose?" ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... possible endeavours his obligations of love and guardianship to his young sister. The young sister, with her tender, quizzical understanding, regarded him as a mere child, with a deliciously humorous way of always taking himself very seriously; a brilliant brain, an irritating fund of superiority, and something altogether apart that made him dearer than heaven and earth and all things therein ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... Yaroslav to Nizhni is beautiful, but I had seen it before. Moreover, it was very hot in the cabin and the wind lashed in our faces on deck. The passengers were an uneducated set, whose presence was irritating. At Nizhni we were met by N., Tolstoy's friend. The heat, the dry wind, the noise of the fair and the conversation of N. suddenly made me feel so suffocated, so ill at ease, and so sick, that I took my portmanteau and ignominiously ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... complexity there must be limits—an endless and incongruous variety teases and revolts; the discordant effect of innumerable tints, among which some are sure to be uncongenial to each other, is always extremely irritating. There ought, then, to be a scale of color, it would seem, within whose limits the purest harmonies are to be found, and beyond which subdivisions should be no more allowed than in constant musical notes. When this idea strikes, as it must have, many artists, reason, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... people cultivate tact; study how to speak and act so as to touch gently all with whom you are associated. Behind the best tact lies the wish to be kind and to make people comfortable and happy, to avoid wounding and irritating; and so it is true that the basis of true tact is, after all, the ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... a participant in an incident which was somewhat amusing, and also a little bit irritating. Shortly before noon of the first day, Jack Medford, of my company, and myself, concluded we would "straggle," and try to get a country dinner. Availing ourselves of the first favorable opportunity, we slipped from the ranks, and struck out. We followed an old country road that ran ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the soul, attempted not any answer, but walked about the room in the utmost disorder of mind. Cecilia would have retired, but feared irritating him to some extravagance; and Mrs Delvile, looking after him, added "For myself, I would still see, for I should pity your wife,—but NEVER would I behold my son when sunk into an ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to cry; it was terribly irritating, and she had cried too much—not lately, but in the first years. Lately she had disciplined herself better, become more cheerful, realised, no doubt, that she was quite as well off as other men's wives, and really had nothing to weep for. But, in case those tears which had fallen should be ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... became, as the day wore on, more and more something to look forward to. All the things about him which in more resilient hours she had found irritating or absurd, his neutrality, his appropriateness, his steady unimaginative way of going always one step at a time, seemed now precisely his greatest merits. The thought of tea in his company even aroused a faint appetite for food in her and lent zest to her preparations for it. When she ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... things, perhaps the most irritating is to have your big bundle of news calmly opened and emptied, and its contents appropriated without ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... anger. See then of what a complication of faults the Governor General is guilty. In order to curry favour with the Hindoos he has offered an inexpiable insult to the Mahometans; and now, in order to quiet the English, he is forced to disappoint and disgust the Hindoos. But, apart from the irritating effect which these transactions must produce on every part of the native population, is it no evil to have this continual wavering and changing? This is not the only case in which Lord Ellenborough has, with great pomp, announced intentions which he has not been ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... scarcely noticed a slow but widening ostracism which shut him out from house after house, under the pressure of the Pierce influence. But Mrs. Festus Willard had perceived and resented it. That any one for whom she had stood sponsor should fail socially in Worthington was both irritating and incredible to her. Hence she made more of Hal than she might otherwise have found time to do, and he was much with her and Festus Willard, deriving, on the one hand, recreation and amusement from her sparkling camaraderie, and on the other, support and encouragement from her husband's strong, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... above irritating Griggs occasionally, when the fancy took her to seek amusement in that way. She knew how to do it, and he rarely turned upon her, even in the most ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Ptolemy's guardians, sent secretly for the troops at Pelusium, and gave the command of them to Achillas, the officer who had murdered Pompey. The city rose when they came in, and Caesar found himself blockaded in the palace and the part of the city which joined the outer harbor. The situation was irritating from its absurdity, but more or less it was really dangerous. The Egyptian fleet which had been sent to Greece in aid of Pompey had come back, and was in the inner basin. It outnumbered Caesar's, and the Alexandrians were the best seamen in the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... are not tractable; they have an irritating habit of obstinately insisting on finding their own trail, and of persisting in vagaries that are ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... beauty and fine sensibility she had inherited the indomitable spirit which had made John Harris one of the must prosperous farmers in the district. She moved in an easy, unconscious grace of self-reliance—a reliance that must be just a little irritating to men of old-fashioned notions concerning woman's dependence on the sterner sex—drew the long wooden table, with its covering of white oilcloth, into the centre of the kitchen, and began placing the ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... that which is clean; and if well-aired, I should no more object to your putting on clean underwear than to your changing your dress. Most especially would I advise a frequent change of napkins, in order to remove those which are soiled from their irritating contact with the body. A full bath during menstruation would, for most people, be unadvisable, but the cleansing of the private parts is imperative. For this, tepid water, with good soap, may be used ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... believe that irritation must be taken as the starting-point in the consideration of inflammation. We cannot conceive of inflammation without an irritating stimulus, and the first question is, what conception we are to form ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... was distributed through the post-offices as an item of party service; and matter of a political character, passing through the mails in the usual course and addressed to patrons belonging to the opposite party, was withheld; disgusting and irritating placards were prominently displayed in many post-offices, and the attention of Democratic inquirers for mail matter was tauntingly directed to them by the postmaster; and in various other ways postmasters and similar officials annoyed and vexed those holding opposite political ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... his new ministers by his assiduity and his aptitude for business. He conversed with everyone on the subject that most interested him. He questioned Roland on his works, Dumouriez on his adventures, and Claviere on the finances, whilst he avoided the irritating topics of general policy. Madame Roland reproached her husband with these conversations, and besought him to make use of his time, to take abstracts of these conversations, and to keep an authentic register, which would one ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Manitoba that economic depression prevailed, though nowhere else were the grievances so concrete and so irritating. Throughout the Dominion the brief gleam of prosperity which dawned with the eighties had vanished. After the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway stagnation was everywhere the rule. Foreign trade, which had reached a total of $217,000,000 in ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... made off into the woods. Mackenzie followed him, and thus reached a village from which two men issued armed with daggers and intending to attack him. While stopping to defend himself, many other people assembled, and amongst them he recognized the irritating person who incessantly repeated the names "Makuba" and "Benzins". However, this threatened danger was narrowly averted, and eventually they left the village with a supply of food; but also in a state of considerable irritation with—fleas! For some of the houses of these ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the rights of the native and the claim which he has to the protection of the law. We hold, and rightly, that British justice, if not blind, should at least be colour-blind. The view is irreproachable in theory and incontestable in argument, but it is apt to be irritating when urged by a Boston moralist or a London philanthropist upon men whose whole society has been built upon the assumption that the black is the inferior race. Such a people like to find the higher morality for themselves, not to have it imposed upon ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... worded with the very purpose of offering insult to the Church. Take for example the second question: whether the dominion of the pope and his satellites is for or against Christ. The monarch could not have thrown the question into a more irritating form. Certainly Galle showed forbearance in arguing the point at all. His answer was an appeal to history. From the days of Gregory popes had enjoyed vast riches along with temporal power; this showed that they were justified ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... you think so?" inquired Giovanni with a man's irritating indolence when he does not mean to ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... subject of endless and angry discussion. The feelings of the community were not carefully consulted, and laws in the main useful, were too often pertinaciously encumbered with provisions both irritating and needless. The motives of the lawgivers were canvassed without reserve. They were supposed to employ their powers to facilitate extortion, in the profits of which they were ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... her brows contract with the effort of will to control the irritating tickle that ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... shot of inference went home. It was the first of many. Kenny fought back his temper. Affronted, he crossed the room and laid a roll of bills upon the table. Craig counted them with an irritating show ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... to have a little light on one point," remarked the young man, curtly. He felt again the irritating prick of resentment. "What am I to be down to that ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... urged in favor of Sir George's timid defensive system, that it was proper in order to avoid irritating the enemy, and thereby uniting them; as also, that his force was inadequate to offensive warfare. Now, no positions were ever more untenable, for to think of conciliating an enemy by leaving to him the full benefit of ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... mind, there was some irritating influence in the presence of the mistress of the house, which applied the spur to his wits. He mischievously proposed submitting to her the question in dispute between ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... understand how any good quality can lead one to "forget his station"; to the servant the spirit of management in the master seems mere "driving." This is only a sample of what is going on all society over. The relation between the higher and lower classes becomes irritating, and therefore injurious, not from any conscious unfairness on either side, but simply from the want of a common understanding; while at the same time every class suffers within its own limits from the prevalence of habits and ideas, under the authority of class-convention, which ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... "This speech was irritating on two separate grounds. It implied that people were talking freely of my attachment, which, until I had formally acknowledged it, I resented as an impertinence; and it implied that, from personal observation, Agalma doubted Ottilie's feelings for me. This alarmed ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... room to another; above all, he liked to hear his voice reading the paper out loud to her in the evening. She dreaded that most of all. It had lately seemed to jar on her nerves till she felt she must scream aloud. His voice going on and on, raucous and sing-song, became unspeakably irritating. His "Mary!" summoning her from her household work to wherever he happened to be, his "Get my slippers," or "Bring me my pipe," exasperated her almost to the point of rebellion. "Get your own slippers" had trembled on her lips, but had never passed them, for she was a woman who could ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Charles's name was still one to conjure with in India, it clearly became his duty to bid his son seek out and secure whatever modicum of advantage—in the matter of advice and introductions—might be derivable from so irritating ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... asked, Why can we not enter the bladder by one side, avoiding altogether its neck and this prostate gland? For this, among other reasons, that the bladder normally contains, and so long as the patient lives must contain, a certain quantity of a very irritating fluid. It is surrounded by the loose areolar tissue of the pelvis, into which, if any of this fluid escapes, abcesses will form and death probably ensue; this result will almost certainly follow any opening made into the bladder except at one spot. This ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... know," said the irritating Potts, "and I'm sorry I can't tell ye but its a saycret ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Herod of what he had heard. So when he related to the king Alexander's ill temper, as discovered by the words he had heard him speak, he was easily believed by him; and he thereby brought the king to that pass, turning him about by his words, and irritating him, till he increased his hatred to him and made him implacable, which he showed at that very time, for he immediately gave Eurycles a present of fifty talents; who, when he had gotten them, went to Archclaus, king ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... In the fiery obstinacy of his determination, Gardiner was the incarnate expression of the fury of the ecclesiastical faction, smarting, as they were, under their long degradation, and under the irritating consciousness of those false oaths of submission which they had sworn to a power which they loathed. Once before, in the first reaction against Protestant excesses, the Bishop of Winchester had seen the Six {p.119} Articles Bill carried—but his prey had then been snatched from his ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... the jaws of the mainboom or of the gaff overhead on the mast; the jerk of the mainsheet tautening out suddenly to the heave of the schooner; the kicking of the rudder, and the gurgling swirl of water about it and along the bends—only served to emphasise while they broke in upon it with an irritating harshness altogether disproportionate to their volume. So intense was the silence outside the ship that one seemed constrained to listen intently for some sound, some startling cry, to come floating ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... but I saw that he was listening with all his attention, studying my statement as he might have studied a complicated brief. And when I had done, he thrust out his ugly underlip with an effect of sneering incredulity that I found almost unendurably irritating. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... my heart, Edward: I think it will be very hard, if, with our two guns and Smoker to back us, we do not manage to be masters of the field. However, we must survey well before we make our approach; and if we can get within shot without alarming or irritating them, we ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... the State can do business as well and as cheaply as private enterprise. It is much more likely that after a few years' time the public would find the business of paying in and getting out its money a very much more tedious and irritating process than it is at present, and that the expenses of the matter would have grown to such an extent that the taxpayer might be called upon annually to make ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... rejection of their demands had the effect of irritating those who had made them; and stimulated by their spite with more energy than ever did they bend themselves to the task ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... and noisy and irritating cranks. I have met scores of them. They are intense, but shortsighted. Some are delightfully ingenuous, with the lovable simplicity of the child. Others are of a morbid and carping disposition, with an inordinate sense of their ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... he was by neglect, this was irritating, and at last he could not help telling her she was unreasonable. "You live a gay life, and I a sad one. I consent to this, and let you go about with these Lucases, because you were so dull; but you should ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... the man's easy confidence which was, in its way, impressive yet irritating. Helen appeared bereft of words and retreated to her place almost mildly. Philippa's very delicate eyebrows were drawn together in ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dance at Henry's; you made a good soldier, they said, but you'd had enough of it in twelve months; you play auction bridge in the afternoons; and you talk about the war as though it were simply an irritating circumstance. And to-night—" ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... even these caused them less acute distress than the fear that as a consequence they should now be forced so late in life to make that mournful pilgrimage into strange regions. David was saddened to think that ever at his father's side sat his mother, irritating him by dropping all day into his ear the half idle, half intentional words which are the water that ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... the colonists as not chargeable with any breach of the laws of justice or of mercy in sending out of their jurisdiction, into another patch of the same wilderness, a man all whose phenomena were of the most uncomfortable and irritating character. We confess that our reading and thinking identify our judgment on this matter with that of our own historian. There can be no question but that Roger Williams—whether he was thirty-two years old, as Mr. Arnold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... been conceded to them, nor were they willing to abide by the terms of the Edict of Nantes in so far as to allow the establishment of Catholic worship in the places which were under their control. Their public attacks on the Blessed Eucharist and on the Pope were very irritating to their countrymen, but Henry IV., who was a good king deeply interested especially in the welfare of the lower classes, continued to keep the peace between both parties. His sympathies were, however, with the Protestants of Germany, and he was actually on his way to take part in a war ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... that wine did some people harm, by inflaming, confusing, and irritating their minds; but that the experience of mankind had declared in favour of moderate drinking. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I do not say it is wrong to produce self complacency by drinking; I only deny that it improves the mind. When I drank wine, I ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... moralizing. Her blood was coursing feverishly through her veins, her spirit had been made reckless by the wilful violence that she was doing her conscience, and also by her deep and growing dissatisfaction with herself, that was like an irritating wound. She was therefore prepared to resent any interruption to the whirl of excitement, which gave her a kind of pleasure in the place of the happiness that was impossible to one ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... cecum from gas accumulations and the forced dilations from diarrheas made either from drugs or irritating foods, must not only damage the cecum but the appendix as well; for the appendix opens into this part of the intestine and it is reasonable to believe that it suffers distention from gas and that toxic secretions are driven into it. When its function is not interfered with by an unusual pressure ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... the darn fool entered in person and included the crowd in one of his irritating smiles. Two boys said, "'Lo, Mer'dith"; the others gave him a chilly glance and went on talking to ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... two minutes," interrupted Christian, speaking very quietly, but conscious of a wild desire to fly at Miss Gascoigne and shake her as she stood, putting forward, in her customary way, those mangled fragments of truth which are more irritating than absolute lies. "Indeed, it was only two minutes. I did not choose, even if I had no other reason, that a man of whom Dr. Grey did not approve should ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and weary that ride seemed now by what it had been coming. His disappointment was deep and irritating; and ere he had ridden half way a torturer fastened on his heart. That torture is suspicion; a vague and shadowy, but gigantic phantom that oppresses and rends the mind more terribly than certainty. In this state of vague, ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... are not an Australian born, Miss Carolan?" put in Mrs. Wooler with a peculiarly irritating condescension of manner and surprised tone, as if she meant to say, "I am sure you are—you certainly are not lady-like enough to ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... whose advent caused the curtailment of the promise's sealing was as foreign looking as the room itself. Dapper, dressed in a sort of elaborate carelessness, his figure alone carried with it an air of assurance that Hartmann always found almost as irritating as the man's gracefully exaggerated manner and speech. His blonde hair was brushed back from a high, narrow forehead. A turned-up moustache and a close-trimmed and pointed Van Dyke beard ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... Government has thus far given us no just cause of offence[346]." Meanwhile the Government, just at the moment when the Declaration of Paris negotiation had reached an inglorious conclusion, especially irritating to Earl Russell, was suddenly plunged into a sharp controversy with the United States by an incident growing out of Russell's first instructions to Lyons in regard to that negotiation and which, though of minor importance in itself, aroused an intensity of feeling ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... moment, highly irritating to Mary, was not the ultimate close of the affair. Mr. Christie was connected in business with Mr. Imlay, at the same time that the house of Mr. Christie was the only one at which Mary habitually visited. The consequence of this ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... Vera, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf. Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and returned it to John with one of contemptuous defiant anger. It did not help to soothe Richard that John looked unusually handsome. There was a fire and persuasion in his face, a tenderness and grace in his manner, that was very irritating, and Richard could neither control his hands nor his tongue. He began at once to feel for his pistol. "Why is John Millard here?" he asked of ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... Throughout her sickness she was considerate of those around her. Her ruling passion was strong in death. When her attendants recommended her to sleep, she tried to obey, though her disease made this almost impossible. She was gentle even in her complaints. Expostulation and contradiction were peculiarly irritating to her in her then nervous condition, but one night when a servant heedlessly expostulated with her, all she said was, "Pray, pray do not let her reason with me!" Religion was not once, to use Godwin's expression, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... was not sentimental, and any exhibition of feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear—what was it that showed in the expression of his face at these moments? Whatever that strange look was, it departed too quickly ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... have by me the proper tool for cleaning up his ring, [1] and that he had better go to another goldsmith. Without further provocation he retorted that I was a donkey; whereupon I said that he was not speaking the truth; that I was a better man than he in every respect, but that if he kept on irritating me I would give him harder kicks than any donkey could. He related the matter to the Cardinal, and painted me as black as the devil in hell. Two days afterwards I shot a wild pigeon in a cleft high up behind the palace. The bird was brooding in ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... an irritating sniff from the gray cloud; he was provoked at the scorn implied in his interposition being regarded as disturbing a ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... ought to inspire confidence in every season of suffering; and we cannot but hope that her mind was long consoled, by the recollection of the heavenly interposition which she had enjoyed sixteen years ago, in her first banishment. No resentful feelings, no irritating language is recorded; and doubtless Abraham dismissed her with as much kindness as the peculiarity of the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... to-day are, in all the maritime coasts, the implacable Corsairs of Barbary. For, however great may be the dangers of which we have just spoken, and no matter now many examples they may see of the fury and inconstancy of Neptune, they cease not their irritating performances, kindling warfare in all the coasts of the Christian nations. It is there that they exercise their infamous piracies, and there also that they glory in the most shameful of all commerce—the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... a curse, as in the dropsy, but essential to life with our food. Oil is valuable, properly taken, but an irritating oil to consume the bones is destructive. How awful the case of the rich man when refused a drop of water to cool that fire which he had created while living, and into which he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... although the action of the Boer leaders was regarded as far too trifling a matter to be seriously considered as against the Raid itself, nevertheless a residuum of impression was left which helped to form opinion at a later stage. There followed, too, an irritating correspondence between the Transvaal and Imperial Governments, in the course of which Dr. Leyds successfully established his skill as a smart letter writer and his limitations as a statesman. The Municipal ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... excited both my admiration and approval was that in the accommodation provided on board the Hannah and the really excellent dinner to which we sat down every day, although enforced teetotalism was somewhat irritating to those accustomed to wine with their meals. It is no exaggeration to say that an overland journey may now be made from Skagway to Nome City with as little discomfort as a trip across Switzerland, if ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... rich in color and fine in effect, but the northerner is painfully imprest by the black and white horizontal stripes which, running from vaulting to pavement, seem to blur and confuse the vision, and the closely set bars of the piers are positively irritating. In the hexagonal lantern, however, they are less offensive than elsewhere, because the fan-like radiation of the bars above the great gilded statues breaks up the horizontal effect. The decoration of the stone-work is not happy; the use of cold red and cold blue with gilt ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... admirable as mine of the day before had been wretched. In spite of the fact that Connor had to stay behind at Campote and could catch us up later, this attention on his part was one of the most generous things that ever happened to me, for certainly the pony he got from me was the most irritating piece of horseflesh imaginable. I am glad publicly to give him my warmest thanks again! Mr. Worcester was well mounted, too; he rode this day at two hundred and thirty-five pounds, and his kit must have weighed some thirty more, yet his little beast carried him soundly to Bambang, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... where they were to give their farewell dinner to Heavy Tree Hill. They talked but little together: since the rebuff his enthusiastic confidences had received from Van Loo, Barker had been grave and thoughtful, and Stacy, with the irritating recollection of Van Loo's criticisms in his mind, had refrained from his usual rallying of Barker. Oddly enough, they spoke chiefly of Jack Hamlin,—till then personally a stranger to them, on account of his infelix reputation,—and even the critical ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... help feeling after it was all over that my sense of humour had received a shock from which it was not likely to recover in a long time. There was but little consolation in the reflection that my irritating visitors deserved something in the shape of a rebuff; I could not separate myself from the conviction that my integrity as a gentleman had suffered in a mistaken conflict with humour. My headache, I think, was due in a large measure to the sickening fear that I ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Herbert, don't touch that!" "Master Herbert, for shame!" "Let that alone, sir!" "Master Herbert, how dare you, sir!" but she prudently began by putting forbidden goods entirely out of his reach: thus she, at least, prevented the necessity for perpetual, irritating prohibitions, and diminished with the temptation the desire to disobey; she gave him some things for his own use, and scrupulously refrained from encroaching upon his property: Isabella and Matilda followed ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... forgiven him altogether, I believe, if he had been in any manner apologetic to me; but he wasn't that. He kept reassuring me in a way I found irritating. Mostly, however, his solicitude was ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... remain all the summer. 'Lina was glad, for since the fatal dress affair there had been but little harmony between herself and her brother. The tenderness awakened by her long illness seemed to have been forgotten, and Hugh's manner toward her was cold and irritating to the last degree, so that the young lady rejoiced to ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... large bright eyes, a meagre yellow beard, and thin sandy hair flowing down upon his well-starched ruff, the new governor soon showed himself inferior to none of his predecessors in audacity and alertness. It is difficult to imagine a more irritating position in many respects than that of commander in such an extraordinary leaguer. It was not a formal siege. Famine, which ever impends over an invested place, and sickens the soul with its nameless horrors, was not the great enemy to contend against here. Nor was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... be imagined how irritating and embarrassing was Yakub Khan's presence, since his position in my camp enabled him to give the leaders at Kabul accurate information as to our numbers and movements. That he felt pretty sure ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... jealous of political control, constantly endeavoured, by irritating Ordinances, to cripple the powers previously conferred. On December 2nd, 1234, he ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... luxuries of one to whom all things are brought indivisible. If he had any longing for the society of women of his own race and kind, he carefully concealed it; his indifference to the subtle though unmistakable appeals of the two gentlewomen in the chateau was irritating in the extreme. When he deliberately, though politely, declined their invitation to tea one afternoon, their humiliation knew no bounds. They had, after weeks of procrastination, surrendered to the inevitable. It was when they could no longer stand out against the common enemy—Tranquillity! Lord ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... Sunday editor of the New York "Searchlight" was busy. This was not an unusual condition, but it frequently included unusually irritating features. His superior, Wilson, the Sunday editor, was a gentleman with a high brow and a large salary, who, having won a reputation as "a Napoleon of Journalism," had successfully cultivated a distaste for what he called ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... lying that is very irritating and very hard to meet is that known as prevarication. This consists in telling a part of a truth, or even a whole truth, in such a way as to convey a false impression, and is most common at about twelve or thirteen years. When a child resorts to prevarication he is already old ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... in the most cool, high, irritating voice she could command, 'really, of votes for women hardly enters into our argument here. As a matter of fact, I take no interest in any kind of politics, and, I may be entirely wrong, but if I were compelled to take sides on the subject, I ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... red rushed to the boy's face. It was an irritating fact that in the senior class of that particular Los Angeles high school a Japanese boy stood at the head. This was embarrassing ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the banks of the lake. He has missed, the last three days, his walk with Sophy—missed the pleasing excitement of talking at her, and of the family in whose obsolete glories he considers her very interest an obtrusive impertinence. He has missed, too, his more habitual and less irritating conversation with Darrell. In short, altogether he is put out, and he vents his spleen on the swans, who follow him along the wave as he walks along the margin, intimating either their affection for himself, or their anticipation of the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ensued. Lavretzky defended the youth and independence of Russia; he surrendered himself, his generation as sacrifice,—but upheld the new men, their convictions, and their desires; Panshin retorted in a sharp and irritating way, declared that clever men must reform everything, and went so far, at last, that, forgetting his rank of Junior Gentleman of the Imperial Bedchamber, and his official career, he called Lavretzky a "laggard conservative," he even hinted,—in a very remote way, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... match—to, in Edith's position, the dazzling temptation of a splendid establishment, and to Mr. Harlowe's eloquent and impassioned pleadings—that the rich man's offer was irrevocably accepted, we of course forebore from continuing a useless and irritating resistance. Lady Maldon had several times very plainly intimated that our aversion to the marriage arose solely from a selfish desire of retaining the services of her charming relative; so prone are the mean and selfish to impute meanness ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... had had when Kennedy had stood alone in the house, his hand against all men. Now that he could work off the effects of such encounters by going straight to Fenn's study and picking the house-master to pieces, the latter's peculiar methods ceased to be irritating, and became funny. Mr Kay was always ferreting out the weirdest misdoings on the part of the members of his house, and rushing to Kennedy's study to tell him about them at full length, like a rather indignant dog bringing a rat he has hunted down into a drawing-room, to display it ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse |
