"Meddlesome" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "that there will be no occasion for applying to a Court of Chancery. There ought to be none. There is but one child, Mrs Vincent, whom you have seen this evening in the drawing-room. The great essential is to keep prying and meddlesome attorneys from thrusting themselves into the business. You acted as confidential secretary as well as tutor, while you were domiciled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Grace Ferrall hotly, "before they begin to bully you. There was no earthly reason for you to talk to Stephen. No disinterested impulse moved you. It was a sheer perverse, sentimental restlessness—the delicate, meddlesome deviltry of your race. And if that poison is in you, it's well for ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... insisting on cash. No one insisted so loudly as the cousin with the red flower in her wig; and when the other cousins seemed about to weaken and accept the note, Red-Flower stood up and exhorted them to be firm, lest their flesh and blood be cheated under their noses. The meddlesome cousin was silenced at last, the contract was signed, the happiness of the engaged couple was pledged in wine, the guests dispersed. And all this while my mother had not opened her mouth, and my father had scarcely ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Persistent as the rumours of a divorce had been for seven years past, they seem to have emanated, not from the husband, but from jealous sisters-in-law, intriguing relatives, and officious Ministers. To the most meddlesome of these satellites, Fouche, who had ventured to suggest to Josephine the propriety of sacrificing herself for the good of the State, Napoleon had lately administered a severe rebuke. But now he caused Talleyrand and Caulaincourt to sound the Czar as to the feasibility of an alliance with one of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... "You careless, meddlesome young one, to take it off my steps where I left it just long enough to go round to the back and hunt up my door-key! You've given me a fit of sickness with my weak heart, and what business was it of yours? ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... The officers had been hand in glove with the lawless traders, but they did not want the matter bruited about by meddlesome Englishmen. They scowled. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... a good deal older than you and I am a friend—of many years—of your mother. There's nothing I like less than to be meddlesome, but I think these things give me a certain right—a sort of privilege. For the rest, my inquiry ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... had inspired apparently nothing more fruitful than distrust. I would like to emphasise that it was in no way from any desire to interfere in other people's affairs that young Bohun undertook these Quests. He had none of my own meddlesome quality. He had, I think, very little curiosity and no psychological self-satisfaction, but he had a kind heart, an adventurous spirit, and a hatred for the wrong and injustice which seemed just now to be creeping ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... Townsend; and on receiving this news the girl started with a sense of pain. She felt angry for the moment; it was almost the first time she had ever felt angry. It seemed to her that her aunt was meddlesome; and from this came a vague apprehension that she ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... peacocks, darning-needle, pen, and cooking-spoon, did not get off so easily; for the Professor was down on her with all manner of mirth-provoking accusations, criticisms, and insults even. He alluded to her domestic infelicity, her meddlesome disposition, sharp tongue, bad temper, and jealousy, closing, however, with a tribute to her skill in caring for the wounds and settling the quarrels of belligerent heroes, as well as her love for youths in Olympus and on earth. Gales of laughter greeted these hits, varied by hisses from some ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... same duties at Lyons, his native place. In winter he dwelt in the town, and the rest of the year was passed in the country in his paternal home, where his mother still lived, a respectable old woman, but meddlesome and overbearing in her household. Madame Roland, in all the flower of youth, beauty, and genius, thus found herself tormented and beset by a domineering mother-in-law, a rough brother-in-law, and an exacting husband. The most passionate love could scarcely have been proof against ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the treaty, maintained that hanging ought to be abolished, and the buffalo protected. On the whole, he accepted the conditions of the treaty, but, as his people were not present, he would not sign it, although he did sign it in the following year. Big Bear is a noisy, meddlesome savage, who is never in his glory save when he is the centre of some disturbance. He has always shown much delight in talking about war; and he would go without his meals to listen to a good story about fighting. He has the habit to, when the reciter of the story ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... my situation, father—some meddlesome fellow told my employer that I occasionally played a game of pool, and my tailor came to the store and dunned me; so old Boggs gave me a long lecture and my walking papers, and here ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... speak to me," he was saying to the picture, "you'd make me happy, I know. You'd tell me that you love me. You'd tell me that you hate that meddlesome old man Ellison. You've got it just as bad as I have, haven't ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... theft been accomplished than Villon shook himself, jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and extinguish the embers. Meanwhile Montigny opened the door and cautiously peered into the street. The coast was clear; there was no meddlesome patrol in sight. Still it was judged wiser to slip out severally; and as Villon was himself in a hurry to escape from the neighborhood of the dead Thevenin, and the rest were in a still greater hurry to get rid of him before he should discover ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... her heart. She sat on her tossed bed, the sickness of disappointment heavy over her. An hour ago wealth was in her hand, ease was before her, and the future was secure. Now all was torn down and scattered by an old yellow paper which prying, curious, meddlesome old Sol Greening had found. She bent her head upon her hand; ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... live-long night they were both in great perplexity as to the extraordinary goblins on board. Such inquisitive, meddlesome spirits, had never before been encountered. So cool and systematic; sagaciously stopping the vessel's headway the better torummage;—the very plan they themselves had adopted. But what most surprised them, was our striking a light, a thing of which no true ghost would be guilty. Then, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... carefully washed hands (for little hands will somehow get dirty, try sedulously though you and their owner may to prevent it), in the small tin, and it is placed in the oven with the other pies. It serves admirably at a doll's tea-party, and the meddlesome fingers have been kept busy, the restless mind contented, while the housewife's ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... for some years longer, hardly affords many more events. It was not without troubles. At times came friendly support; at others, opposition from the authorities—the committee at home were sometimes ignorantly meddlesome, sometimes sordid in their fits of economy; insufficiently tested fellow-labourers came out and failed; promising converts fell away; the climate was one steady unrelaxing foe, which took victims out of every family: but all these things ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... camp fire that night we discussed our adventures and made plans to prevent their recurrence. It was evident, for one thing, that we would have to moor our boats off shore in such a way that they would be out of reach of meddlesome persons, and yet could be drawn in toward shore by anyone who knew how. This was the way we did it. A pair of galvanized iron ring bolts were procured on Jack's next trip to Lamington for provisions, also a light rope about forty feet ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... January 29, 1864, aged 77 years," and that on the left these words "To the memory of Mrs. Fanny Jones, ob. January 27, 1864, aged 75 years." Mr. Jones was a former incumbent of St. Thomas's. He was a quiet, mild-minded man, devoid of bombast, neither cynical nor meddlesome, and was well liked by all. His wife died just two days before him, and both were interred in one grave in St. Peter's church yard. The pulpit and reading desk at St. Thomas's are good-looking and ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... in skyey dreams of good. How many good men, prosperous and contented, looked around and saw naught but good, while millions of their fellowmen were bartered and sold like cattle! No doubt, there were comfortable optimists who thought Wilberforce a meddlesome fanatic when he was working with might and main to free the slaves. I distrust the rash optimism in this country that cries, "Hurrah, we're all right! This is the greatest nation on earth," when there are grievances that call loudly for redress. That is false optimism. ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... that she was debating whether or not to speak some thought which she feared Del might regard as meddlesome. "When you finally do have to get out," she said presently, "it'll be like giving up your own home, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... sang, was markedly erotic towards the physician, careless in exposing herself and often obscene in her talk. Most of her productions were determined by the environment. She was therefore quite distractible, very alert; sometimes she was meddlesome, again irritable, irascible. The following illustrates her productions: "Send for my husband, S.—He had one sister as big as that. She likes candy.... My father is underneath and my mother is ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... in us that combats desire—urged him to close his ears to the voices, he cursed it for a meddlesome thing. Since Life had thrown down the gauntlet, he would take it up! If he had to travel the chambers of disgrace and discouragement, he would go on to the halls of sensual abandonment. Life had torn aside the curtain—it was for him to ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... young fisherman's back was getting very sore by this time, and he began to look about for the white side-streak which he had painted along the water-line of that new boat, to distract the meddlesome gaze of rivals from the peculiar curve below, which even Admiral Darling had not noticed, when he passed her on the beach; but Nelson would have spied it out in half a second, and known all about it in the other half. Dan knew ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... one's self is one kind of knowledge, but it admits of many shades of difference: and it is a common notion that the man [Sidenote:1142a] who knows and busies himself about his own concerns merely is the man of Practical Wisdom, while they who extend their solicitude to society at large are considered meddlesome. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... protectorate they found no aid. All their harsh mistress did was to turn loose upon them hordes of money-lenders and tax-farmers ('negotiatores,' and 'publicani'), who cleared off what was left by those stronger creatures of prey, the proconsuls. Thus the misery caused by a meddlesome and nerveless national policy was enhanced by a domestic administration based on ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... and through this accuser of what the city intended for those in this condition? Do not, members of the Boule, pass this vote. For why should I find you of such a disposition? 24. Because some one in a trial ever lost his property through me? But no one could prove that. Because I am meddlesome, and harsh and quarrelsome? But I do not chance to have such conditions of life for such actions. 25. But that I am violent and disorderly? But not even he would say that if he did not wish to lie about this as the other things. ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... that the conclusion reached by the English statesmen in 1874, was reached in Illinois in 1873; the conclusion that railroad companies ought to have the right to control their own affairs, fix their own rates of transportation, be free from meddlesome legislation, and, as has been said, work out their own destiny in their own way, just so long as they show a reasonable regard for the requirements ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... many a deprecatory "you know," and apologetic "I am sure I thought I was acting for the best," gave, considering her agitation, a tolerably accurate account of the whole interview. Her interlocutor saw plainly that she had acted from a sincere conscientiousness, and not from a meddlesome, mischievous interference; so he only thanked her for her kind interest, and suggested that he had now arrived at an age when it would, perhaps, be well for him to conduct matters, particularly of so delicate a nature, solely according to his own judgment, He ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... impression was burned with overpowering force into my mind that houses and furniture, scrubbed floors, white curtains, bright tins and brasses, were the great, awful, permanent facts of existence; and that men and women, and particularly children, were the meddlesome intruders upon this divine order, every trace of whose intermeddling must be scrubbed out and obliterated in the quickest way possible. It seemed evident to me that houses would be far more perfect if nobody lived in them ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... our relative standing was the same here as it had been at the school. I gradually overcame the prejudices of the students, and gained their good will, while he was always giving offence by his meddlesome disposition and overbearing manners: yet his talents and force of character always procured him a few followers, whom he managed as he pleased. Of their aid he made use to gratify his malevolence towards me, for this feeling had grown with his growth, and now seemed to be the ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... fashion some wings with which he might fly away. Feathers of different lengths were bound together with thread and wax, and shaped into arched pinions like those of a bird. As he worked, the boy Icarus stood by watching his father, and sometimes handling the feathers with his meddlesome fingers. ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... beguiling moment? Why should he not love me—kiss me? Why should we not be sad together, that we are not and can not be the real man and woman we would—that we are but the forms of a dream—the fleeting shadows of the night of Nature?—mourn together that the meddlesome hand of fate should have roused us to consciousness and aspiration so long before the maturity of our powers that we are but a laughter—no—a scorn and a weeping to ourselves? We could at least sympathize with each other in our common misery—bear with its weakness, comfort ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... with the disposition of the public lands were clearly exposed by one Robert Gourlay, a somewhat meddlesome Scotchman, who had addressed a circular, soon after his arrival in Canada, to a number of townships with regard to the causes which retarded improvement and the best means of developing the resources of the province. An answer from Sandwich virtually set forth ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... mayors (up their sleeves). A mayor is here today and gone tomorrow, whereas a permanent official is permanent. A mayor knows nothing about anything except his chain and the rules of debate, and he is, further, a tedious and meddlesome person—in the opinion ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... wearisome than the long line of alliances, triple and quadruple, the endless negotiations, the interminable congresses, the innumerable treaties, which make up the history of Europe during the earlier half of the eighteenth century; nor is it easy to follow with patience the meddlesome activity of English diplomacy during that period, its protests and interventions, its subsidies and guarantees, its intrigues and finessings, its bluster and its lies. But wearisome as it all is, it succeeded in its end, and its end was a noble one. Of the twenty-five ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... be—I don't say a word against that," replied the mother, somewhat surprised at the mildly reproachful nature of that response which her daughter had made, so different from her usual custom:—"he may be very good, but I think he's very meddlesome to come here talking about ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... and even rumors rising on the subject, Voltaire wrote once: "Give me a yard of ribbon, Sire [your ORDER OF MERIT, Sire], to silence those vile rumors!" Which Friedrich, on such free-and-easy terms, had silently declined. "A meddlesome, forward kind of fellow; always getting into scrapes and brabbles!" thinks Friedrich. But is really anxious, now that the chance offers again, to have such a Levite for his Priest, the evident pink of Human Intellect; and tries various incitements upon him;—hits at last (I know not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... other fellows at the club may chaff me all you choose. I'm going to marry her and that's all there is to it. I'm my own master, do you understand? I have no family—no inquisitive, meddlesome relatives, thank God! If this marriage is going to cost me what friends I have—all right—let them keep away! Such friends are not worth having, anyway. My mind is made up and you know me. Once I make up my mind, nothing can ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... Revised New Testament, that there are doubtless some few changes for the better, so obvious and so demanded beforehand by all educated opinion that to have neglected them would at once have stamped the revisers as blockheads and dunces; but that the set-off in the way of petty and meddlesome changes for the worse, neglect of really desirable improvements, bad English, failure in the very matter of pure scholarship just where it was least to be expected, and general departure from the terms of the Commission assigned to them (notably by their introduction of confusion instead of flexibility ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... Tanacharisson, Jeskakake, White Thunder, and the Hunter going with Washington. The latter understood very well that their object was to have an opportunity to win them over to the French. But Washington insisted upon their going with him, and rebuked Captain Joncaire for his meddlesome disposition. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... an idea that some part of the active, spreading and increasing influence of the New England people as they moved about the world, was from a meddlesome disposition to interfere with other people. There is nothing in that. If there ever was a race that confined itself strictly to minding its own business, it is the New Englanders; and they mind it, with great results. The solution of this apparent discord is ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... he was offered at home. And so he had to sell it in a rage at just that price, and he went home puzzled and fighting-mad. If, then, the Blue-grass people had handled with the firebrand corporate aggrandizement of toll-gate owners who were neighbors and friends, how would they treat meddlesome interference from strangers? Already one courteous emissary in one county had fled the people's wrath on a swift thoroughbred, and Burnham smiled sadly to ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... course of his extended career Mr. Wintermuth had been called upon to face many serious and unexpected crises. Conflagrations; rate wars; eruptions of idiotic and ruinous legislation adopted by state senates and assemblies composed of meddlesome agriculturalists, saloon keepers, impractical young lawyers, and intensely practical old politicians;—all these he had lived through not once, but often, and had always piloted the Guardian's bark to port in safety. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... time Odin, Loki, and Hoenir started on a journey. They had often traveled together before on all sorts of errands, for they had a great many things to look after, and more than once they had fallen into trouble through the prying, meddlesome, malicious spirit of Loki, who was never so happy as when he was doing wrong. When the gods went on a journey they traveled fast and hard, for they were strong, active spirits who loved nothing so much as hard work, hard blows, storm, peril, and struggle. There were no roads ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... shameless violations of the city ordinances and the state bird laws. In those days I never but once heard of a policeman on his own initiative arresting a birdshooter, even on Sunday; but whenever meddlesome special wardens from the Zoological Park have pointedly called upon the local police force for help, it has always been given with cheerful alacrity. In the fall of 1912 an appeal to the Police Commissioner resulted in a general order to stop all hunting and shooting in the Borough of the Bronx, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... been peculiarly meddlesome, putting chairs straight, moving vases, altering the lie of table-cloths and the angle of sofas, opening windows because it was 'so stuffy,' and closing them a minute later with complaints about the draught, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Blondet!" cried Bixiou, "thou hast set thy finger on the weak spot. Meddlesome taxation has lost us more victories here in France than the vexatious chances of war. I once spent seven years in the hulks of a government department, chained with bourgeois to my bench. There was a clerk in the office, a man with a head on his shoulders; he had set his mind upon making a sweeping ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... freedom of action in such a government as ours, any form of communism is an iniquitous and meddlesome despotism. ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... it seems meddlesome," said Sir Julius, tugging at his white moustache, "but we're fond of Auriol. I've been much more of a father to her than that damned old ass Mountshire"—Evadne, again; though for once in her life ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... forgive me if I seem to you impertinent, meddlesome. I know quite well that this is no business of mine, but—but I know Mrs. Carstairs, and I know she has been made bitterly unhappy by this wretched misunderstanding. And I am sure, as sure as I am that you and I sit here to-day, that she never wrote one word of all those beastly letters—why, ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... replied, with a laugh, "if you really want to know, I understand that every eighth of a mile is marked with a single small white rag; each quarter has a blue one; while the mile shows a plain red one. I hope some meddlesome fellow doesn't go to changing the signals on Brad, and make him think he's doing a record stunt. But I believe he's got some other secret sign of his own to ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Franklin had just discovered and was making so much talk about, and was so recklessly tinkering with in Philadelphia at that very time. The doctor had strongly disapproved of Franklin's reprehensible and meddlesome boldness, but he felt that it was best, nevertheless, to write and obtain the philosopher's advice as to the feasibility, advisability, and the best convenience of having one of the new lightning-rods rigged upon his medical back, and running thence up through his ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... herself being deputy to the lovely, meddlesome, and arrogant Countess of Chell that had ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... puttin' in your meddlesome oar?" the Deacon said, turning to Waitstill. "The girl would never 'a' been there if you'd attended to your business. She's nothin' but a fool of a young filly, an' you're an old cart-horse. It was your ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... word of it!" Dolly stood up and angrily grasped the bell-handle. "It's not true. It's a meddlesome lie. They are jealous. People are always like that—it makes them furious to see another person prosper. They are ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... brought by Caleb Huse, purchasing agent of the Confederacy, caused a further sale of "cotton warrants[1056]." Spence, fearing he was about to be shelved, became vexed and made protest to Mason, while Slidell regarded Spence[1057] as a weak and meddlesome agent[1058]. But on February 14, 1863, Erlanger's agents returned to Paris and uncertainty was at an end. Spence went to Paris, saw Erlanger, and agreed to co-operate in floating the loan[1059]. Then followed a remarkable bond market operation, interesting, not so much as ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... us, Christopher Quarles had his weaknesses. Whenever he failed to elucidate a mystery he was always able to show that the fault was not his, but somebody else's; either too long a time had elapsed before he was consulted, or some meddlesome fool had touched things and confused the evidence, or even that something supernatural had been at work. Once, at least, according to the professor, I had played the part of meddlesome fool, and one ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... exclaimed, hurriedly; "I want no meddlesome quack near me, with his solemn face and pretended knowledge. There is not a doctor in Ballarat that I would trust with my life. Besides, they are so expensive, and where is the money to come from to pay a ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... believe in an unnatural god who apparently must be ever ready to answer anybody's prayerful cry and act as a general servant to humanity by distributing good things to those who beg for them; a sort of meddlesome god who enters into all the petty quarrels of hunan beings and generally settles them ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... here all alone?" she asked in French. She never used a word of Marquesan to me. I replied that I was trying to imagine myself there fifty years earlier, when the meddlesome white sang very low in the concert of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... incredulous. Besides, can a miracle be proved? No, you must believe in it! When God is pleased to intervene, it is not for man to try to understand. In the ages of real belief, Science did not make any meddlesome attempt to explain the nature of the Divinity. And why should it come and interfere here? By doing so, it simply hampered faith and diminished its own prestige. No, no, there must be no Science, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... meddlesome fellow," said Jasper, in a tone of vexation. "He tried to persuade him not to ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... inclined to evade the small complications of existence. This trait of his character was composed of a little indolence, some disdain, and a shrinking from contests with certain forms of vulgarity—like a man who would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid a toad. His intercourse with the meddlesome journalist was that merely outward intimacy without sympathy some young men get drawn into easily. It had amused him rather to keep that "friend" in the dark about the fate of his assistant. Renouard had never needed other company than his own, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... was she there for if not to look after the child of her ungrateful, selfish daughter who had not the slightest feeling of— But, all this time, Madame Rousseau was informing her mother that she was a meddlesome, stupid old blunderer, and that the fat was in the fire. She snatched the baby from the old lady's arms. The bottle crashed to the tile floor and painted a section of it white, its pristine hue. The infant was too surprised to cry. It maintained an open-mouthed silence even ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... proceedings against Mr. Gourlay under the Alien Act, his conduct had furnished a pretext to those in authority for striking a heavy blow against freedom of speech and action. The holding of conventions, whereat meddlesome persons of the Gourlay stamp might air their grievances and agitate for investigations into public abuses, was a thing not to be tolerated in Upper Canada. Upon the assembling of the Legislature at York, in October, 1818, the Lieutenant-Governor, in his ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... two lads may grow up to be friends, and kill the old feud. They cannot help respecting each other after such an encounter as that. I'll try and get hold of young Darley, and then of Mark; and perhaps I may be able to—Bah! you weak-minded, meddlesome old driveller!" he cried impetuously. "You would muddle, and spoil all, when perhaps a Higher Hand is at work, as it always is, to make everything tend toward ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... that approached him, was the only one who dared to tell him the truth. The truth? No, it was a lie, a lie; he was not dying, he was going to be well and strong again as soon as he could shake this cold that had settled upon him. Nancy was a meddlesome old woman. He had told her so not more than an hour ago and had sent her off about her business. He had been harsh to her and rude, and after all she was old and had probably meant to do him a kindness. But, then, he was not sorry; she'd not come bothering him any ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... was a very foolish, meddlesome ass, who fancied that I ought to do my duty once in a way by my neighbours. Now, I have only to say, that if you will but forgive and forget, and let bygones be bygones, I promise you solemnly I'll never do my duty by you again as long as I live, nor ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... crisis, I found, but he was better again by the time I got to him. Then he improved a little, and seemed to be convalescing. Then malaria chose to interfere with the running of her sister fever's course. This seemed extraordinarily meddlesome, and made things hazardous still, though they were as well as one expected, when the time of my ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... harness; up in arms; on one's legs, at call; up and doing, up and stirring. busy, occupied; hard at work, hard at it; up to one's ears in, full of business, busy as a bee, busy as a one-armed paperhanger. meddling &c v.; meddlesome, pushing, officious, overofficious^, intrigant^. astir, stirring; agoing^, afoot; on foot; in full swing; eventful; on the alert, &c (vigilant) 459. Adv. actively &c adj.; with life and spirit, with might and main &c 686, with haste &c 684, with wings; full tilt, in mediis rebus [Lat.]. Int. be ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have received the enclosure from Linda Lady Blanchemain. She is an exceedingly impertinent and meddlesome old woman. But she is right about the allowance. I don't know why I never thought of it myself. I don't know why you never suggested it. I extremely regret it. As next in succession, you are certainly entitled to an annuity from the estate. I have to-day remitted L500 ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... evening was a success at every angle from which Peter chose to view it. And he made his way back to the Cabin through the deep forest along the path that Beth had worn, the path to his heart past all the fictitious barriers that custom had built about him. The meddlesome world was not. Here was the novaya jezn that his people had craved and shouted for. He had found it. New life—happiness—with a mate ... his woman—soon to be his wife—whether Beth Nichols or ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... "You little meddlesome dunce!" said Jacob, all in a blaze of anger, "I'll teach you to mind your own business, and let other people's quarrels alone." And, suiting his action to his words, he struck Mike in the face so hard that the blood ran from his ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... will not think me meddlesome or impertinent. I have the matter very much at heart. It seems to lie in my path. I must see it. Surely you perceive some way of averting ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... were made during the Tudor and early Stuart periods to organise all the Inns of Court and Chancery into a University of Law. Those attempts failed; chiefly through the lack of wisdom displayed in issuing arbitrary and meddlesome Orders in Council, instead of allowing unification to mature on those natural and voluntary lines which had already been ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... seven-and-a-half dollars. In his rage at the price he exclaimed: "As a public man I have given twenty of the best years of my life to bringing about a friendly understanding between capital and labor. I have succeeded, and may God have mercy on my meddlesome soul!" ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... be raised. A confident man with a blood-shot voice and a gift for repartee is sure to make a success of politics, especially if he is not too particular. This did not matter once, perhaps, when politics merely afforded excitement for taverns and a career for the avid and meddlesome. The country was prosperous, and so it was difficult to do it ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... in Mr. Denner's dark library, filled with remorse and unabated rage as well, he began to realize that he had been meddlesome; and he was stung with a sudden sense that it was not honorable to have pushed his questions upon Forsythe. Gifford's relentless justice overtook him. Had he not given Forsythe the right to insult him? Would not he have protected himself against any man's prying? ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... pardon for being meddlesome,' continued Percy, 'I thought I saw a way of being even with that scoundrel. Your papers had got into my pocket, and, as I had nothing else to do, I looked them over after parting with you, and saw a way out of the difficulty. I ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the habit of making on a certain young lady, did not expect him—that is, Holmes—to notice anything beyond the limits of his work, or to recognize in any way his employer's secret intentions. But fortunately for us, this man Holmes is just one of those singularly meddlesome people whose curiosity grows with every attempt at repression; and when, coincident with that disastrous happening at the museum, all these loverlike attentions ceased and no calls were made and no presents sent, and gloom instead ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... gasp. The worst evidence came from Lancashire, Cheshire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, East Scotland, and South Wales. In these districts juvenile labour was cheap and plentiful; and this was an irresistible argument for its employment, though the miners themselves disliked it. The meddlesome restrictions on the factories were a contributory cause. Parents, it was said in Lancashire, were pushing their children into colliery employment at an earlier age because of the legal restrictions upon sending ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... in the fields, bird-nesting and botanizing, and had like to have been taken up as a poacher in Hilly Wood, by a meddlesome, conceited gamekeeper belonging to Sir John Trollope. He swore that he had seen me in the act, more than once, of shooting game, when I never shot even so much as a sparrow in my life. What terrifying rascals these woodkeepers and gamekeepers are! They make a prison ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... suits me, and whenever we think we can do a community a good turn we always go ahead and do it. Outlaws don't like me, and I don't like outlaws. It is the same with my partners. Some might call us a little meddlesome sometimes, but it is a way we have got, and we simply can't help it. Are you going back through the ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... strong prejudice against the institution of "elders," which he only knew of by hearsay and believed to be a pernicious innovation. Before he had been long at the monastery, he had detected the secret murmurings of some shallow brothers who disliked the institution. He was, besides, a meddlesome, inquisitive man, who poked his nose into everything. This was why the news of the fresh "miracle" performed by Father Zossima reduced him to extreme perplexity. Alyosha remembered afterwards how their inquisitive guest from Obdorsk had been continually flitting to and fro from one group ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... interrupting our talk, and looking at me, I thought, with a little air of bravado. He must think me indeed a tiresome, meddlesome bore; and upon my word, turning it all over, I wonder at his docility. After all, he's five-and-twenty—and yet I must add, it does irritate me—the way he sticks! He was followed in a moment by two or three of the regular Italians, and ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... sleeping next, and taxing me for ivery snore a give. They've been after t' winders, and after t' vittle, and after t' very saut to 't; it's dearer by hauf an' more nor it were when a were a boy: they're a meddlesome set o' folks, law-makers is, an' a'll niver believe King George has ought t' do wi' 't. But mark my words; I were wed wi' brass buttons, and brass buttons a'll wear to my death, an' if they moither me about it, a'll wear ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... only a day, Charles, I am sure that I could bring him back to me. There has been some other influence here, that meddlesome Jesuit or the pompous Bossuet, perhaps. Only one day to counteract their wiles! Can I not see them waving hell-fire before his foolish eyes, as one swings a torch before a bull to turn it? Oh, if I could but baulk them to-night! That woman! that cursed woman! The foul viper which I nursed ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the midnight hour; and then they were so overjoyed at what appeared a new lease of life, that sleep, that "sweet restorer," was a stranger during the night. In the morning, however, a gloom was again cast over the spirits of some of the most superstitious by the remark of a meddlesome old West India captain, that undoubtedly Cochran, like the seers of olden times, made his calculations according to the "old style" of computing time. Thus twelve additional days were allowed to pass before they ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... you'll be very sorry you went to Bosting," remarked Winnie, in an oracular manner, that night, when they were all together in their old places in the sitting-room. "The Meddlesome Quinine Club had a concert here last Wednesday, and we had preserved seats. What ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... So called from their habit of going entirely naked. One of them is said by Arrian to have said to Alexander. "You are a man like all of us, Alexander—except that you abandon your home like a meddlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions; enduring hardships yourself, and inflicting hardships on ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... like brothers and sisters for telling one home-truths. I suppose it is the penalty of having been a regular Paul Pry in my childhood, in spite of poor Eleanor making me learn "Meddlesome Matty" as soon as I could speak. I always do and always shall have ringing in ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most of the troops from Winchester, to strengthen Fort Cumberland, which was now to become headquarters; thus weakening the most important points and places, to concentrate a force where it was not wanted, and would be out of the way in most cases of alarm. By these meddlesome moves, made by Governor Dinwiddie from a distance, without knowing any thing of the game, all previous arrangements were reversed, every thing was thrown into confusion, and enormous losses ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... stubby nose. His ears rose and fell easily, without undue haste or excitement when the sound of horses' hoofs put him on his guard, or a goat wandered too near. Yet one could see that he was not a meddlesome dog, nor a snarler, no running out and giving tongue at each passing object, not that kind of a dog at all! He was just a plain, substantial, well-mannered, dignified, self-respecting St. Bernard dog, who knew his place and kept it, ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Briggs's interference. She was not one of the form-mistresses, but taught certain subjects throughout the school, and had passed very high examinations; and, in her zeal for the well-being of the school and its pupils, she was apt to be meddlesome, as she was this morning, when, having nothing to do, she was walking about the corridors, and met Vava hurrying in late. Vava went by her orders to the head-mistress's room, but found it empty. As she was coming away she met Miss Briggs, and thought ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... perceived this," she went on—"out of the abundance of one's affection and one's sympathy." It all blessedly came back to her—when it wasn't all, for the fiftieth time, obscured, in face of the present facts, by anxiety and compunction. "One was no doubt a meddlesome fool; one always IS, to think one sees people's lives for them better than they see them for themselves. But one's excuse here," she insisted, "was that these people clearly DIDN'T see them for themselves—didn't see them at all. It struck one for ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... excuse of duty!" said Zenobia, in a whisper so full of scorn that it penetrated me like the hiss of a serpent. "I have often heard it before, from those who sought to interfere with me, and I know precisely what it signifies. Bigotry; self-conceit; an insolent curiosity; a meddlesome temper; a cold-blooded criticism, founded on a shallow interpretation of half-perceptions; a monstrous scepticism in regard to any conscience or any wisdom, except one's own; a most irreverent propensity to thrust Providence aside, and substitute one's self in its awful place,—out of these, and ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with him. It didn't really matter, of course; he didn't suppose Mrs. Leadbatter could exercise any control over Mary Ann, but it was horrible to be discussed by her and Rosie; and then there was that meddlesome vicar, who might step ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... possible to his sainted person. I left him an hour ago after we had left Deeping, for I came on here to see if you could receive him, not according to his rank, but as a plain guest, with the name of Thomas Williams; for there are those about who might be meddlesome, and His Majesty can only tarry for two or three days, waiting for a message from the Scots generals, to be brought by a trusty hand. I had feared that His Majesty would have overtaken me, for my horse cast a shoe, and came limping along for a mile or more, till at ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... strike, there were persons who thereupon thought that it was in my power, and was my duty, to settle all other strikes, so after the peace of Portsmouth there were other persons—not only Americans, by the way,—who thought it my duty forthwith to make myself a kind of international Meddlesome Mattie and interfere for peace and justice promiscuously over the world. Others, with a delightful non-sequitur, jumped to the conclusion that inasmuch as I had helped to bring about a beneficent and necessary peace I must of necessity have changed ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... talks there occurred a singular contact of minds. It was very well for me to spin sonorous generalities, but I had never till now dreamed of being so vulgar as to translate them into practice. I had always detested the meddlesome alarmist, who veils ignorance under noisiness, and for ever wails his chant of lugubrious pessimism. To be thrown with Davies was to receive a shock of enlightenment; for here, at least, was a specimen of the breed who exacted respect. It is true he made use of the usual jargon, interlarding ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... not mind all this. She pressed on, and they gave way for her a little as she approached the table. Three constables stood around it to guard the dead body from the touch of meddlesome hands. On seeing Lady Vincent with the air of one having authority, the constable that guarded the head of the table guessed at her rank, and officiously turned down the white sheet that covered the dead ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... it is well that you have brought me the promise, for had you not you would never have seen me again. I thank you for the promise and for the ring. No one shall see it. Of that you may be doubly sure. If by any chance some meddlesome body should see it and tell this arrogant lady of the castle that I have the keepsake she sent you, there would be trouble, Max, there would be trouble. She is a jealous, vindictive little wretch and you shall not think on her. No doubt she would have me torn limb from limb if she knew I possessed ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Hetty's were gloomy. They said, he was marrying her for her money; that Hetty was too old, and too independent in all her ways, to be married at all; that they would be sure to fall out quickly; and a hundred other things equally meddlesome and silly. But nobody so disapproved of the match that he stayed away from the wedding, which was the largest and the gayest wedding Welbury had ever seen. It went sorely against the grain with Hetty to invite Mrs. Deacon Little, but Sally entreated for it ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... nonsense; but never mind, he's worth waiting for, with his fine house and immense wealth; I shan't care so much about Uncle Nat's money then, though goodness knows I don't want him turning up here some day and exposing me, as I dare say the meddlesome old ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... life. His mother figures largely in these volumes (she survived her glorious son), and from the scattered reflection of her idiosyncrasies the attentive reader constructs a sufficiently vivid portrait. She was the old middle-class Frenchwoman whom he has so often seen—devoted, active, meddlesome, parsimonious, exacting veneration, and expending zeal. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... was my fault," Jack said, contritely. "I should not have tempted you to go on that unlucky trip last Tuesday. So you were seen near Richmond station by some meddlesome individual—probably when you got out of the trap! But it may turn out for the best; your father could not have been kept in ignorance ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... some fancied slight to his honour or disregard of his affections and suddenly "amok"? The wise adviser would be the first victim, no doubt, and death would be his reward. And underlying the horror of this situation there was the danger of those meddlesome fools, the white men. A vision of comfortless exile in far-off Madura rose up before Babalatchi. Wouldn't that be worse than death itself? And there was that half-white woman with threatening eyes. ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... in which she had met with such encouragement at home. Whatever she saw or heard in one place, she would be sure to report it in another; so that all the masters and misses who had the mortification to fall into her company, considered themselves as under the malicious inspection of a meddlesome spy; which they had the more reason to do, because she seldom failed to embellish her informations with the recital of several unfavourable circumstances of her own invention." "Indeed, Mr. Wiseman, said Betsey, my youngest daughter, what you have told us is exactly true; for I have been in company ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... was worse'n a flea. He'd start out on the bass, and first thing you knew he'd be singin' tenor with Sam Crawford; and by the time Sam was good and mad, he'd be off onto the alto or the soprano. He was one o' these meddlesome old creeturs that thinks the world never moved till they got into it, and they've got to help everybody out with whatever they happen to be doin'. You've heard o' children bein' born kickin'. Well, Uncle Jim must 'a' been born singin'. I've seen people that said they didn't like the idea ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... that of the English sparrow, who made such a noisy disturbance that the bailiff had to call for silence. All witnesses asserted that the bird was a foreigner and did not belong in this country. They further testified that the sparrow was a meddlesome, gossiping neighbor, always fighting the other birds and driving them away. The sparrow looked around, but not a single friend could he find. The court decided that he should be driven out and made the lawful prey of every one. He cautioned all present, however, always to be very careful to distinguish ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... town, at times cheerful enough; at others obstinately morose. But he did not drink. Whatever the differences between us, he evidently thought seriously enough of his word to me to make that promise worth keeping. I know he believed me to be meddlesome and with good reason (if he had known all), but he would not let me leave the Manor. I was a habit with him, a bad habit if you like, but it seemed a necessary one. Nevertheless in spite of the apparently pleasant nature of our relations, there was a coolness between ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... this undertaking," I heard Mr. Bainrothe say; "her own moody and excitable condition of late—the absence of her physician (meddlesome people, those conscientious medical men sometimes prove, even when not asked for an opinion!)—Mrs. Austin's testimony as to those lethargies, which would be conclusive of itself—our own disinterestedness, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... for her in the porchway. . . . For a burden had fallen from his heart: his little mistake, just now, weighed as nothing against the assurance that Dr Mant would write a certificate and settle these meddlesome idiots at the Troy Custom-house. . . . Moreover Dr Mant, who passed for a knowledgeable fellow in his profession, had as good as assured him that his leg was nothing to die of; not just yet anyway. Well, he would have it attended to, sometime; his ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... He is very meddlesome. He is always telling mamma what ought to be expected from a young lady like me, and getting her to annoy me about lessons and other things; at least, I think so. I know he thinks me quite childish; and sometimes he interferes between Clement and me. What do you think he had the impertinence ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... where, under the magic of their industry, the beautiful village of New Harmony arose in one year, and where many of their sturdy buildings still remain a testimony to their honest craftsmanship. Unfortunately, however, two pests appeared which they had not foreseen. Harassed by malaria and meddlesome neighbors, Father Rapp a third time sought a new Canaan. In 1825 he sold the entire site to Robert Owen, the British philanthropic socialist, and the Harmonists moved back to Pennsylvania. They built their third and last home on the Ohio, about twenty miles from ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... people are in this world, in that she had the ability to see herself as others saw her. At the present moment the vision was anything but pleasing or gratifying. Miss North's argument, clear and logical, spoke straight to her conscience. She realized all at once that she had been meddlesome and officious, and she ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Italian or English or Chinese, whom a man is supposed to respect. Who are they? God knows. Nine-tenths of them are in a place where they have no business to be: so much is certain. And what are they doing, these swarms of parasites? Justifying their salaries by inventing fresh regulations and meddlesome bye-laws, and making themselves objectionable all round. Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty, even as the first military duty is said to be the reverse of it. We catch ourselves talking ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... to arrest us as rogues and vagabonds," Kosinski explained to me as we made our way towards a neighbouring coffee-shop for breakfast. "A pretty fix that would have been just now! We had scarcely settled down for a quiet sleep on the box when the meddlesome fool came up and asked our names and addresses, what we had there, what we were doing at that hour, and threatened to take us in charge unless we moved on. When I explained that we were simply waiting for our train he laughed, and said that was a likely tale! If you had not ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... preference to the elder son; he repeated the act in 796, as has already been explained in Chapter XX., when a few other instances were cited to illustrate the general rule in China. At this time the waning power of the emperors still evidently flickered. In 608, through the meddlesome political interference of Ts'i, a concubine's son succeeded to the Lu throne in preference to the legitimate wife's son; curiously enough, the legitimate wife was a Ts'i princess. The result of this irregularity ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... to avoid the risk of giving or of receiving serious affront, would be to push that whim of his into more than wonted exaggeration. Thus he could more decidedly and briefly come to the point; and should he, in doing so, appear too meddlesome, rather provoke a laugh than a frown-retiring from the ground with the honours due to a humorist. Accordingly, in his deepest nasal intonation, and withdrawing his eyes ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... admitted the fact openly and pleasantly—took off his hat to Judith and said he guessed he'd be going. And the men with whom he had been talking, including all of the milkers and all of the other workmen upon whom Nelson could get his meddlesome hands at short notice, all men whom Trevors had placed here, made known in hesitant speech or awkward silence that they were going with Nelson. There were good jobs open with the lumber company, it seemed. Nelson even expressed the hope that the quitting ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... its fate by preferring monasticism to education; and never during the Spanish War did he or his government, to my knowledge, show the slightest leaning toward our enemies. Certain it is that when sundry hysterical publicists and meddlesome statesmen of the Continent proposed measures against what they thought the dangerous encroachments of our Republic, he quietly, but resolutely and effectually, put his foot ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the commentators which would be discreditable in a third-form schoolboy. To substantiate that assertion, and rescue the disputed word "Britaine" henceforth for ever from the rash tampering of the meddlesome sciolist, I beg to advertise the ingenuous ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... upon the unborn generation, whose parents had not then entered the matrimonial state. Whatever other purpose it subserved, except to show to other communities the "latest novelty" from California, is the unfathomable conundrum. John Crowe was a noisy, blatant, meddlesome fellow, the keeper of a livery stable on Kearny street, and a fierce denouncer of the Committee. There was nothing else to his discredit, so far as I could learn at the time. Reub. Maloney was a compound character—a good deal of a knave, something of ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... don't know Sarah's temper, or you would wonder no more. I tried it when I came to Croydon, and we kept on until about two months ago, when we had to part. I don't want to say a word against my own sister, but she was always meddlesome and hard to please, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... for a simple yet difficult problem—to do as little harm to the place as possible, and to appease Portlaw at the same time, and curb his meddlesome and iconoclastic proclivities. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... humbly and simply why he had not felt like talking this noon, and of the fact that he could not really afford to pay five dollars a week for a maid. It was very strange, but after he had begun, it was not at all hard to go on. He wondered vaguely how he could have thought the postmaster a meddlesome, malicious, vulgar young man; he seemed very sensible ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... born in a day. A baby is always six months old before he is twenty-one. Our fathers, who first reasoned that God made all men equal, said: "You sha'n't hang a man until you have asked him if he consents to the law." Some meddlesome fanatic, engaged in setting up type, conceived the idea, that he need not pay his tax till he was represented before the law: then why should woman do so? Now, I ask, what possible reason is there that woman, as a mother, as a wife, as a laborer, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... up to the 'Blade' office and has put an advertisement in," muttered Dexter. "Now, she's talking to those two meddlesome boys. About me, I wonder? Blazes! There she is, turning about again. I wonder if she's going back to ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... character of Englishmen. Reform and develop it if you will; bring in modern knowledge to work upon it; change, expand, without breaking it; appeal to the sense of property, while enormously diffusing property; help the peasant without slaying the landlord; in other words, put aside rash, meddlesome revolution, and set yourselves to build on the ancient foundations of our country what may yet serve the new time! Then you will have an English, a national policy. It happens to be the Tory policy. Every principle ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in it. The writer observes:—'It must not be inferred when such remarks are absent from the reports that nothing is done. I have great difficulty sometimes in overcoming the feeling that my questions on these points are a meddlesome interference in private matters.' Bearing that remark in mind, I say here are instances which I am sure reflect as much credit on the individuals as on the interest they represent and the county to which they belong. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... duskened features, dark, piercing eyes, and penthouse brows, but the long and pendulous Chinaman moustaches had shrunk till they scarcely covered his mouth. The "devil's jaw" could boast only a small tuft of hair. There were wrinkles in "the angel's forehead." If meddlesome Time had also furrowed his cheeks, nevertheless the most conspicuous mark there was still the scar of that great gash received in the ding-dong fight at Berbera. His hair, which should have been grizzled, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... failed. All sects and parties sought ascendency rather than the public good; angry and inexperienced, they refused to compromise. Sectarianism was the true hydra that baffled the energy of the courageous combatant. Parliaments were factious, meddlesome, and inexperienced, and sought to block the wheels of government rather than promote wholesome legislation. The people hankered for their old pleasures, and were impatient of restraint; their leaders were demagogues ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... right," said the old woman, patting his arm, "if you don't get to cuttin' up agin, and havin' folks shooting at you. Son told me about you, sir, while you was layin' senseless on the floor. Don't you take it as meddlesome fer an old woman with a son as big as you to talk about it. And you mustn't hold no grudge ag'in' my son for havin' to shoot at ye. A officer has got to take up for the law—it's his duty—and them that acts bad and lives wrong has to suffer. Don't blame my son any, sir—'tain't his fault. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... my meddlesome chatter and forget my advice. It is very silly in me to undertake to tell you what to do. When you are embarrassed, do as you think best, and you will do very well. When you are in a difficulty, judge ...
— The American • Henry James
... greatest happiness of the greatest number, comfortable domestic axioms, little schemes for the elevation of the masses by the classes, had, on their logical basis, no attraction for this sceptical, wayward girl. To be merely useful was, in her eyes, to make oneself meddlesome and absurd. The object of existence was to be heroic or nothing. She could imagine herself a Poor Clare: she could not imagine herself as a great young lady dividing her hours judiciously between district visiting and the ball-room, between the conquest ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... twice preferred to him modest and meritorious Grecian citizens, at length reminds him that his vast wealth and power are of a tenure too precarious to serve as an evidence of happiness; that the gods are jealous and meddlesome, and often make the show of happiness a mere prelude to extreme disaster; and that no man's life can be called happy until the whole of it has been played out, so that it may be seen to be out of the reach of reverses. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... first envoy sent to represent the wild and revolutionary republic of France,—the republic of Robespierre and the Jacobins. He represented, as well as any man could, the ideas and purposes of those who had wrought such havoc in France. He was meddlesome, wrong-headed, unreasonable, and bold with it all. He sailed from France in a ship which he commanded himself; and instead of going straight to Philadelphia (then the seat of government), where his business ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... is going to leave us," announced Trotter, with a smile. "He goes north to-night. Here is the slip of paper, my boy, that will take you past any meddlesome inquiry. But it is good only until midnight, so I advise you to be sure ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... of me yet," he said. "As for you, Squire Thorndyke, I shall not forget your meddlesome interference, and some day, maybe, you ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty |
