"Meddling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and honest to realize it," said Mrs. Ferrall suavely; "and in doing so you insure your own safety. Sylvia dear, I wish I hadn't meddled; I'm meddling some more I suppose when I say to you, don't give Howard his conge for the present. It is a horridly common thing to dwell upon, but Howard is too materially important to be cut adrift on ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... taken a professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to think of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety, filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth century, was of a different type. By temper he was strongly conservative. He always loved best to be among his own family; he was fond of his home, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... engineer, were no visionary spirits; they pleaded for a serious consideration of the general welfare, and especially the welfare of the agricultural class, the wealth-producers of the community. To violate economic laws, Boisguillebert declared, is to violate nature; let governments restrain their meddling, and permit natural forces to ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... foully stain'd with inward wickedness. I kept her bravely, and I lov'd her dear; But that dear love did cost my life and all. To reckon up a thousand of her pranks, Her pride, her wasteful spending, her unkindness, Her false dissembling, seeming sanctity, Her scolding, pouting, prating, meddling, And twenty hundred more of the same stamp, Were but to heap[428] an endless catalogue Of what the world is plagu'd with every day. But for the main of that I have to tell, It chanced thus—Late in a rainy night, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... of matter worthy their observation, especially of facts in which they themselves had so large a share. We only relate such things as could not possibly escape our knowledge, and what we actually know to be true. We don't set up for naturalists and men of great learning, therefore have avoided meddling with things above ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... weak points and our strong ones. I'm no polemic, I!—I prefer meddling with things that will not bring me into trouble. There was a ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... working away at a mowing-machine as it is? Better own up that you can't get on without your old craft, after all—that you must for ever be messing and meddling with steel and ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... I'm as happy as happy can be." If the little brown thrush keeps singing that song the heart of everyone who hears it will overflow with joy. But it would be easy, very easy indeed, to stop the joyous song of the thrush by meddling with the five pretty eggs, and when the thrush changed his happy song to harsh notes of fear and reproach, the light of joy would fade from our day as quickly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... say, I rather bar meddling with politics, especially the white-hot explosive politics that ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... the room and found Terence hastily laying the fiddle down where he had found it. "Ah, can't I leave you alone a minute," said Peter, "but you must be meddling with things that don't belong to you? What'll I do now if you've ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... needs must have strong walls to keep out all comers from over seas. And we have an ill neighbour or two, who would fain share in our booty. However, men know in Sweden, and Finmark, and Norway also, that it is ill meddling with Jarl Ingvar and ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... an allusion was made to the family at Manor Cross, and had almost worshipped him when he would come to her on Sunday. And now he was going off to London without saying a word to her of the journey. "I don't believe that Toff knows anything about it," she said. "Toff is a nasty, meddling creature, and I wish she had not come here at all." The management of the Marchioness under these circumstances was very difficult, but Lady Sarah was a woman who allowed no difficulty to crush her. She did not ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... done this when the witch called her daughter and bade her lift the pot off the fire and put the stew into a dish, as it had been cooking quite long enough and she was hungry. But no sooner had she tasted it than she put her spoon down, and declared that her daughter must have been meddling with it, for it was impossible to eat anything that was ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... issued. It served to notify these commanders that the army must attack the enemy, and it advised the country of the earnestness of the President to vigorously prosecute the war, and thus aided enlistments, inspired confidence, and warned meddling nations ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... that proud hierarchy by which they had been so heavily oppressed, that, in England, and in the seventeenth century, it was not in the power of the civil magistrate to drill the minds of men into conformity with his own system of theology. They proved, however, as intolerant and as meddling as ever Laud had been. They interdicted under heavy penalties the use of the Book of Common Prayer, not only in churches, but even in private houses. It was a crime in a child to read by the bedside ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... feeling that his son-in-law was responsible for his present disgrace, and began to behave more harshly toward him. [Sidenote:—3—] For these reasons Antoninus became both disgusted with his wife (who was a most shameless creature), and offended at her father himself, because the latter kept meddling in all his undertakings and rebuking him for everything that he did. Conceiving a desire to be rid of the man in some way or other he accordingly had Euodus, his nurse, persuade a certain centurion, Saturninus, and two others of similar rank to bring him word that Plautianus had ordered some ten ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... gone on with their nest-building and brood-rearing, undisturbed by human spectators. I wondered whether many of the visitors noticed the birds, and whether any one but myself had discovered their nest. Indeed, their little ones were safe enough from human meddling, for one could not see the nest without wading up the stream into the sphere of the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... bowed thy neck to imperial pride and priestly craft, thou who has suffered sorely even to this hour, from Nero down to Pio Nono, the days of thine oppression are over. Gone from thy enfranchised ways for ever is the clang of the praetorian cohorts and the more odious drone of meddling monks!" And yet, as Mackinnon observed, there still stood the dirty friars and the small French soldiers, and there still toiled the slow priests, wending their tedious way up to the church of the Ara Coeli. But that was ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... of Chaldicotes used to say, and the archdeacon had heard him say it a score of times, and had learned the lesson. But now his heart was not with the foxes,—and especially not with the foxes on behalf of his son Henry. "I can't have any meddling with Mr Thorne," he said; "I can't; and ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... do you come meddling here, and carrying off boys from their lawful guardeens, and talking folderol, and raising Ned generally? I've seen skippers before, but I never heered of no such actions as these, never in my days! Why, no one here so much as knows your name; and here you seem to own the hull village, ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... not in a position to judge, and I don't think I want to be. I have no real liking for meddling in other people's affairs." ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... ended by saying that the Governor's answer would be a guide to him in his political correspondence with the government he represented. In consequence of this letter, M. Theron and the French consul at Richmond, who had also been meddling with Texan affairs, were ordered to leave the Confederate States. The object evidently was to set up an independent republic between the new empire in Mexico and whichever power, Union or Confederacy, should triumph in the ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave-trade. In every proposed extension of the powers of Congress, that State has expressly and watchfully excepted that of meddling with the importation of negroes. If the States be all left at liberty on this subject, South Carolina may, perhaps, by degrees, do of herself what is wished, as Virginia ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... of Bashkai. The minute Dravot puts on the Master’s apron that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the stone that Dravot was sitting on. ‘It’s all up now,’ I says. ‘That comes of meddling with the Craft without warrant!’ Dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand-Master’s chair —which was to say the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... assumption or power by the Moullas, and freeing themselves from their thraldom. There has always been great liberty of opinion and speech in Persia, and six hundred years ago the poets Khayyam and Hafiz took full advantage of this in expressing their contempt for the 'meddling Moullas.' Not very long ago the donkey-boys in one of the great towns would on occasion reflect the popular feeling by the shout 'Br-r-r-o akhoond!' (Go on, priest!) when they saw a Moulla pattering along on his riding donkey. Biro is Persian for 'go on,' and, rolled and ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... history was to the Protestant as a seal to the wax, or as a negative to a {702} photograph; what was raised in one was depressed in the other, what was light in one was shade in the other. The same theory of the chosen people, of the direct divine governance and of Satanic meddling, was the foundation of both. That Luther was a bad man, an apostate, begotten by an incubus, and familiar with the devil, went to explain his heresy, and he was commonly compared to Mohammed or Arius. Bad, if often trivial motives were found for his actions, as that he broke ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the big lock was not fastened. The key, not working well, he took it some days ago to the locksmith, and when the latter failed to return it, he laughed, and said he thought no one would ever think of meddling with ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... meet the eyes of his fellow-citizens. Had Fortini known that the Marchese had been made aware of the purposed excursion of his nephew with the singer—as the reader knows that he had been by the officious meddling of the Conte Leandro,—it might have seemed strange that he should have chosen just that day and hour for the declaration of his intention. Was it that he hastened to acquire such an authority over Bianca, as might enable him to put an end to any such escapades for the future? Was it that ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... of Oxford, who wrote in his defence against Kenrick; because it was doing him hurt to answer Kenrick. He was told afterwards, the boy was to come to him to ask a favour. He first thought to treat him rudely, on account of his meddling in that business; but then he considered, he had meant to do him all the service in his power, and he took another resolution; he told him he would do what he could for him, and did so, and the boy was satisfied. He said, he did not ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... immediately run back, at any risk, to warn Alexander. He and the painter were now in hiding, and would remain in safety, come what might, in the cellar at the Cock, till the coast was clear again. The tavern-keeper strongly advised no one to go meddling with his wine-skins ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... him to be meddling with canes. It's plenty that Bulldog has a cane, without yon meeserable wretch"; and that was the last effort which Moossy made ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... I must speak," she thought wistfully. "I hate to do it. I always did hate meddling. My mother always used to say that ninety-nine times out of a hundred the last state of a meddler and them she meddled with was worse than the first. But I guess it's my duty. I was Margaret's friend, and it is my duty to protect ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Dost think I want him meddling i' my affairs? Go to young Baines up th' road. Tell him to come at once. He's sure to be at home, as ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... we'll canonize him, Tho' Cant is his hobby and meddling his bliss, Tho' sages may pity and wits may despise him, He'll ne'er make a bit the worse ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... encouraging, and disclosed to me a somewhat consoling prospect of increasing my influence as musical conductor at a time when my disgust was daily growing stronger at the constant meddling with our opera repertoire, which made me lose more and more influence as compared with the wishes of my would-be prima donna niece, whom even Tichatschek supported. Immediately on my return from Berlin I had begun the orchestration of Lohengrin, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... said Stafford dryly. Rising with a yawn, he went on: "Half the marital troubles one hears about are the fault of the wife. She is often too exacting, too fond of meddling in her husband's affairs. A man who respects himself bends to no one—not even to his wife." With another yawn he added: "Will you two excuse me for a few minutes? I ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... consults McDowell and Franklin; consults McClellan; exasperates McClellan by his action; appoints Stanton to succeed Cameron; his lack of personal feeling against Stanton; his patience toward Stanton; his letter to Halleck; wishes a direct attack; accused by McClellan's friends of meddling; decides to force action; issues General War Order No.; its purpose political rather than military; orders McClellan to move South; asks McClellan to justify his plan; calls council of generals; accepts McClellan's plan; insists on preservation of capital; political reasons for his ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... taken aback by this unexpected attack that at first he hardly knew how to meet it. Should he lecture his wife for her presumption in meddling in his affairs, which were quite beyond her comprehension as a woman, or should he make light of the matter and laugh it off? After a moment's reflection he decided ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... been to the village shop, Ditte ran out screaming, as she came back. "Grandad's dead!" she burst out sobbing. Soeren lay bruised and senseless across the doorstep to the kitchen. He had been up on the big chest, meddling with the hands of the clock. Maren dragged him to bed and bathed his wounds, and when it was done he lay quietly following her movements with his eyes. Now and then he would ask in a low voice what the time was, and from this Maren knew that he was nearing ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... disgust of seven-eighths of the town he lived in. He had caused more quarrels, smutted more characters, and created more ill-feeling between friends, neighbors and acquaintances, than all else beside in the community of Frogtown. Uncle Josh was voted a great bore by the men, and a sneaking, meddling old granny by the women. So, at last, the young women of the town did agree, that the very next time Uncle Josh carried, concocted, or circulated any slanderous or otherwise mischievous stories, they would ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... freeing herself, he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason for further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their plans settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of the marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that the novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence reasserted itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to be on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers were perpetually ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... himself, "all my study and travel and observation tells me a woman's natural position in society is in a safely guarded home; and the evil consequences of meddling with this position must show themselves, sooner or later. Humanity is of one general quality everywhere,—and that not so high as she apparently believes. Changes in social ideals are more or less ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... come to the unalterable determination never, under any circumstances, to either advise anybody or receive it myself where it can be avoided. If it is ordained that I am to make a fool of myself, it shall be done on my own responsibility, and not with the assistance of meddling friends—though if they have any desire to take the credit of it, I shall make no objections whatever. I doubt if they will. The longer I live in the world, the clearer appears the fact that half at least of our unhappiness is unnecessary. We seem perversely bent on tormenting ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... instant," he said, seating himself on the settee, from which Louise had risen on his entrance. "Come here and tell me what you mean by meddling with ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... to pitch into you. Ha! ha! And you call that science—to draw a pistol on a man. But you daren't fire it, and well you know it. You'd better put it up, or you may let it off without intending to: I never feel comfortable when I see a fool meddling with firearms. I came to tell you that I'm going to be married to ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... of my philosophy—that there are cases when to be angry becomes a duty. Men who, knowing nothing of the universities from experience, think proper to run them down, succeed at all events in exposing one crying evil—the absurdity of meddling with what one does not understand. We who know better may afford to smile at once at their spite and their ignorance. But he who lifts his voice against the mother that bore him, can fix no darker blot upon her fame than the disgrace of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... me more gently? You have seized my fine brown coat in such a manner that it is all torn and full of holes, meddling and interfering rubbish that you are!" With these words he shouldered a bag filled with precious stones, and slipped away to his cave ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... was a passive and not suggestive nature; if the first step in some desirable path were taken by another she would follow, and labor heart and hand, and by her judgment and zeal accomplish what that other only projected; but she had a horror of taking the responsibility, of "meddling with other people's affairs," even in the hope of bringing about ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the door, but he rode a piebald mare not to be confused in the most suspicious mind with the no more conspicuous Barmaid. It is true the brown parts smelt of Condy's Fluid, and were at once strange and seemingly a little tender to the touch. But Stingaree allowed no meddling with his mount; and only a very sinful publican, very many leagues ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... of meddling with men's amourettes," said Genvil; "Sir Damian would needs brawl with Wenlock about his dealings with this miller's daughter, and you see they account him a favourer of their enterprise; it will be well if others do not take up the same opinion.—I ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it—low, vulgar, meddling with every thing, assuming universal competency, flattering every base passion, and sneering at every thing noble, refined, and truly national! The direct and personal despotism will come on by and by, after the multitude shall have been gratified with the ruin and the spoil of the old ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... is meddling with our machines! Back to the road!" shouted Jerry, turning and plunging through ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... me. I didn't know what to say or do. I was afraid you might think I was meddling ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... to have a talk with you," this meddling person told the fat and frolicsome Jennie. "She wants you to stop eating leaves. She says you are doing your best—or your worst—to hurt the trees that she is trying to save. She claims that you are no friend of ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... family, of Augsburg, tell us again that there is nothing new in the world. Five hundred years ago they were millionaires. One of these Fuggers had a voice even in the election of Charles V, and we are still hard at it trying to keep our Fuggers from meddling in politics. Another Fugger, Marcus by name, wrote a capital book on the horse in the sixteenth century, and at the last horse-show at Olympia, in 1912, a Fugger came over from Germany and took away the first prize for officers' chargers. So far flung was their fame as money-lenders ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... and I met again. He had the same simple character and good temper as of old, and had, too, some of his old unlucky fortune, which clung to him always; yet notwithstanding that—as all of his trouble came from good-natured meddling with other people's affairs, for their benefit, I am not at all certain that I would not risk my chance of success—in the broadest meaning of that word—in the next world surely, if not in this, against all the Steerforths living, ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Glencora Palliser know about it? If Lady Glencora Palliser would mind her own affairs it would be much better for her. I remember when she had troubles enough of her own, without meddling ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Ruskin, whose writing is art, and whose art is unworthy his writing. To him and his example do we owe the outrage of proffered assistance from the unscientific—the meddling of the immodest—the intrusion of the garrulous. Art, that for ages has hewn its own history in marble, and written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by?—for guidance from the ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... 'Meddling coxcomb!' he exclaimed, 'what is there in him that commands the attention and respect that I fail to obtain ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... institution appeal to the imagination of both ignorant and cultured alike. The aim of the distinguished writer of the "Grip of Desire" is far removed from that of vulgar and gratuitous image-breaking. He seeks to show the danger to human character that comes through meddling with one of the most imperious of natural instincts. If in the "Chastisement of Mansour" he bodies forth the consequences of unbridled Libertinism, in the "Grip of Desire" he demonstrates the evils attendant on a ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... about me. I have reached a point where I can no longer suffer, because all suffering is become so sweet. Besides, it is quite a mistake to trouble yourselves as to what I may still have to undergo. It is like meddling with God's work. We who run in the way of Love must never allow ourselves to be disturbed by anything. If I did not simply live from one moment to another, it would be impossible for me to be patient; but I only ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... Jugurtha's half-brother. The Romans did not care to turn into a province a country of which the frontiers were so hard to guard. But they received some Gaetulian tribes in the interior into free alliance, so that they had plenty of opportunities for meddling if they wished ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... commended him for his religion. In answer to this the Quakers observe, first, that no solid argument can be drawn from silence on any occasion. Secondly, that Jesus Christ seems, for wise purposes, to have abstained from meddling with many of the civil institutions of his time, though in themselves wicked, thinking probably, that it was sufficient to have left behind him such general precepts, as, when applied properly, would be subversive ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... a plaint against M. de La Tour d'Azyr! You are out of your senses, I think. Oh, you are mad; as mad as that poor friend of yours who has come to this end through meddling in what did not concern him. The language he used here to M. le Marquis on the score of Mabey was of the most offensive. Perhaps you didn't know that. It does not at all surprise me that the Marquis should have ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... read and mark; and only hope there is no harm done by my meddling; and lose the sense of it all in the sense of beauty and power everywhere, which nobody could kill, if they took to meddling more even. And now, what will people say to this and this and this—or 'O seclum insipiens et inficetum!' or ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... monogamy and not a disguised polygamy, especially in the fact that it is a free union and only subject to the inherent penalties that follow its infraction, not to external penalties. Ours is not free; our faith in its natural virtues is not quite so firm as we assert; we are always meddling with it and worrying over its health and anxiously trying to bolster it up. We are not by any means willing to let it rest on the sanction of its own natural or divine laws. Our feeling is, as James Hinton used ironically ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... not your father or your brother I want to see this turn, but just your own self." And Father John sat himself down by the fire. "I'm come just to have a little chat with you, and you musn't be angry with me for meddling with what, perhaps, you'll say was ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... take heed how he behaves. If he persists in saying to me what he likes, he'll be hearing things that he don't like. Am I meddling with these matters or interesting myself? Can you not endure your troubles with a patient mind? For as to what I say, whether it is true or false what I have heard, can soon be known. A certain man of Attica, a long time ago,[94] his ship being wrecked, was cast ashore at Andros, and this woman ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... justice, which I do not believe they will relish. But the other two, the spaceman and the company agent, are to be sent to Xecho to face Combine authorities. It is my thought that those will not accept kindly the meddling of ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... laws of the State was also a topic which he felt required a word. "Considering the great probability," he said, "that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer not meddling with them, unless they were attacked by others; in which case I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take that stand which, in my view, might tend most to the advancement ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... if my theory be right—and I hope I've convinced you—I see no use in meddling. The girl is respectably married. It will cause her quite unnecessary trouble if we rip this affair open again. Her husband will have just ground for complaint, and it might—I need not point ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... second man, "is that if you leave the gods alone they'll leave you alone. It's no trouble to them to do whatever is right themselves, and what call would men like us have to go mixing or meddling with their ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... said to her brother, "for meddling with foreigners, and especially for mixing your love affairs up with an English girl. Proud, haughty creatures all of them! And you are a very fool to tell any woman such a—crime. Yes, it is a crime. I won't ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... interest in this matter—my reason for meddling," she informed me. "Belle's welfare means a great deal to me; just how much you can perhaps best understand after hearing a bit of my history. Have you ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... give it to any one who goes meddling in my brush cupboard now that I've just put all in order against the prying and nozzling of the good-for-nothing baggage what's coming along with ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... awake, dote on the first thing they see. Some of the juice of that flower I will drop on the eyelids of my Titania when she is asleep; and the first thing she looks upon when she opens her eyes she will fall in love with, even though it be a lion or a bear, a meddling monkey or a busy ape; and before I will take this charm from off her sight, which I can do with another charm I know of, I will make her give me that ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... screamed the archdeacon, giving so rough a pull at his nightcap as almost to bring it over his nose; "why not!—that pestilent, interfering upstart, John Bold;—the most vulgar young person I ever met! Do you know that he is meddling with your father's affairs in a most uncalled-for—most—" And being at a loss for an epithet sufficiently injurious, he finished his expressions of horror by muttering, "Good heavens!" in a manner that had been found very efficacious in clerical meetings of the diocese. He must for the ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... kind did not count for much; but the king's prime-minister, Cardinal Richelieu, who really managed everything, knew very well that Rochelle could give a great deal of trouble if it chose, and so, perhaps, he really would have let the town alone if it had not been for the meddling of the ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... not pain, and sorrow, and evil enough in this fallen world of ours, that meddling gossips must needs poison the few pure springs of enjoyment and peace? Not the hatred of the Theban brothers could more thoroughly accomplish this fiendish design than the whisper of detraction, the sneer of malice, or the fatal innuendo of envious, low-bred tattlers. Human life ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the beach; and the nurse, a German, said something that she could not understand. On the 1st of July—yes—but I have the date here—came a telegram to the hotel to have rooms for Lady de Lyonnais and Mr. Egremont ready by the evening. The whole place knew it, and some meddling person burst on Alice with the news, roughly and coarsely given, that they were coming to call her to account for her goings on. Captain Egremont found her crying in the utmost terror, and—she really hardly knew what he said to her—she thinks he offered to shelter her on board ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so busy as to say, In this fashion shall you live, in that fashion shall you die, and in such another fashion shall you take leave of the world, to be sent before the judgment-seat of the Lord! A wicked and a troublesome meddling is that, with the business of One who has not made His creatures to be herded, like oxen, and driven from field to field, as their stupid and selfish keepers may judge of their need and wants. A miserable land must that be, where they fetter the mind as well as the body, and where the ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... said I, somewhat testily, though without a grain of anger in my heart against any one but the meddling old woman. 'But, Helen, I've something to say to ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... search-warrant; and she tells you to mind your own business; and droll enough it is. We always fancy we're saying an impertinence to a man when we tell him to attend to what concerns him most. It shows, at least, that we think meddling a luxury. And then she adds, "Kilgobbin is welcome to you," and I can only say you are welcome to Kilgobbin—ay, and in her own words—"with such regularity and order as the meals succeed."—"All the luggage belonging to you," etc., and "I am, very respectfully, your Aunt." By ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... deliverance might be on its way, and resolved to keep attention awake for what might appear. In his inmost being he knew that the mission of man is to help his neighbors. But in as much as he was ready to help, he recoiled from meddling. To meddle is to destroy the holy chance. Meddlesomeness is the very opposite of helpfulness, for it consists in forcing your self into another self, instead of opening your self as a refuge to the other. They are opposite extremes, and, like all extremes, touch. It is not correct that extremes ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... persisted in without grave danger to these states. To deal with trade and industry as though they were matters that concerned only the particular business firms engaged in them was no longer an economical error, it was also a political blunder. To Government meddling in trade and industry the British people have ever been averse. And their dislike is intelligible although no longer warranted. A glance at Germany's economic campaign and its results ought to have borne out the thesis that individual self-reliance and push are unavailing to ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... been the mere register of the President's will, now turned upon him. On January 19 it passed a resolution making Lee general-in-chief of the army. This Mr. Davis might have borne with patience, although it was intended as a notification that his meddling with military affairs must come to an end. But far worse was the bitter necessity put upon him as a sequel to this act, of reappointing General Joseph E. Johnston to the command of the army which was to resist Sherman's victorious march to the ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... is war, there is misery and outrage; notwithstanding which, it is not only lawful to wish, but even a duty to pray for the success of one's country. And as to the neutralities, I really think the Russian virago an impertinent puss for meddling with us, and engaging half a score kittens of her acquaintance to scratch the poor old lion, who, if he has been insolent in his day, has probably acted no otherwise than they themselves would have acted in his circumstances and with his power ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... hero of this troop of infant robbers; he valued himself much on never meddling with small matters or committing any meaner crime than that of the highway. It happened he had a mistress coming out of the country and he would needs have his companions take each of them a doxy and go with ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... There is much behind, even more worth saying, which must not be said. Perhaps some far wiser men than I will think that I have said too much already, and be inclined to answer me as Elisha of old answered the over- meddling sons ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... than the Abbe Le Loutre. But while his energy, ability and patriotism are undoubted, his conduct has been the subject of severe criticism not only on the part of his adversaries but of the French themselves. He did not escape the censure of the Bishop of Quebec for meddling to so great an extent in temporal affairs, but the Bishop's censure is mild compared to that of an anonymous historian, who writes: "Abbe Loutre, missionary of the Indians in Acadia, soon put all in fire and flame, and may be justly deemed the scourge and curse of this ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... all the investigations that I have been able to make that the farmers as a whole are determined to maintain the independence of their business. They do not wish to have meddling on the part of the Government or to be placed under the inevitable restrictions involved in any system of direct or indirect price-fixing, which would result from permitting the Government to operate in the agricultural markets. They are showing a very ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... villagers to the inn, felt certain that their true character would be discovered, and that they would be sent to prison. Paul was especially unhappy under the belief that his bad French had betrayed him. He wished that he could give Reuben warning to keep out of the way of the meddling villagers, lest he also should be captured. Still, he was not a lad to give in, and he determined to play the part he had assumed as long as he could. When the villagers saw Francois, they shouted out to him that they had got the young rogues fast enough. Paul at once began to expostulate with ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... Aylward, who detested the two ladies, and repelled their meddling, stiffly assured them both of Miss Delavie's discretion and her own vigilance, which placed visits from the young baronet beyond the bounds of possibility. Supposing his Honour should again visit his uncle, she should take care to be present at any interview with the young ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him very soon. Am I to mention you? I might—" he hesitated for the right words—"I could only say the pleasantest things of you, and the most general, but I am his friend, whom he claims to like and respect. If I am meddling with what is ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Jimmy Jay is a very mischievous little bird. Yes, sir, he certainly loves to tease. Grandmother Magpie is mischievous, too, but she's no worse than little Jimmy Jay. She does harm by meddling ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... condemned by his best friends. They told him in plain terms that this was come as a judgment upon him for his loose life, his gluttony, drunkenness, and avarice; for laying aside his father's will in an old mouldy trunk, and turning stock-jobber, newsmonger, and busybody, meddling with other people's affairs, shaking off his old serious friends, and keeping company with buffoons and pickpockets, his father's sworn enemies; that he had best throw himself upon the mercy of the court, repent, and change his manners. To say ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... debauched Emperor's favourite concubine in public affairs; and we have seen, under the heading of Law in Chapter XX., how one of the imperial statutes, proclaimed or read regularly in the vassal kingdoms, prohibited the meddling of women in public business. But, in spite of this, so far as promoting the succession rights and political interests of their own children goes, wives and concubines certainly exerted considerable influence, whether legitimate or not, in all the states. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... had left youth behind. I made the mistake of thinking I could play a new role—and I cannot. I am tired—yes, I am deadly tired; and I feel now as if I wanted to get out of it all, and just leave things to work themselves out. I have meddled, and I am being punished for meddling. I have been playing with fire, and I have been burnt. I had thought of a new sort of life. Don't you remember," he added with a smile, "the monkey in Buckland's book, who got into the kettle on the hob, and whenever ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... at her fixedly, and Sylvia's face became what it seldom was—very forbidding in expression. She wished this meddling, familiar woman would go away and leave ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... had ever a quick temper, and as he turned on his heel, was like to have replied and raised a brawl. My own meddling tongue had brought the rebuff upon me: but yet my heart was hot as ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... Human pride is not worth while Hunger is the handmaid of genius If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank Inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances It is easier to stay out than get out Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to Meddling philanthropists Melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense Most satisfactory pet—never coming when he is called Natural desire to have more ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... that he spends much of his time learning the exact number of buttons, tags and laces, and the cut of all the cocked-hats, pigtails, and gaiters in his army. Oh, yes, he is so great that he is always meddling in other people's affairs. He pokes his red face into every cottage for miles around. Imagine the King of England going about in his old wig, shovel-hat, and Windsor uniform, hob-nobbing with pig-boys, ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... been the lesson he had received for meddling with Imperial fiefs; and he must have been mad had he thought of provoking further the resentment of the Emperor. To Farnese, Charles V was a sleeping dog it was as well to ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... been meddling with my things again?" demanded Dick. "Mother, I've an engagement at eight o'clock and it's quarter past now; every blessed collar button is ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence
... to you," said I, "for your courtesy: but, for the future, I shall be more cautious in meddling with History when you are present; whom I may justly commend as a most exact and scrupulous relator of the Roman History; but nearly at the time we are speaking of (though somewhat later) lived the above-mentioned Pericles, the illustrious son of Xantippus, who first improved his eloquence ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... lore which Nature brings; 25 Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— We murder ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... mixture. And then again the party that to outsiders may seem the angelic one may in reality be the devilish one. It is a well-known fact that people who to the outside world may seem the personification of honor and good nature may be very devils at home. I have long ago given up not only meddling in, but even judging, domestic disharmonies. For it is almost impossible for an outsider to judge justly. I knew a husband who was considered a paragon of virtue. And when a clash came between him and his wife everybody was inclined to blame the ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... gentleman publicly pummelling her in the Rue Gay-Lussac. He hastened to remonstrate; and the husband went off, hiccoughing of his outraged rights, and calling the universe to witness that he would have the law of the meddling stranger. Pair picked the girl up (she was scarcely eighteen then, and had only been married a sixmonth), he picked her up from where she had fallen, half fainting, on the pavement, carried her to his lodgings, which were at hand, and sent for a doctor. In his manuscript-littered study, for ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... does it cease on the child's leaving the parental roof for another place of residence? Or, on entering upon the married state? Or, upon the commission of some great act of outward transgression, shall we pronounce the covenant to be dissolved? Do we not see that we are meddling with a divine prerogative, if we assume to act in such cases? Expostulations, warnings, entreaties, from parents, pastor, brethren of the church, may always be in place; but further than these we ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... of friendly advice is quite to the taste of the amateur, who, being a non-practical man, is wise in abstaining from meddling in directions for which he has no natural bent, and unlike the numerous tribe of would-be repairers who think that any person who can use glue and cut a piece of wood can engage in the restoration of such a small ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... Morris complained of our interfering as he thought in that department; and therefore he did not incline to subject himself to any further censures, or as he expressed it "raps over the knuckles" for meddling in the affair. We were indeed as much surprised as Mr Izard appears to have been on the occasion, but our surprise arose from another cause; it was to find Mr William Lee desirous of holding such a plurality of appointments, in their ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... lift the tea-pot lid, To peep at what was in it; Or tilt the kettle, if you did But turn your back a minute. In vain you told her not to touch, Her trick of meddling grew ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... as though he owned the place. He was sly enough with me at first, and would brow-beat the Squire only while I was out of earshot. It chanced one day, however, that I heard loud voices through an open window and paused to hearken. That vile servant called my father 'a meddling old fool,' 'Fool and meddler art thou thyself, varlet,' I shouted, springing through the window, 'that for thy impudence!' and in my heat I smote him a blow mightier than I intended, for I have some strength in mine arm. The fellow rolled over and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... by way of Picture. The English Nation, having flung its old Puritan, Sword-and-Bible Faith into the cesspool,—or rather having set its old Bible-Faith, MINUS any Sword, well up in the organ-loft, with plenty of revenue, there to preach and organ at discretion, on condition always of meddling with nobody's practice farther,—thought the same (such their mistake) a mighty pretty arrangement; but found it hitch before long. They had to throw out their beautiful Nell-Gwynn Defenders of the Faith; fling them also into the cesspool; and were rather at a loss ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... scandal gave him no concern, compared with his fear that his own castle would suffer in wars of the League. As to the Reformation, he held it for a hasty, conceited movement on the part of persons who did not know what they were meddling with, and, being a perfect sceptic, he was a perfectly good Churchman. Full of tolerance, good-humour, and content, cheerful in every circumstance, simple and charming, yet melancholy in his hour, Montaigne is a thorough representative of the French spirit in literature. His English translator ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... "How about your letters? Who asked you to try to persuade me to marry him? Was not that a declaration from you? Why do you force yourself upon us in this way? I confess I thought at first that you were anxious to arouse an aversion for him in my heart by your meddling, in order that I might give him up; and it was only afterwards that I guessed the truth. You imagined that you were doing an heroic action! How could you spare any love for him, when you love your own vanity to such an extent? Why could you not simply go away from here, instead ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... listening to a musical-box, and well out of hearing of such fearfully direct falsehoods, as it seemed to her, not knowing that the boys excused it to their own minds by the notion that it was not the SPRING of the engine that they had been meddling with, and that so they did not know how the harm had been done—as if it made it any better that they lied to themselves as well as their father! The German saw her dismay, and began to say how ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... having been urged to do so by some meddling friend; for I'm quite sure that she would never have thought of doing so herself, seeing that she received no damage at all beyond a fright. I'm going to pay her a visit to-day in reference to that ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... always dangerous business meddling with lovers' affairs," rejoined Richard. "Lovers take themselves very seriously indeed, and—well, here the thing is! Now, who will go and fetch her from Liverpool? I should say that both my father and my mother ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... either for partiality or dislike. Yet he was thoroughly kind-hearted, and many remembered his good deeds with generous gratitude. Nor was he wholly wrong in his theory that a tutor often does as much harm by meddling interference as he ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... its present ingenuities, it will break out in a new method of grafting raspberries on a rosebush, in the comfortable cut of a pilot-coat, or the safest machinery for a steamer. Ne sutor ultra crepidam is a rule of moderation it repudiates; incessant energy provokes unabated meddling, and its intuitive qualities of penetration, adaptation, and concentration, are only hindered by the accidents of life from carrying any one thing out to the point at least of respectable attainment. Look at Michael Angelo; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... addressing the girl, 'unless you want to be thrown out the same way you were thrown in! The sooner I see your back, my sulky Madam, the better I shall be pleased. No more meddling with petticoats for me! This comes of working with fine gentlemen, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... right," said Lady Mary. "It would really be a very nice thing for Blanche. At all events, we are out of the Chipchase girls for to-day." And, so saying, she rose somewhat comforted, little aware, poor woman, that another ringer was meddling ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... world rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. The elements of an empire, which I hope will lead Ethiopia very soon to stretch out her hands to God, is the fruit of the institution here. An officious meddling with the institution, from feeling and sentiments unknown to the Bible, may lead to the extermination of the slave race among us, who, taken as a whole, are utterly unprepared for a higher civil state; but benefit them, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... with each other, and destroy reciprocally each other's nature and power: competing and fighting for place at every tread of your foot; sand squeezing out clay, and clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and defiling the whole. Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that its elements gather together, like to like, so that their atoms may get ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... laughed Herbert "You, prying, meddling Meta; talking about other people's curiosity! Well, ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... who crowded about and paid her no attention. Then the soldier, as if suddenly remembering, took the rabbit from her arm and handed it to me. She looked about at this, as if missing the snuggling animal, and I stared hard at the meddling soldier to reprove him for interfering with his queen, and gently restored the rabbit ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... doubtless, he administered a rough remedy to cool the fit of passion, for he appeared red and breathless. I got the dishcloth, and rather spitefully scrubbed Edgar's nose and mouth, affirming it served him right for meddling. His sister began weeping to go home, and Cathy stood by ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... twins' exploit of yesterday, had spread through the house. For when Rolf returned from his morning lessons, he went straight for his bow, and of course discovered at once the loss of one arrow. Very much incensed, he ran about the house to find out who had been meddling with his property. He had little trouble in discovering the offenders, for the twins were so broken down by the suffering they had been through, that they confessed at once, and told him the whole story, including their horror at the cry of pain, and adding ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... other book; he will have, therefore, ultimately, a popular judgment of his task and its performance. But he is unfortunate in another point: for he must meet that popular sentiment which at the outset looks with disfavor upon anything that has even the appearance of meddling with the commonly received and almost universally approved version of the Holy Scriptures. Let us, in a brief space and with as little of formal and scholastic criticism as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various |
