"Querulous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... week or so a sprouting of hope had pierced the matchmaking soil in the querulous lady's really well-intentioned heart, for, like the proverbial half-loaf, a step-son-in-law is distinctly ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... Queerly Questioned a Quibbling and Querulous Quidnunc, And asked Quizzingly if he had ever seen the ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... The priest ignored the querulous words. "You must see your father at once," he said gravely. "At once," he repeated, noting how ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with Annie. Granny was hobbling about the barnyard, a red and black checked shawl round her head and shoulders, a stick in her hand, which she used as much to rap the unruly pigs and calves as for a support. She was complaining in her high querulous voice about her turkeys, the contrary little bastes, that would nivir stay to home at all, at all, no matter if ye give them the whole farm to ate up. Tom rode up and stood talking with them, and Elizabeth, watching him through the raspberry bushes for signs of a package of candy, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... eyes, as if he gazed feebly out of unglazed spectacles, which heightened his simian resemblance, already grotesquely exaggerated by what appeared to be repeated and spasmodic experiments in dyeing his gray hair. Without the slightest notice of Lance, he inflicted his protesting and querulous presence ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Renmark, you are pleased to be severe. Know that you are forgiven. This delicious sylvan retreat does not lend itself to acrimonious dispute, or, in plain English, quarreling. Let dogs delight, if they want to; I refuse to be goaded by your querulous nature into giving anything but the soft answer. Now to business. Nothing is so conducive to friendship, when two people are camping out, as a definition of the duties of each at the beginning. Do you ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... place was asleep. Nothing was stirring about the inn excepting a bandy Dachshund, which came wheezing up and thrust a cold nose into the young man's hand. High in the air a hawk was wheeling; his faint, querulous cry struck Gethryn with an unwonted sense of loneliness. He noticed how yellow some of the trees were on the slopes across the lake. Autumn had come before summer was ended. He leaned over and patted the hound. A door opened, a voice cried, "Ei Dachl! du! ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... The feather'd quiristers] Imitated by Boccaccio, Fiammetta, 1. iv. "Odi i queruli uccelli," &c. —"Hear the querulous birds plaining with sweet songs, and the boughs trembling, and, moved by a gentle wind, as it were keeping ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... happened to you or me, or might have happened, if our circumstances had been different; only the mood of desolate self-consciousness in which the soul slowly contemplates the disaster of existence. The melancholy that the music exhales is no querulous feminine plaint, but an immemorial melancholy, an exalted resignation. The music goes out like a fume, dying in remote chords, and Evelyn sat absorbed, viewing the world from afar, like the Lady of Shallott, seeing in the mirror of memory ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... high. "Droves of six hundred swine,"—I have seen (by reading in those old Books) certain noble Gentlemen, "of Putlitz," I think, driving them openly, captured by the stronger hand; and have heard the short querulous squeak of the bristly creatures: "What is the use of being a pig at all, if I am to be stolen in this way, and surreptitiously made into ham?" Pigs do continue to be bred in Brandenburg: but it is under such discouragements. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... Another querulous voice broke in: "For heaven's sake, Connie, don't stand here any longer. Our reputations are bad enough as it is. Good night—Roxbury!" He distinctly heard the heartless Edith giggle. Then came the soft, quick swish ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... know." His tone became querulous. "How can a man tell why he becomes indifferent to a woman? I don't know. I never did know. I can't explain it. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... behind, and stood rubbing it a little, with a movement that displaced his hat. (I may remark in parenthesis that I never saw a hat more easily displaced than Mr. Ruck's.) I supposed he was going to say something querulous, but I was mistaken. Mr. Ruck was unhappy, but he was very good-natured. "Well, they want to pick up something," he said. "That's ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... here?" exclaimed the King of the Jungle, in a querulous tone, "Is it an over-grown pinch-bug, or ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... his burden, he tried to distract himself by fancying how the discovery of their absence would be made. He heard the listless, half-querulous discussion about the locality that regularly pervaded the nightly camp. He heard the discontented voice of Jake Silsbee as he halted beside the wagon, and said, "Come out o' that now, you two, and mighty quick about it." He ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... altogether in its favour. The dogmas of Malthus maybe right or wrong, the statistical propositions of Mr. Sadler, and the philosophical deductions he derives from them may be right or wrong: with these querulous rhetoricians, I have nothing to do. But one thing is certain, that while the fertile earth, in any of its endless divisions, affords the means of sustenance, no human being ought to be suffered to want, because the notion of emigration ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... shuffled forward, peering. A lantern flashed on one of the big schooners. Looking up, Grimshaw saw the name: "Anne Beebe, New Orleans." A querulous voice, somewhere on the deck, demanded: "That you, Richardson?" And then, angrily: "This damned place—dark as hell.... ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... a querulous Quail, Who said: "It will little avail The efforts of those Of my foes who propose To attempt to put salt on ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... word more about this home, the like of which it would be hard to find in our generation: "No bickering or dissention was ever permitted. Love was the habit, the life of the household rather than the law.—A querulous tone, a complaint, a slight word of dissention, was met by that awful frown of my father's. Jove's thunder was to a pagan believer but as a summer day's drifting cloud to it. It was not so dreadful ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... regarded her with a reflective interest. She must have been very beautiful then, he thought. She was almost beautiful still. Certainly she was a very distinguished person, with her costly clothing, her rich furs, her white hair, and that faded rose-leaf skin. The petulant, querulous droop of her mouth escaped MacRae. He was not a physiognomist. But the distance of her manner did not escape him. She acknowledged the introduction and thereafter politely overlooked MacRae. He meant nothing at all to Mrs. Horace A. Gower, he saw very clearly. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... headquarters at Wildman's tavern in Albemarle Street. Pitt spoke strongly against the tax in the commons. It was defended by Grenville, who in the course of his speech constantly demanded where another tax could be laid. Mimicking his querulous tone, Pitt repeated aloud the words of an old ditty, "Gentle shepherd, tell me where". The nickname, Gentle shepherd, stuck by Grenville. The bill passed the commons and was sent up to the lords. For the first time since the revolution ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the hall the prefect of the college sodality was speaking earnestly, in a soft querulous voice, with a boarder. As he spoke he wrinkled a little his freckled brow and bit, between his phrases, at a ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... out of bed at half-past five, but even then her simple toilet had been hastened to an untidy half completion by the querulous insistence of her mother's frequent "You know, Helen,—you must know how utterly impossible it is for me to lift my head until I've had my coffee! Are n't you nearly ready?" Mrs. Raymond had wakened earlier than usual that morning, ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... whether that government was not, during the first months of its existence, in more danger from the affection of the Whigs than from the disaffection of the Tories. Enmity can hardly be more annoying than querulous, jealous, exacting fondness; and such was the fondness which the Whigs felt for the Sovereign of their choice. They were loud in his praise. They were ready to support him with purse and sword against foreign and domestic foes. But their attachment to him ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a volume of Tennyson in my pocket, which somehow settled that question, and ended the querulous dispute between me and Conscience, under the shape of the neglected and irritated Greek muse, which had been going on ever since I had commenced my walk about Athens. The old spinster saw me wince at the idea of the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rose and fell, wayward and querulous. There was no other sound in the house, only the water sobbing against ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... insistent drizzle this person, smiling now very pleasantly, led us to a depressed wooden building that suggested a derelict Noah's Ark with a sinister look about the windows. The bad-tempered sky scowled between the planks of the roof; the querulous wind whined up through the floor; rats backed snarling into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... boats and gondolas, was gone out to meet the much-lauded Falieri. Hence it was that the unhappy youth was sighing away his pain in utter helplessness. But just as his weary head fell back upon the pavement, and he seemed on the point of fainting, a hoarse and very querulous voice cried several times in succession, "Antonio, my dear Antonio." At length Antonio painfully raised himself partly up; and, turning his head towards the pillars of the Custom-house, whence the voice seemed to proceed, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... querulous contralto voice was heard behind them, and a dim, majestic figure appeared ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... long time, Lena," said the mother in a delicately querulous voice. "You're fortunate to be able to get out instead of being cooped up in this little room the way I am." Mrs. Quincy coughed with conscious pathos. "I sometimes wonder if you ever think of your poor mother and how lonely ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... the end of your mournful history?' some querulous reader demands. Not quite. There is a soul of good in things evil. Compassion dwells with the depths of misery; and in the valley of the shadow of death dove-eyed Charity walks with shining wings.... It was nearly two months after I had lost sight of ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... this Montague Shirley?" was the querulous greeting from the old gentleman, when he was admitted to the drawing-room. "You kept me in anguish the entire night, with your silly words. The telephone bell rang at intervals of half an hour until dawn: I may have missed ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... already come; and so was her mother—a little querulous chip of an old lady with a peevish face, who, in right of having preserved a waist like a bedpost, was supposed to be a most transcendent figure; and who, in consequence of having once been better off, or of labouring under ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Smith availed himself of the opportunity to send by Newport an account of his summer explorations, a map of Chesapeake Bay and tributary rivers, and a letter in answer to the complaints signified to him in the instructions of the home council. Smith's reply was querulous and insubordinate, and spiteful enough against Ratcliffe, Archer, and Newport, but contained many sound truths. He ridiculed the policy of the company, and told them that "it were better to give L500 a ton for pitch, tar, and the like in the settled countries of Russia, Sweden, and ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... white teeth, an almost feminine mouth, a straight Grecian nose, and delicately small hands and feet; but he was vain of his person, and ostentatious; fond of dress and of jewellery. He was, moreover, suspicious of neglect, and vindictive when neglected; querulous of others, and intolerant of reproof himself; exigeant among men, and more than politely flattering among women. He was not, however, without talent, and a kind of poetic fecundity of language, which occasionally made him brilliant in society; ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... the beginning, and afterwards he was often in her home, bringing gifts for the querulous invalid, and, better still, hope for the future of her husband, about whom he interested a friend of his, who was doing well out in New Zealand, and looking out for a partner with some ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... only availing himself of an opportunity to gain ingress into the house, and was leading him as a responsible accomplice to probable exposure and disgrace. His expectation was quickly realized: a lazily querulous, feminine outcry, with the words, "Yer's that darned hound agin!" came from an adjacent room, and his exposed and abashed companion swiftly retreated past him into the road again. Mr. Ford found himself alone in a plainly-furnished sitting-room confronting the open door leading to another ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... the querulous tone, she departed. She had much to do besides her duties in the belfry. Her father was an invalid who required constant care; there was only one servant, an old peasant woman who cooked. The Government ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... this!" said she, in a querulous tone. "Jacob here, and all my cupboard on the table. Jacob, how dare you ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wife might be heard calling for her husband. He, alas! had gone, she knew not whither, or perhaps had fled into the woods of Acadia, and had now returned to weep over the ashes of their dwelling. An aged widow was crying out, in a querulous, lamentable tone, for her son, whose affectionate toil had supported her for many a year. He was not in the crowd of exiles; and what could this aged widow do but sink down and die? Young men and maidens, whose hearts had been torn asunder by separation, had hoped, during the ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... four, and six! And then there is the feeling that that kind of semi-poverty, which has in itself something of the pleasantness of independence, when it is borne by a man alone, entails the miseries of a draggle-tailed and querulous existence when it is imposed on a woman who has in her own home enjoyed the comforts of affluence. As a man thinks of all this, if he chooses to argue with himself on that side, there is enough in the argument ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Virgilia, very tired from the hours passed in gently soothing her mother's querulous complaints, giving her cooling drinks and telling her old Grecian legends to amuse her, entered her own little ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... journals, so far as we are able to judge, shows the inherent folly and weakness of the Secession movement. Men who feel strong in the justice of their cause, or confident in their powers, do not waste breath in childish boasts of their own superiority and querulous depreciation of their antagonists. They are weak, and they know it. And not only are they weak in comparison with the Free States, but we believe they are without the moral support of whatever deserves the name of public opinion at home. If not, why does ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... that time, for the next few months, all things were ordered there with reference to Morely. It was a poor place enough, for Muir's wages were not large; but it was neat and comfortable. His mother was his housekeeper,—a querulous old body, with feeble health, one who little needed any additional burden of household care. But when she knew that in a poor home, far away, a mother of little children was waiting, hoping and praying for the well-doing of ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... was a querulous Quab Who at every trifle would sob; He said, "I detest To wear a plaid vest, And I hate to eat ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... His querulous question was more of a challenge than a request, and Dick hastened to assure him that he could unroll his blankets in a bunk in the rambling old structure that loomed dim, silent, and ghostly, on the hill beyond where they were seated. His pity ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... pease out on the table, and took the pan into her lap. She shelled at the pease in silence, till the sound of their pelting, as they were dropped on the tin, was lost in their multitude; then she said, with a sharp, querulous, pathetic impatience, "Well, father, I suppose you're thinkin' ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... of a man for me and you! However little of worth we do He credits full, and abides in trust That time will teach us how more is just. He walks abroad, and he meets all kinds Of querulous and uneasy minds, And sympathizing, he shares the pain Of the doubts that rack us, heart and brain; And knowing this, as we grasp his hand We are surely coming to understand! He looks on sin with pitying ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... and composed, showing in her face none of the elation she feels. For she is amazed and triumphant that this famous gentleman, whose name is the golden key to the most exclusive portals of society, should choose her faded, querulous Gertrude. How much of it is due to Violet she will never know, nor the professor either; but it is Violet who has raised Gertrude up to a new estate out of her old slough of despond, who in her own abundant sweetness and generosity has so clothed the other that she has seemed ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... receive a letter from you to-day, sealing my pardon—and I will be careful not to torment you with my querulous humours, at least, till I see you again. Act as circumstances direct, and I will not enquire when they will permit you to return, convinced that you will hasten to your * * * *, when you have attained (or lost sight of) the object ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... my sympathy for him. He had been a well-favored man, he said, sweeping his hand in a semicircle, which implied that his acute-angled countenance had once filled the goodly curve he described. He was now a perfect Don Quixote to look upon. Weakness had made him querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped his grievances to me in a thin voice with that finish of detail which chronic invalidism alone can command. He was starving,—he could not get what he wanted to eat. He was in need of stimulants, and he held up a pitiful two-ounce ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... call of calamity hastened him to Ireland, where perhaps his presence contributed to restore her to imperfect and tottering health. He was now so much at ease, that (1727) he returned to England, where he collected three volumes of Miscellanies in conjunction with Pope, who prefixed a querulous and apologetical Preface. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... platform of an engine, Maraton sped on his splendid mission. It was Ernshaw himself who drove, with the help of an assistant, but as they passed from place to place the veto was lifted. The men in some districts were a little querulous, but at Maraton's coming they were subdued. It was peace, a peace how splendid they were soon to know. By mid-day, trains laden with coal were rushing to several of the Channel ports. Maraton found his task with the miners more difficult, and yet in a way ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... right has anybody got," demanded Brown with querulous ferocity, "to interfere between me and a lady? Eh? Whose compartment was she in? Me in hers or her in mine? Eh? Me. I'm sleeping. Hasn't a gent a right to sleep? Next thing I know she's fingerin' my whiskers. How should ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... and affectation. Some of the Proverbs are good, but not many of them are in common use. Job contains some fine passages, and so do some of the Psalms; but the Psalms generally are poor and, for the most part, querulous, spiteful and introspective into the bargain. Mudie would not take thirteen copies of the lot if they were to appear now for the first time—unless indeed their royal authorship were to arouse an adventitious ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... spite of his teachers, and by setting at naught the minute and painstaking plans of his mother. This mother lived her life a partial invalid, whimsical, querulous, religious overmuch, always fearing a fatal collapse; in this disappointed, for she finally died peacefully of old age, going to bed and forgetting to waken. She was long to survive her son, and realize his greatness only after he was gone, getting the facts from the daily papers, which ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Querulous he was and ill-tempered with the scoffers. "Man, if I had twenty more years I would grow hoofs on your horse and udders on your in-coming queys." Well, well, I'm fond of this farming, but I have set out to tell a tale, which in my poor fancy should even be like a rotation of crops, from the ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... disquisition, examples of national calamities, and scenes of extensive misery, which are found in books, rather than in the world, and which, as they are horrid, are ordained to be rare. Let us not imagine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations; I cannot bear that querulous eloquence, which threatens every city with a siege, like that of Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on every flight of locusts, and suspends pestilence on the wing of every blast ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Rousseau, so querulous, admits "that a moral subject could not be better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that of a pretty woman in Paris." Undoubtedly there is a good deal of idle talk, but with all the chattering "let a man of any authority ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... heap of nets, lost her balance, stumbled, and sat down very suddenly. Then she threw back her head and laughed; peal on peal of deliciously childish laughter rang through the ancient net-shed, until, overhead, the passing gulls echoed her mirth with querulous mewing, and the sea-hawk, towering to ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... were discoverable, the most material of which was an emotion of tenderness at times, and a querulous sensibility not proper to the character of lady Macbeth's cool, deliberate, and inflexible resolution by which the poet has distinguished her. Great allowance is due for the perturbation of the actress in so perilous and trying a situation, and into these, perhaps, much of the objection ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... the beef, the gentleman managed to out himself some delicate slices, part of which he ate in silence. When he next spoke, it was, in a less querulous tone, to ask ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... while about the Colonel's voyage home, the pleasures of the Spanish journey, the handsome new quarters in which Clive has installed his father and himself, my own altered condition in life, and what not. During the conversation a little querulous voice makes itself audible above-stairs, at which noise Mr. Clive begins to laugh, and the Colonel to smile. It is for the first time in his life Mr. Clive listens to the little voice; indeed, it is only since about six weeks that that small organ has ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the direction of half a dozen grey gulls which came flapping towards them, and as the school passed off to the left and the boat bore to the right Dick could see the flap-winged birds keep dipping down with a querulous cry, splash the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... ("The Serpent is shut out from Paradise.") These words must be taken as implying no reflection either upon Mary's love for him, or upon his own power to bear the slighter troubles of domestic life. He was not a spoiled child of fortune, a weak egotist, or a querulous complainer. But he was always seeking and never finding the satisfaction of some deeper craving. In his own words, he had loved Antigone before he visited this earth: and no one woman could probably have made him happy, because he was for ever demanding more from love than it can give ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... covered with flowers; every cranny bears a blossom or a tuft of green. Then above, long stretches of barren heath (with a few twisted and wind-tortured trees), where the sheep pasture and the sky-lark sings, and in and out of the red-fronted cliffs the querulous sea-gulls flash in the sunshine, and make their plaintive moan. Near Lynton there is the famous Valley of Rocks, where the wise woman, Mother Melldrum, had her winter ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... liqueur glass full of brandy which I poured out. He remained for several minutes sipping it and looking thoughtfully into the fire. He seemed to me to have aged by a dozen years. The brisk alertness of his manner had all departed. He was an old man, limp and querulous. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his nature be capable of true sympathy with the various elements of that wonderful age, turn again without bitterness to the confused modern world, saddened but not paralysed by the comparison, grieving, but with no querulous grief, for the certainty that those ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... the mother would not admit. In weary and querulous tones she began expatiating on the merits of her daughter: her fair hair, her graceful neck—until the African, bored and impatient, turned on ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and composure. Nothing ruffled his temper or disturbed his serenity. His faculties were unclouded, his memory retentive, his perceptions clear to the last; no murmur of impatience ever escaped him, no querulous word, no ebullition of anger or peevishness; he was uniformly patient, mild, indulgent, deeply sensible of kindness and attention, exacting nothing, considerate of others and apparently regardless of self, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... mischievous passivity on the part of the other, have given birth to the meek maiden waiting for her fate, to the typical disconsolate and forlorn "superfluous woman," to the two standards of morality for the sexes, to the mercenary marriage with all its attendant miseries, to the selfish, exacting, querulous wife, to the disappointed or tyrannical husband; and of late, with the wider possibilities of individual pleasure and satisfaction, to the growing aversion of young people to matrimony, and the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... laden with the odours of wild herbs and recent rain, came fresh from Monte Calvo. It was a quarter past seven. In the shell-shaped tract watered by the Anio the bells were ringing; first the big bell of Sant' Andrea, then the querulous bells of Santa Maria della Valle; high up on the right, from the little white church near the great wood, the bells of the Capuchins, and others in the far-away distance. A woman's voice, submissive and sweet, the voice of five and ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... particular; it does not contain a single appeal to God; and of no other among Cromwell's speeches, are the original MS. notes in existence. This speech, of the utmost historic importance, is essentially unheroic in tone and circumstance,—the querulous complaint of a master against servants who have overmastered him,—an assertion of supremacy made by a man, who felt that he was not really supreme. But the singularity that attends the address to the recalcitrant officers ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... things however grievous, that it may attain to the honours of this world and the praise of men. If we were humble and laboured to gain our own souls rather than hunt after vain glory, few of us, indeed, would endure such annoyances." He details, with querulous humour, all the grievances of his position, from the ingratitude of the prince to the sordour of the table-cloths, and the hardness of the black bread. But hardest of all to bear is the contempt shown towards literature. "In the courts ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... knocks one after another in quick succession; and huddling on her clothes, and muttering to herself all the way, she got into the hall, and standing a couple of yards away from the door, answered in shrill and querulous tones, and questioning the messenger ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... forward to greet the new arrival; and the girl, relieving him of his monstrous burthen, proceeded to display her offerings to her father. Van Tromp's countenance fell several degrees; he became quite querulous. ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by making the connoisseur in murder very fastidious in his taste, and dissatisfied by anything that has been since done in that line. All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his; and, as an amateur once said to me in a querulous tone, "There has been absolutely nothing doing since his time, or nothing that's worth speaking of." But this is wrong; for it is unreasonable to expect all men to be great artists, and born with the genius of Mr. Williams. Now it will be remembered that in the first of these murders, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... that pond. There were things of interest discovered daily. In a neighbour's field Sam had found another Woodchuck with a "price on his head." Rabbits began to come about the camp at night, especially when the moon was bright, and frequently of late they had heard a querulous, yelping bark that Caleb said was made by a Fox "probably that old rascal ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... mosquitoes buzzed about each man's head. Their faces were coated with blue clay. Each carried a lump of this damp clay, and, whenever it dried and fell from their faces, more was daubed on in its place. There was a querulous plaint in their voices, an irritability of movement and gesture, that told of broken sleep and a losing struggle with the little ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... Topnambo's white figure, with its dryish, gray skin, and pink patches round the neck, that lay forever in dark or darkened rooms, and talked querulously of "Your uncle, the earl," whom I had never seen. I didn't get on with the men any better. They were either very dried up and querulous, too, or else very liquorish or boisterous in an incomprehensible way. Their evenings seemed to be a constant succession of shouts of laughter, merging into undignified staggers of white trousers through blue nights—round the corners of ragged huts. I never understood the hidden ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the tried leader, her soldier husband, sitting in saddle at the bank. Bravely she answered the flutter of his handkerchief in farewell. Then all was swallowed up in the shadows of the distant prairie, and from the nursery adjoining her room there rose a querulous wail that told that her baby daughter was waking, indifferent to the need that sent the soldier father to the aid of distant comrades, threatened by a merciless foe, and conscious only of her infantile demands and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... a city is usually quite different. We are not at our ease. We are querulous and anxious, and our interest takes a feverish turn. For the cities of our Western world are new-fangled contrivances which we are not used to, and we are worried as we try to find out whether they will ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... inaccessible shelves, skimmed over the water, dived, and came up again with small fishes in their beaks, to return to feed the young, which often enough had been carried off by some great gull, one of the many which glided here and there, uttering their peculiarly querulous, mournful cries, so different in tone from the sharp, hearty calls ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... have been quite unaffected by the losses of his master. M. Formery, an ardent lover of good things, enjoyed himself immensely. He was in the highest spirits. Germaine, a little upset by the night-journey, was rather querulous. Her father was plunged in a gloom which lifted for but a brief space at the appearance of a fresh delicacy. Guerchard ate and drank seriously, answering the questions of the Duke in a somewhat absent-minded fashion. The Duke himself seemed to have lost his ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... night and, in the morning, took it to Mr Greeley. He was at his desk writing and at the same time giving orders in a querulous tone to some workman who sat beside him. He did not look up as he spoke. He wrote rapidly, his nose down so close to the straggling, wet lines that I felt a fear of its touching them. I stood by, waiting my opportunity. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... piece of earthenware for toys, they were happy in their way. Whatever their food might have been, they showed no traces of hard usage. Their red "puddy" fists were fat, and their naked legs round and plump enough. Their faces were full and rosy, and their voices clear and anything but querulous. The eager passions of childhood come out fierce and unrestrained, and blows were freely interchanged, without, however, either cries or apparent hatred. Their naked knees were on the stone-flags, and the wind, creeping in a draught under ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... far too much of it—for English tastes, at any rate—before he is alarmed by discovering the still wet manuscript in Sachs' handwriting. He snatches it up and conceals it; Sachs comes back dressed for the great ceremony, and there is a row—Beckmesser querulous, bitterly angry and suspicious, on the one hand, Sachs quietly scornful on the other. Let me point out that this scene is another example of Wagner's stage craftsmanship at its best. There is nothing conventional in the way Sachs and Walther are got off to give Beckmesser ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... 1889. A querulous newborn female infant crying to cause and lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with shocks her moneybox: counted his three free moneypenny buttons, one, tloo, tlee: a doll, a boy, a sailor she cast away: blond, born of two dark, she had blond ancestry, remote, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... women. It could just get on as it was, and if the family life had never been a bright and cheerful one, it was now drearier than ever. Then Addie married. She was nearly if not quite forty years old, and neither her brother nor sister-in-law expected such an event. She was sallow, thin, and rather querulous in temperament. Very likely Addie felt that marriage could not make her lot worse, and as middle-age threatened, she accepted the defeat of her ambitions and in the spirit of better-late-than-never struck out for herself in ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... what happened at the cross-roads store, of what good stories were related day by day and week by week and month by month, while the cup went round; it is sufficient to say that the stomach of John Appleman became querulous when he had not taken a stimulant within a limited number of hours, and that he was in a fair way of becoming an ordinary drunkard. With his experience and decadence came, necessarily, an expertness of judgment as to the quality of that which he drank. He could ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... dazzling effect among the glittering foliage. A robin, perched upon the top of a mountain-ash that hung its clusters of red berries just before my window, was basking himself in the sunshine, and piping a few querulous notes; and a peacock was displaying all the glories of his train, and strutting with the pride and gravity of a Spanish ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... of this fact made Barter's case seem hopeless to himself. If he had brow-beaten, or blustered, if he had shown anger or impatience, or had been querulous, there might have seemed to exist some slenderest chance for him. But Steinberg was so unmoved ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Before him lay nothing but his books, his dinner, and a literary reputation. Capable biographers can make pretty pictures of the white-haired scholar surrounded by his favourite authors. They can turn his petulant limitations and querulous prejudices into exquisite foibles, his despotisms into quaint impetuosity, his insensibility to human want and misery into mellow wisdom. But we cannot forget that the last years of those who have never passionately pursued impossible ideals or loved imperfect human beings are probably ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... president had stalked in, and his high querulous voice was marshaling the party breakfastward. Ford manoeuvered skilfully in the pairing off, and so succeeded in securing Miss Adair for a companion on the short walk across to the ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... you're not sure?" His voice was a little sharper than he intended, a little more querulous than he had meant it to be. It was, he thought, the voice of an old man, annoyed ...
— Decision • Frank M. Robinson
... girls were generally young women at fourteen years of age. She was never ruddy or robust, always pale, delicate-looking and fragile-seeming, never actually ill, but usually ailing, peevish, limp and querulous. Life in the Atrium largely consisted in the effort to keep Meffia well, to make sure that she was not overtired, to foresee and forestall opportunities for her to blunder, to repair the consequences of her mistakes, generally to protect and ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... forgiving the temper of her Horace—for he is her Horace still—and who can wonder at that? She will bear with all—will live, will die with him. I look, Eusebius, upon this ode as a real consolation to your lovers of an ambiguous and querulous age. Seeing what we are daily becoming, it is a comfort to think that, should such untoward persons make themselves disagreeable to all else of human kind, there will be, nevertheless, to each, one confiding loving creature, to put them in conceit with themselves, and make them, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... an indictment against human nature. What is to become of us, thus placed between the devil of mob ignorance and corruption, and the deep sea of genteel listlessness and superficiality? After all, Sir Henry Maine is only repeating in more sober tones the querulous remonstrances with which we are so familiar on the lips of Ultramontanes and Legitimists. A less timid observer of contemporary events, certainly in the land that all of us know best and love best, would judge that, when it comes to a pinch, Liberals are still passably ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a far better. The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours, I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... blue sky, flapped lazily away, and sank down the abysses of the cliff, as if he scented the corpses underneath the surge. Below them from the Gull-rock rose a thousand birds, and filled the air with sound; the choughs cackled, the hacklets wailed, the great blackbacks laughed querulous defiance at the intruders, and a single falcon, with an angry bark, dashed out from beneath their feet, and hung poised high aloft, watching the sea-fowl which swung slowly ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of faith in a moral as well as in an intellectual sense. It inculcates a spirit of loving, filial trust instead of a querulous self-righteousness which virtually chides the unknown Ruler of the universe. According to "The Light of Asia" when the Buddha preached at Kapilavastu there were assembled men and devils, beasts and birds, all victims alike of the cruel fate that ruled the world. Existence was an evil and only ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... a trifle annoyed. "Be a man," he was on the point of saying, "and don't, for heaven's sake, talk in that confoundedly querulous voice." But before he had uttered the words, there rang through the studio a loud, peremptory ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... sea-board, and Cornwallis's from the southward,—when we were driven from Richmond and Charlottesville, and every member of my council fled to their homes, it was not the total destitution of means, but the mismanagement of them, which, in the querulous voice of the public, caused all our misfortunes. It ended, indeed, in the capture of the whole hostile force, but not till means were brought us by General Washington's army, and the French fleet and army. And although the legislature, who were ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... know whether it is or not," said Andrew, in a high, querulous voice like a woman's. "It seems as if it must be somebody's fault. If it ain't my fault, whose is it? ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... boarding-house stairs, past your door and on up into the skylight room on the roof, despondently to bed; and you know that the old man has had another unsuccessful day among the agents and the managers. You can sometimes interpret the querulous little laugh over the thin oatmeal at breakfast, sometimes you can guess the water in the rapidly winking eyes; but of course you do not proclaim your deductions. Civilization is a process of making ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... to say to you before you go," she announced, in her rasping voice, with its querulous note. "I want to tell you that the chances are a hundred to one you set that fire yourself, with your engine that's haulin' you around over the country, so you can jolly men into votin' for you. Your train's the only one over the road since noon, and that fire started from the railroad. The hull ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... absorbed in themselves; the world did not exist for them. And I thought: "What miraculous exquisite Force is it that brings together that strange, sombre, laconic organism in a silk hat and a loose, black overcoat, and that strange, bright, vivacious, querulous, irrational organism in brilliant fur and feathers?" And when they moved away the most interesting phenomenon in the universe moved away. And I thought: "Just as no beer is bad, but some beer is better than other beer, so no marriage is bad." ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp, querulous cry,—a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... dealing with casual servants, querulous, sensitive, and lodged for a day in a sphere they resent, can hardly comprehend the friendliness and sympathy that existed between the master and the slave. He cannot understand how the negro stood in slavery days, open-hearted and sympathetic, full of gossip and comradeship, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... was not the sharp, querulous voice of the deaf old woman, it was more like the voice of the young aunt whom Mary remembered in childhood. The old woman was leaning forward, looking ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton—once the strongest of the party—seemed to sicken and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. "I'm going," she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, "but don't say anything about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head, and open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for the last week, untouched. "Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. "You've starved ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... wonderful to hear him speak of Miss Hatchard as if she were a querulous baby: in spite of his shyness he had the air of power that the experience of cities probably gave. It was the fact of having lived in Nettleton that made lawyer Royall, in spite of his infirmities, the strongest man in North Dormer; and Charity was sure ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... is she? No mate for a man like you, I feel sure. In the first place, she is not rich; I could tell that by the querulous complaints of her middle-class mother. She's just fit to be some pious Quaker's wife, or a Sister of Charity, or a governess, or a hospital nurse, or a nun—no companion for a man ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... limpid blue, with rolling silver-fringed clouds, and a pure-dazzling sun. For underlay, trees in fulness of tender foliage—liquid, reedy, long-drawn notes of birds—based by the fretful mewing of a querulous cat-bird, and the pleasant chippering-shriek of two kingfishers. I have been watching the latter the last half hour, on their regular evening frolic over and in the stream; evidently a spree of the liveliest kind. They pursue each other, whirling and wheeling around, with ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... or Mr Forester Dale as he preferred to be styled, was a somewhat querulous individual, with an unhappy knack of looking at the dark side of everything. Add to this the fact that he entertained a very exalted idea of his own (imaginary) excellences, and believed himself to be almost, if not quite, infallible, and it will be seen ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... an hour, running from top to bottom of some small sycamore, pecking at every crevice, pausing to dot a dozen inexplicable holes in a row upon an apple-tree, but never once intermitting the low, querulous murmur of housekeeping anxiety: now she stops to hammer with all her little life at some tough piece of bark, strikes harder and harder blows, throws herself back at last, flapping her wings furiously as she brings down her whole strength again upon it; finally it yields, and grub after ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... by night there was no long peace under the large stars. Desperate stampedes, the scattering of camp-fires, trampling, grunting in the dark; ghostly horsemen looming and vanishing suddenly in the half-light; and in the lull the querulous howling of ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... herd's-grass for the cows: Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; And, sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows The cattle shake their walnut bows; While, peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent And down his querulous challenge sent. ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... thought she had grown decidedly better-looking in the last year. At Redsands Miss Brabazon had been a little too buxom, a little too self-possessed, also, for his taste. And yet—and yet how wonderfully good she had been to poor Mrs. Varick! With what tender patience had she put up with the invalid's querulous bad temper, never even mentioning it to him, the doctor, who so often received painful confidences of the kind from those who were far nearer and dearer to a dying patient than Helen had been to querulous ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Where did you get him?" demanded the youth, in a querulous and husky tone of voice, as he became instantly aware that the mysterious steed in the tapestried chamber was the very counterpart of the furious animal ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe |
