"Shrewish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wrath, was her single domestic servant, one Miss Miggs; or as she was called, in conformity with those prejudices of society which lop and top from poor hand-maidens all such genteel excrescences—Miggs. This Miggs was a tall young lady, very much addicted to pattens in private life; slender and shrewish, of a rather uncomfortable figure, and though not absolutely ill-looking, of a sharp and acid visage. As a general principle and abstract proposition, Miggs held the male sex to be utterly contemptible and unworthy ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... you will be roused from your sound night's sleep in the morning at eight bells, or eight o'clock A.M., by the tinkling of a shrewish-sounding hand-bell, which says, as plainly as ever the chimes of Bow hailed Whittington lord mayor of London, "Arise, and shave, and make your toilet, and prepare to come forth; for the cow is milking, and ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... born here 50 B.C., dying in his seventy-sixth year. He is supposed to be buried here, and his tomb is shown; but that his bones lie beneath the stones is certainly like too many things in Italy—a fable. Here, by-the-by, also dwelt the shrewish Katharina— ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... do? Three midshipmen,—armed only with their tiny dirks,—what chance would they have among so many? There were scores of these sinewy sons of the Desert,—without counting the shrewish women,—each armed with gun and scimitar, any one of whom ought to have been more than a match for a "mid." It would have been sheer folly to have attempted a rescue. Despair only could ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... always been sorry that Mrs. Otway and his mother didn't exactly hit it off. His mother had once been a beauty, and was now a rather shrewish, sharp-tongued old lady, who had outlived most of the people and most of the things she had cared for in life. Mrs. Otway irritated Mrs. Guthrie. The old lady despised the still pretty widow's eager, interested, ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Marlowe, and was first printed in quarto in 1594. The chief change which the revision made in the plot was that which gave Katherine one sister instead of two and added the interest of rival suitors for this sister's hand. Stories concerning the taming of a shrewish woman are both ancient and common, but no direct antecedent of the older play has been discovered, although some incidents seem to have been borrowed from Gascoigue's Supposes, a translation from the Italian ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... been wondering whether you would both like to go sleighing with me some afternoon?" she ventured, with the humility so prone to assail humankind in a frank and shrewish presence. "The roads are in wonderful condition, and I don't believe you'd take cold. Do you know, I found Grandmother Eaton's foot-warmers, the other day! ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... note the breaking up of this sentiment. It was plain after all that no standard of ideality was to be maintained or struggled after. The relief was palpable; nevertheless, when Pilate's wife cast a shrewish gibe at him over the shoulder of her exit, the audience showed but a faint inclination to be amused. It was to be a play evidently like any other play, the same coarse fibre, the same vivid and vulgar appeals. It is doubtful whether this idea was critically present to ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... grinned, and complimented and gone their way, leaving the gunners high up on the bleak hillside to grill or mildew or freeze for weeks and months. Then she spoke. Her voice was higher pitched, it seemed, than ours—with a more shrewish tang to the speeding shell. Her recoil was as swift and as graceful as the shrug of a French-woman's shoulders; the empty case leaped forth and clanged against the trail; the tops of two or three pines fifty ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... advice Rolf would not listen. He had heard of how the shrewish Torborg treated her suitors, and felt that wooing her would be like taking a wild wolf by the ears. So he stayed unmarried for several years more, though Kettil often spoke of the matter, and one day said ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... versions or variants of Aladdin: a brief outline of their features will however serve my purpose. In the tale of Maruf the Cobbler, which concludes the Bulak and Calcutta printed texts of The Nights, we have an interesting version of Aladdin. The hero runs away from his shrewish wife and under false presences is married to a king's daughter. He confesses his imposture to the princess, who loves him dearly, and she urges him to flee from her father's vengeance and not to return until his death should leave the throne vacant, and having furnished him ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... chorus of some drinking or fighting song. There were lights in many of the dwellings where lived the married members of the permanent garrison, and from them ever and anon came the shrill tones of some shrewish, woman scolding her children or berating her lord and master. For a while Sir Aymer paced the great wide wall, reflecting upon what had occurred since he came to Pontefract and the matters he had learned from De Wilton. But ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... suddenly very small and very, very helpless—she was utterly spent. But there was something in her wide gray eyes—a dignity and a command—that completely dominated the shrewish wife of the hump- shouldered tailor, something that made the slatternly creature back out of the room, for Felicia Day, with her hand on the battered iron railing of the bed, had said clearly, ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... saw through a raised trap-door in the flooring above the shrewish face of old Mrs. Higgs, and the very same candle in the very same tin candlestick that he had seen in use in the ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... Ellis were at the head of a highly respectable and industrious coloured family. They had three children. Esther, the eldest, was a girl of considerable beauty, and amiable temper. Caroline, the second child, was plain in person, and of rather shrewish disposition; she was a most indefatigable housewife, and was never so happy as when in possession of a dust or scrubbing brush; she would have regarded a place where she could have lived in a perpetual state of house cleaning, as an earthly paradise. Between her and Master Charlie continued ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb |
