"Squeamish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alter the constitution of their Church in a point regarded by them as essential. In consequence of your breach of faith secession after secession takes place, till at length the Church of the State ceases to be the Church of the People. Then you begin to be squeamish. Then those articles of the Treaty of Union which, when they really were obligatory, you outrageously violated, now when they are no longer obligatory, now when it is no longer in your power to observe them according to the spirit, are represented as inviolable. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... March, there were amazing scenes. The democrats were crazy for blood; William shrank with horror against fighting his beloved Berliners. But this son, the future William I, who twenty-four years later was to gain the imperial German crown, was not so squeamish. The young prince gained the popular title "Cartridge-box prince," equivalent to saying that he was willing to blaze away at "beloved Berliners," or at any other citizens insane with political excitements ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... nodded suavely. "That is a very ... uh ... commendable desire," he said in a low, gentle voice that was a perfect match for his outward appearance of high gentility. "We can always use a good man," he continued, "who isn't afraid ... nor too squeamish." ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... badly," he explained with the utmost simplicity, "the only way to get it is to forge straight ahead. You can't afford to be squeamish over trifles. And I want you!"—his voice ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... heard the conversation up to this point, but now only an occasional word reached her ears. Gibbs seemed to be urging some action, and her father was as vigorously protesting. "I tell you, Jim, hit's th' only safe way. You didn't use t' be so squeamish." Several times the old shepherd was mentioned, and also the stranger whom Wash had seen that evening. And once, the trembling girl heard Young Matt's name. At length the guest rose to go, and Mr. Lane walked with him to the ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... ay, and black down the rigging at times too. By Jove, he's the fellow to make your kid-glove-wearing gentlemen dip their hands in the tar-bucket, and keep them there, if he sees they are in any way squeamish about it." ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... meant that Fred would feel squeamish about shooting before she hurled the knife, then she was certainly right. But she knew better than to make one preliminary motion. And Kagig knew better than to permit further pleasantries. I saw him whisper to Gregor, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... Philip Beaufroy Barry in his essay on Anna Zwanziger—tells us that some of the methods of torture employed by criminal women are so horrible that they cannot be described without outraging the laws of decency. Less squeamish than Lombroso or Mr Barry, I gather aloud that the tortures have to do with the organs of generation. But male savages in African and American Indian tribes have a punishment for adulterous women which will match anything ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... an awful tribute, for one great fact grew upon him: that the colonel represented almost perfectly the power of absolute evil. Donnegan was not a squeamish sort, but the fat, smiling face of Macon filled him with unutterable aversion. A dozen times he would have left the room, but a silken thread held him back, ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... said it was a chance in a thousand, as all the camps were so orderly now, not as in Bret Harte, or as it was in his young days. And he said both Octavia and I would make splendid miners' wives not to be squeamish or silly over the "carrion" that was shot, and not to have trembling nerves today. We felt so pleased, and only that underneath I can't help being sad about Nelson, we should all have been very gay. It was about nine o'clock when we ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... of this! While she was, and constantly professed to be, an unmarried mother; she was fit society for the squeamish and the formal. The moment she acknowledged herself a wife, and that by a marriage perhaps unexceptionable, the case was altered. Mary and myself, ignorant as we were of these elevated refinements, ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... who wasn't squeamish about the job! And I'd always been preparing to do it myself. It was my job—just ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... it may safely be set aside. One objection which has been made, and made with reason, is that Fielding, while taking care that Nemesis shall follow his hero's lapses, has spoken of them with too much indulgence, or rather without sufficient excuse. Coleridge, who was certainly not squeamish, seems to have felt this when, in a MS. note [Footnote: These notes were communicated by Mr. James Gillman to The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published by H. N. Coleridge in 1836. The book in which they were made, (it is the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Wenbourne, and others of the family, have been expecting; because of Anna's beauty and accomplishments, which I own might well merit a man of higher birth and fortune. But the little hussy has been so nice, and squeamish, that I began to fear she would take up her silly spend-thrift brother's whim, and determine to live single: therefore I shall not balk her, now ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... that these tales affected the House. Would they then sanction enormities, the bare recital of which made them shudder? Let them remember that humanity did not consist in a squeamish ear. It did not consist in shrinking and starting at such tales as these; but in a disposition of the heart to remedy the evils they unfolded. Humanity belonged rather to the mind than to the nerves. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... knight of the Badger snapped his fingers, and said, "So much for your burgher trainbands! All they be good for with their show of fight is to give honest landsknechts a good reason to fall on to the plunder, if so be one is hampered by a squeamish prince. But grammercy to Saint George, there be not many of that sort after they ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... find them much more easy and tractable, than the squeamish, fretful, discontented wretches, with which other ministers have had to do. There is but one expence that will be requisite. It is uniform, and capable of an easy calculation. In any great and trying question, I was going to say debate, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... the counting-house, the royal drawing-room, the senate,—what but fortune-hunters are they filled with? A fortune-hunter! Yes. You ARE one; and you would be nothing else, my dear Ned, if you were the greatest courtier, lawyer, legislator, prelate, or merchant, in existence. If you are squeamish and moral, Ned, console yourself with the reflection that at the very worst your fortune-hunting can make but one person miserable or unhappy. How many people do you suppose these other kinds of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... excellent judgment in leaving Trilby "clothed and in her right mind"—such as it was—while the Laird roosted on her couch in that attic bedroom and was— to us a Tennysonianism—mouthed and mumbled. Even New York's "four hundred" might have felt a little squeamish at seeing this pair of platonic turtle doves hid away in an obscure corner of naughty Paris in puris naturalibus even if "there is ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... prone and ready to write it. So that I once more affirm, that if it were not done in respect to his Lady, who, no doubt, peruses him extreamly, it must naturally be the effect of Hypcrisie, for, to be squeamish in one place and not in another is Ridiculous, especially when one word is Innocent in its kind, and makes the sense, and the other when us'd makes it wretched Affectation, and ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... relief, the author would wish to answer, that the Almighty frequently accomplishes His purposes by means which appear very singular to the eyes of men, and at the same time to observe that the manner in which that relief is obtained, is calculated to read a lesson to the proud, fanciful, and squeamish, who are ever in a fidget lest they should be thought to mix in low society, or to bestow a moment's attention on publications which are not what is called of a perfectly unobjectionable character. Had not Lavengro formed the acquaintance ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... free and easy and nobody took offense at anything said or done. In fact if one were squeamish about such things Sanguinetti's was no place for him or her. One found one's self talking and laughing with the people about as if they were old friends. It made no difference how you were dressed, nor how dignified you tried to be, it was all one with the crowd around the tables. If you wished ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... abound among such folk, inevitably, and they will resort to extraordinary expedients in their search for relief. Although squeamish as a race about inflicting much pain in cold blood, they will systematically infect other animals with their own rank diseases, or cut out other animals' organs, or kill and dissect them, hoping thus to learn how to offset their ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... time she had walked a block her faculties were returning. It had all been preposterous, crude. She had blindly lost her temper. Something kept crying out to her that she was an old maid. Perhaps she shouldn't have minded. She was finicky and squeamish. A girl had to have some privacy in the place she entertained her company. But Maida—and the cook! The thought of that flat, pasty, sullen face stirred in her ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Von Anspach had "seen to it," prodigally. And "Oh, well!" I thought; "if everybody else is so extravagantly pleased, what in heaven's name is the use of my being squeamish? Besides, she is only doing what I am doing, and getting all the pleasure out of life that is possible. She and I are very sensible people. At least, I suppose we are. I wonder, though? Meanwhile, I had better go and look for that preposterously beautiful Elena. And ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... sense of the word you're not that at all, sir. You're a great builder. You've done more for the Northwest than any man living. You couldn't have done it if you had been squeamish. I hold the end justifies the means. What you've got is yours because you've won it. Men who do a great work for the public are entitled to ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... swift glance of the cynical, laughing, "fast" eyes at Susan and away. "The best I can—for the house—and for myself. . . . I talk to you because I know you're a lady and because I don't want to see you thrown down. A woman that's living quietly at home—like a lady—she can be squeamish. But out in the world a woman can't afford to be—no, nor a man, neither. You don't find this set down in the books, and they don't preach it in the churches—leastways they didn't when I used to go to church. But ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... everybody was already dressed and ready for the reception of the guests, and languishing from inaction and expectation. Despite the fact that the majority of the women experienced toward men—with the exception of their lovers—a complete, even somewhat squeamish, indifference, before every evening dim hopes came to life and stirred within their souls; it was unknown who would choose them, whether something unusual, funny and alluring might not happen, whether a guest would not astonish with his generosity, whether there would ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... curtly. "I just thought it might be a convenience to you. I'd help you out. I don't see 't you need be so—squeamish. What you're doing ain't so pure an' lofty 't you can set up for Marcus Aurelius and St. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... tainted with some bad disease." The witnesses further made oath, that the said Timothy lay out a-nights, and went abroad often at unseasonable hours; and it was credibly reported he did business in another family: that he pretended to have a squeamish stomach, and could not eat at table with the rest of the servants, though this was but a pretence to provide some nice bit for himself; that he refused to dine upon salt fish, only to have an opportunity to eat ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... generosity had kept him from becoming suspicious and mistrustful. This same false position was the cause of an utter inconsistency, which permeated his whole being. He was fastidiously accurate and horribly squeamish, tried to be cynical and coarse in his speech, but was an idealist by nature. He was passionate and pure-minded, bold and timid at the same time, and, like a repentant sinner, ashamed of his sins; he was ashamed alike of his timidity and ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... monarch of the Prado in winter: in summer of the Chaumiere and Mont Parnasse. Not a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment showed a more amiable laisser-aller in the dance—that peculiar dance at which gendarmes think proper to blush, and which squeamish society has banished from her salons. In a word, Harmodius was the prince of mauvais sujets, a youth with all the accomplishments of Goettingen and Jena, and all the eminent graces ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with her pah!—that's what I call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow. Making believe be what you are not is the essence of vulgarity. Show over dirt is the one attribute of vulgar people. If any man can walk behind one of these women and see what she rakes up as she goes, and not feel squeamish, he has got a tough stomach. I wouldn't let one of 'em into my room without serving 'em as David served Saul at the cave in the wilderness,—cut off his skirts, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Now thet they have bamboozled the Queen (an' she herself is as squar' a little woman as ever lived) inter gittin' Danbury outer th' city, an' now thet the fight is won fer 'em, an' now thet th' boys we brought is about ter raise hell (as they certainly is), Otaballo ain't goneter be squeamish 'bout removin' quiet like and safe everyone who bothers him. In three days we might not be able to git out long 'nuff to git tergether an outfit er ask any questions. There's a whole lot 'bout thet map o' yourn thet ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... a little squeamish or so for the first day, but nothing like some of our passengers. The great secret I have always found, is to eat plenty, and drink a little brandy; that is much better than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... not know the world," said her husband; "and you have always been as squeamish as when you were a miss ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... says, has no charity. He drives clean, wholesome smoke out of the hotel, and stinks the place up with as nasty a chemical mixture as disgusting science ever invented. He reminds me of a Toronto professor of anatomy who wouldn't allow the poor squeamish medicals to smoke in the dissecting room, because, he said, one bad smell was better than two. If I had my way with Bulky I'd smoke him blue in the face, if for nothing but to drown his abominable assafoetida, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... make a habit of it. One sweater doesn't make a summer! I hope Mrs. Berry won't be so squeamish! If I thought she would, I'd throw hers in the ash barrel before I'd give ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... crowd all into one grand mess Or mass; for should I stretch into detail, My Muse would run much more into excess, Than when some squeamish people deem her frail; But though a bonne vivante, I must confess Her stomach's not her peccant part; this tale However doth require some slight refection, Just to relieve her spirits ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Dinah, in a tone of exasperation. 'You have ever stood in the way of your own fortune. Had you not been so over squeamish you might have changed the children, and made your own son the heir of the Moncton. Had I been at home, this surely would have been done. This was all the good I got by leaving you to the guidance of a handsome, good-natured ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... were loose in the saddle! There were trades which the employers kept going for local reasons—these must be hunted out and brought to a standstill, even at the cost of increasing unemployment. They were making energetic preparations for war, and it was not the time to be squeamish about their weapons. Pelle was in his element. This was something better than ruining a single shoemaker, even if he was the biggest in the city! He was rich in ideas, and never wavered in carrying them ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... refuse &c 764. Adj. unwilling; not in the vein, loth, loath, shy of, disinclined, indisposed, averse, reluctant, not content; adverse &c (opposed) 708; laggard, backward, remiss, slack, slow to; indifferent &c 866; scrupulous; squeamish &c (fastidious) 868; repugnant &c (dislike) 867; restiff^, restive; demurring &c v.; unconsenting &c (refusing) 764; involuntary &c 601. Adv. unwillingly &c adj.; grudgingly, with a heavy heart; with a bad, with an ill grace; against one's wishes, against one's will, against the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hinted, that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading, had not only rendered our hero unfit for serious and sober study, it had even disgusted him in some degree with that in which he had ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... repeated Mr. Bennet. "What, has she frightened away some of your lovers? Poor little Lizzy! But do not be cast down. Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret. Come, let me see the list of pitiful fellows who have been kept aloof ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... You are so entangled, that you can neither advance nor recede. You are fixed where I have placed you.—Thus much for the present. Now leave me in my native good humour. As to the old lawyer, I can soon manage him, never fear—Get the better of your squeamish conscience, ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... a squeamish appetite, and the thick slabs of poor butter on the bread turned his stomach, but he saw other boys scraping it off and followed their example. They all had potted meats and such like, which they had brought ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... not ignorant that I have often shut my eyes upon certain affairs—. Enough; they must now testify their attachment for me. Why should they oppose the presentation of the comtesse? <Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!> they were not so squeamish in the days of madame de Pompadour." At these latter words I could not forbear laughing. La Vauguyon and de Richelieu left us and here the conversation terminated. The next morning they brought me a note from the ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... And with the reckless abandon of a sailor he planted the broad toe of a number nine boot in Herr von Staden's short ribs, hoping to break a few, for in the process of working his way up from the bottom Michael had fought under deep-sea rules too often to be squeamish now. So he kicked Herr von Staden again, after which a glimmer of reason penetrated his hot head and he walked to pick up the supercargo's automatic pistol. Then something landed on him from above and he ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... may be no very particular reason why you should be invited to read The Love Story of Guillaume-Marc (HUTCHINSON) it is, I vouch, a vivid enough tale of its genre. Squeamish folk, perhaps, may think that this is not the most opportune time at which to draw attention to the blood-lust that was so marked a feature of the French Revolution. But, granted that you do not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... a firebrand, and his eyes sparkled with wrath, as he loudly exclaimed, "What difference does it make to you, you ungrateful cur, whether the account is true or false, so long as you get your money? Bring none of your squeamish objections here. Either take the account as I have made it out, and swear to it, without flinching, or"—and here he swore an oath too revolting to transcribe "not a cent of money shall ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... squeamish. They thrust their hands into the lathery mouths of their brutes to show the state of their teeth, and wiped their fingers on their trousers or grass afterwards, without a tremor, though my friend could never forbear a shudder at the sight. ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... the partner of his bosom, the worthy gentleman began an address to her which cannot be put down on paper here; because the world is exceedingly squeamish, and does not care to hear the whole truth about rascals, and because the fact is that almost every other word of the Captain's speech was a curse, such as would shock the beloved reader were it ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for the unfeeling, the falsely refined, The squeamish in taste, and the narrow of mind, And the small critic wielding his delicate pen, That I sing of old Adam, the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... "he wan't quite so outspoken, to be sure; but he came around to it in the course of a month or two, and kind o' beat around the bush then, and wanted to know what I thought on't, and—wall, I told him 'yes,'—I didn't see no use in bein' squeamish so long as I'd once made up ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... she took matters in hand, but she only outlived him a few months. If she had lived I believe that she would have retrieved our fortune. I know that she had more executive ability than my father. He was very squeamish about selling his servants, but she would have put every one of them in her pocket before permitting them to eat her out of house and home. But whom ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... she was on her best behaviour, in fact, she was modesty and demureness itself. What wonder, then, that his imagination should fail to realise the changes that eight years must have worked? He knew too much against himself, and was too bankrupt in love to be squeamish; if Ellen had been only what he thought her, and if his prospects had been in reality no better than he believed they were, I do not know that there is anything much more imprudent in what Ernest proposed than there is in half the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... was all; not sermonizing or proselytizing. He was partly comprehended by Chumley Potts, fully a week later. The unsuspecting fellow, soon to be despatched in the suite of Brailstone, bore away an unwontedly affectionate dismissal to his bed, and spoke some rather squeamish words himself, as he recollected with disgust when he ran about ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man, indeed, a much plainer speech was permitted to the old traveler. There were no squeamish readers in those days, and hence, in some respects, he is too candid for modern taste. But it often happens that precisely the characteristics or customs of strange races which are of most value to ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... beef and ale? We have claret, I trust, for the squeamish, if they are above the condition of tradespeople. But of course you leave no person of higher quality in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... everything she must do herself with her weak, unaccustomed fingers (of which you follow the movements with suppressed irritation as those pale members do their best to uncork a medicine bottle, to snuff a candle, to pour out physic, or to touch you in a squeamish sort of way). If you are an impatient, hasty sort of man, and beg of her to leave the room, you will hear by the vexed, distressed sounds which come from her that she is humbly sobbing and weeping behind the door, and whispering foolishness ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... there's Sir EDWARD, who, when he goes bedward, must have his reflections nightmarish! It seems, from such rigs, that our biggest Big Wigs are scarcest to govern a parish. MCDOUGALL again, is agog to restrain all that gives his soul pain—it's a squeamish one!— He thinks he's a stayer as Jabberwock-slayer, mere Angry Boy he, not a Beamish One! These Oracles windy do raise such a shindy, and kick such a doose of a dust up, One would think without them ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... those paid for by loan-sharks, clairvoyants, medical quacks, and the votaries of vice. The New York "Herald" has recently stopped printing its vicious personals. It also refuses fortune-tellers the hospitality of its columns, though it is not so squeamish in regard to loan-agencies and patent medicines. How many papers still publish the advertisement of Mrs. Laudanum's soothing syrup for babies? When you remember that the proprietary medicine concerns have been accustomed to spend forty million dollars ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... is not much." He had intended to go direct to Dunmore House from the Kellys, and to have seen Barry, but he would have had to stop for dinner if he had done so; and though, generally speaking, not very squeamish in his society, he did not wish to enjoy another after-dinner tete-a-tete with him—"It's better to get him over to Tuam," thought he, "and try and make him see rason when he's sober: nothing's too hot or too bad for him, when he's mad ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... presented itself, that might be sought for in vain in any country but Spain. Above a wood-fire, which burned black and smouldering in the strong daylight, a large iron kettle was suspended, emitting an odour that would infallibly have turned the stomachs of more squeamish or less hungry persons than those for whom its contents were destined. It would have required an expert chemist to analyse the ingredients of this caldron, of which the attendant Hecate was a barefooted, grimy-visaged drummer-boy, who, having been temporarily promoted to the office of cook, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... something to write about, but because some circumstance that has happened to himself is the best possible illustration of the subject, and he is not the man to shrink from giving the best possible illustration of the subject from a squeamish delicacy. He likes both himself and his subject too well. He does not put himself before it, and say, 'Admire me first,' but places us in the same situation with himself, and makes us see all that he does. There is no blindman's-buff, no conscious hints, no awkward ventriloquism, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Harrington passed through Flanders into France, and thence to Italy. When he came hack to England, some courtiers who were with him in Rome told Charles I that Harrington had been too squeamish at the Pope's consecration of wax lights, in refusing to obtain a light, as others did, by kissing his Holiness's toe. The King told Harrington that he might have complied with a custom which only signified respect to a temporal prince. But his Majesty was satisfied with the reply, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... at the bar, you have been found guilty by a jury, after a very long and careful consideration of your remarkable and strange case, of a very serious offence; an offence which squeamish moralists are apt to call robbing the widow and orphan; a cant phrase also, with which I hesitate to soil my lips, designates this offence as swindling. You will permit me to remark that the very fact ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... well as the goose; and, as I have heard our curate observe, tramples down the lofty turrets of the prince as well as the lowly cottage of the swain. That same lady, who is more powerful than coy, knows not what it is to be dainty and squeamish; but eats of everything, and crams her wallet with people of all nations, degrees, and conditions; she is none of your laborers that take their afternoon's nap, but mows at all hours, cutting down the dry stubble as well as the green grass; nor does she seem to chew, but rather swallows and devours ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... both the Attorney and Solicitor-General—Mr. Ball, Q.C., to press against the accused that technical right which honourable usage reprehended as unfair! No doubt the crown authorities felt it was not a moment in which they could afford to be squeamish or scrupulous. The speeches of Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Martin had had a visible effect upon the jury—had, in fact, made shreds of the crown case; and so Mr. Ball was put up as the last hope of averting the "disaster" of ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... breakfast had been corn-pone, cold, with no lubricant to ease it down the lane. There had been a certain squeamish liquid in addition, which gave off the smell of a burning straw-stack, served in a large tin cup. Joe had not tasted it, but his nose had told him that it was "wheat coffee," a brew which his mother had made sometimes in the old days of their ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... I shall be met by many with the squeamish proverb, De mortuis nil nisi bonum; though I am not disposed at this moment to enter on a discussion of the merits of this received axiom. Shakspeare tells us "The evil that men do, lives ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... The common quality, however, of all Dryden's comedies is their nastiness, the more remarkable because we have ample evidence that he was a man of modest conversation. Pepys, who was by no means squeamish (for he found "Sir Martin Marall" "the most entire piece of mirth ... that certainly ever was writ ... very good wit therein, not fooling"), writes in his diary of the 19th June, 1668: "My wife and Deb ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the spot as one of evil omen, and commenced to wait for Chrysis to lead me on my way. I took a short stroll and had just seated myself where I had sat the day before, when she came under the trees, leading a little old woman by the hand. "Well, Mr. Squeamish," she chirped, when she had greeted me, "have you recovered your appetite?" In the meantime, the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... was so unpleasant and suggestive that even Otter, who certainly could not be called squeamish, hastened to descend the rock. As he passed round it his attention was attracted by the skeleton of a man who, from various indications, must have been alive within the last few weeks. The bones were clad in a priest's cloak, of which the dwarf, who was trembling ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... knots in close formation without lights. The night was as black as the wolf's mouth, and the rapidly rising wind cut the tops off the short seas and sent them flying over the bridge in constant showers of spray. Moreover, the perpetual pitching and rolling soon gave our friend a squeamish and altogether nasty sensation in the region of his waistcoat, and in ten minutes, by which time the water had found its way through his oilskins and was trickling merrily down the back of his neck, he ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... of Balthazar be squeamish? Gold, the interest of the abbaye, and the foolish eclat of this silly scene, have enabled my father to dispose of his child to yonder mercenary, who has bargained like a Jew in the affair, and who, among other conditions, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Squeamish young donkey!" said the hard-griping old man of the world, when he received his son's letter. "Bad as his weak, sensitive mother. Know better some day. If I had been so particular, Dunroe would not be ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... "We're too squeamish," he said. "It comes of the long Peace. I've sent word to Costello. I suppose I'll have to appear at the inquest. They say a wise man never found a dead man. No one would accuse me ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... pestilential vapours, baffles words in which to describe it. To be sure, persons in daily life were used to conditions which would now be condemned as hopelessly insanitary, and were not so susceptible and squeamish as we have since become. The ordinary state of some of the poorer students' halls in Oxford appears to us as simply disgusting; yet the thing was accepted then as ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to be squeamish—even under the glance of the loveliest eyes. Taking the robe from my shoulders, I spread it over the back of my horse; and employing a piece of the laryette as a surcingle, I bound it fast. Into the improvised saddle I mounted—the girl, from ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Martha. "Take no heed of her, the child has suffered much, she is weak and squeamish. Now I, although I believe that my death lies before me, I say, go ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... formal, formal, respectable *ir repitiendo, etc., to keep repeating, etc. jefe del despacho, manager llevarse bien, to get on well together lograr, to contrive, to attain machacar, to hammer, to insist mandato, order, injunction melindroso, squeamish, very particular multa, fine, penalty Noruego, Norwegian peligro, danger remolcar, to tow sacar en limpio, to make out isanto y bueno! that is all very well sargento, sergeant transportar, to transport, to convey tul bordado, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... famous New York company, and afterward a "star" under his direction. She was a woman who could not be taught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carried with people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was not squeamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty—I think she was lame—I seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand was disproportionately young and slight, a handsome youth, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... Gordon and the other cop went to work, but most of them weren't squeamish. When it was over, the two picked up their whimpering captive. Gordon pocketed the revolver with his free hand. "Walk, O'Neill!" he ordered. "Your legs are still whole. ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... rustled with flurry and agitation, for in spite of mine host's bravado, she was a little perplexed. But in a bachelor's house, and with bachelor guests, these matters are readily managed. There is no lady of the house to stand upon squeamish points about lodging guests in odd holes and corners, and exposing the shabby parts of the establishment. A bachelor's housekeeper is used to shifts and emergencies. After much worrying to and fro, and divers consultations about the red room, and the blue room, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... pronouncing Devilton; as, I admit, I have heard the old people laughingly term the Neck. This belongs to the "Gaul darn ye" school, and it is not to my taste. I say the ignorant and vulgar, for this is just the class to be squeamish on such subjects. I have been told—though I cannot say that I have heard it myself—but I am told, there have been people from the eastward among us of late years, who affect to call "Hell-Gate," "Hurl-Gate," or "Whirl-Gate," or by some other such sentimental, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... dangerous as venomous serpents, and, after what you saw on board that barque, you do not think we need be squeamish about ridding the earth ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... come, and am not in the mood for it if I could," was his answer. "What folly does she give way to? This is the ninth time she hath felt strangely, and I have felt as squeamish as she—but nine is more ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the faintest trace in the play of the idea occasionally met with, and to some extent embodied in Madame Bernhardt's impersonation of Lady Macbeth, that her hold upon her husband lay in seductive attractions deliberately exercised. Shakespeare was not unskilled or squeamish in indicating ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the least squeamish about telling us that Tippoo Tib had surely buried huge quantities of ivory, and had caused to be slain afterward every one who shared ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... resort of ignoble souls. They will have others not only suffer for their own sin, but even treat them with the scorn due themselves. And not one man was there in the colony, excepting perhaps Sir Humphrey Hyde and Parson Downs and the brothers Nicholas and Richard Barry, which last were not squeamish, and would have had me as boon companion at Barry Upper Branch, having been drawn to me by a kindred boldness of spirit and some little passages which I had had with the Indians, which be not worth repeating. I being in such a position in the colony, ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... a woman, squeamish," Pierre said in a rough voice. "She would come with us, thinking she could pick up a trinket or two; but, ma foi, it is hot down there, and she turned sick. So we are taking ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... West-country word for squeamish, but the East Anglian name Creasey, Cressy, is usually for the local Kersey (Suffolk). The only solution of Pratt is that it is Anglo-Sax. praett, cunning, adopted early as a personal name, while Storr, of Scandinavian ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... therefore useless to think of growing delicate or squeamish plants. Most amateur gardeners maintain a lifelong struggle against the devices of Nature; but when the forces of man and the forces of Nature come into conflict Nature wins every time. Nature has decreed that certain ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... squeamish, Ben. They are double our number, and if we don't kill them by a surprise, ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... asked the Bolsheviks to lunch at Genoa in April, 1922, Henry now felt of Charles Wilbraham, only more so. And Suliman Bey too ... a ghastly Turk; for Turk (whatever you might think of Russians) were ghastly; the very thought of them, for all their agreeable manners, turned Henry, who was squeamish about physical cruelty, sick. God, what ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... Marshall. Among Mrs. Quin's more notable parts were Alizia (Alice Perrers) in Orrery's The Black Prince, produced 19 October, 1667; 1677, Thalestris in Pordage's The Siege of Babylon, and Astrea in The Constant Nymph; 1678, Lady Knowell in Sir Patient Fancy and Lady Squeamish in Otway's Friendship in Fashion; 1682, Queen Elizabeth in Banks' The Unhappy Favourite, and Sunamire in Southerne's The Loyal Brother. Mrs. Quin appears to have retired from the stage towards the close of the year 1682. There exists of this actress an ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the STRANGER, with a wink] The Squire's squeamish—too much of a gentleman. But he don't count. The grey mare's all right. You wire to Henry. I'm off to our solicitors. We'll make that old rhinoceros sell us back the Centry at a decent price. These Hornblowers—[Laying his finger on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The company applauded. Sir Charles Carew, in a richly plaintive tenor voice, sang a lyric of Rochester's. Several of the gentlemen looked askance (the clergyman had left the room with the ladies), but on the Governor's crying out "Excellent!" they considered themselves over-squeamish, and ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... I am not squeamish. I have always let my children read what they would. I have never made a mystery of the relations of the sexes, for I know the call of the unseen—the fascination lent by concealment, of discovery. I believe frankness to be a good thing. A mind that is ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... Vetch. "You don't like Gershom, I infer; but when you are ready to sweep, remember you mustn't be over-squeamish about ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... unimaginative mind there was sufficient justification in that attitude. As for the ease with which he planned to kill and cover his killing under the semblance of accident, he would have said, if you could make him speak of it, that he was not squeamish. They'd all have to ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... in equity, Each should confess his sins with me; For laws of right and justice cry, The guiltiest alone should die." "Sire," said the Fox, "your majesty Is humbler than a king should be, And over-squeamish in the case. What! eating stupid sheep a crime? No, never, sire, at any time. It rather was an act of grace, A mark of honour to their race. And as to shepherds, one may swear, The fate your majesty describes Is recompense less full than fair For ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... a habit of it. One sweater doesn't make a summer! I hope Mrs. Berry won't be so squeamish! If I thought she would, I'd throw hers in the ash barrel before ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... placed frankly on the bill of fare to-day as a ration for troops and civilians alike, but many of the latter refused to take it. Hunger will probably make them less squeamish, but one cannot help sympathising with the weakly, who are already suffering from want of proper nourishment, and for whom there is no alternative. Market prices have long since gone beyond the reach ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... "would you have me steal a dory then?" "Do you make it a matter of conscience," replied Holford, "to steal a dory, when you have been a common robber and pirate, stealing ships and cargoes, and plundering all mankind that fell in your way! Stay here if you are so squeamish?" and he left him to consider of ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... he applied to the Tories, who nearly all agreed to support him, and were prepared to go to all lengths, even to that of swallowing the whole Bill if necessary; the Duke of Newcastle particularly would do anything. These were the men who were so squeamish that they could not be brought to support amendments even, unless they were permitted to turn the schedules upside-down, straining at gnats out of office and swallowing camels in. It is remarkable that after the sacrifice Wharncliffe ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... yet to settle. Such gruel sustains life here, I thought; so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the motes by a skilfully directed undercurrent, I drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I could. I am not squeamish in such ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... influence, the only good one in his life, Pepys continued zealous and, for the period, pure in his employment. He would not be "bribed to be unjust," he says, though he was "not so squeamish as to refuse a present after," suppose the king to have received no wrong. His new arrangement for the victualling of Tangier, he tells us with honest complacency, will save the king a thousand and gain Pepys three hundred pounds a year,—a statement which exactly fixes the degree of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Amos sent a squeamish glance out of the corner of one eye at the moving ground beneath them, and then, realizing that they were on their way back to the Mirabelle, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... "I'm squeamish," he admitted. "The trouble on Dara is Med Service fault. Before my time, but still—I'll stick to rations ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... which perhaps was the wisest thing they could have done, for Stokoe was the kind of man who in a case such as this would willingly have knocked a hole in each one of them. In those days people were not very squeamish, and Stokoe seems to have gone quietly back to bed without greatly troubling himself about the slain robber; but the man's friends must have stolen back during the night, for in a copse near by, in a ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... put money in my pocket. If you write for me you won't be called upon to express your own opinions. All you have to do is to express mine and keep your body and soul together comfortably. You can't do that now and the two'll part company before long unless you alter. You were not so squeamish last night at ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... but without the slightest apparent effect. Probably two million squeamish mosquitoes were driven away by the disgust of our medicaments, but what good did that do us when eight million others were not so particular? At the last we hung bandanas under our hats, cut fans of leaves, and stumbled on through a most miserable ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... children will hardly believe it) inclined to like my friends the better for doing what they jolly well pleased—I barred this vendetta-game of his, and would have called him off if I could. Folk were a bit more squeamish, if you remember, in those dear old ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... No squeamish notions filled his breast, The Union was his theme; "No surrender and no compromise," ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... Baltimore," he said, "I'm not squeamish. But I'm cursed if I like to hear a man who may die any time ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... just now, and beneath this again is this large distribution of the lawless and sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the coarse, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote that, "Science sans conscience n'est que ruine ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... brigantine's equipment, rather than attending to the object which so much attracted the looks of his companions. "The night air has taut'ned the cordage of that flying-jib-boom, fellows, until it begins to lift its nose like a squeamish cockney, when he holds it over salt-water! See to it, and bring the spar in line; else shall we have a reproof from the sorceress, who little likes to have any of her limbs deranged. Here, gentlemen, the opinions of the lady may be read, as clearly as ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... which caused some good-natured discussion nine years ago, between the contributor and the editor. Perhaps I was squeamish not to have been, willing to print this matter at that time. Some persons, no doubt, will adopt that opinion, but as both President and author have long ago met on the other side of criticism and magazines, we will leave the subject to their ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... true," he says, "that the Author is any thing but mincing in his expressions and descriptions, but there is nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over fastidious. There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world; let us hope however that there is not so much as there was. Indeed can we doubt that such folly is on the decline, when we find Albemarle Street in '60, willing to publish a harmless but plain speaking book which Smithfield ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... sittings on the ground that he was always drunk in the evening; and even an archbishop—an Irish archbishop, it is true—whose jovial habits broke down his constitution. Scratch those jovial toping aristocrats, and you everywhere find the Squire Western. A man of squeamish tastes and excessive sensibility jostled amongst that thick-skinned, iron-nerved generation, was in a position with which anyone may sympathise who knows the sufferings of a delicate lad at a public ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen |
