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More "Officious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Splurge and tell her all? No,—what right had she? That would but precipitate an exposure which might not be necessary. The case was not clear enough to justify so officious a step. Madeline was in no immediate danger. Perhaps she had only taken a different road to avoid the odious companionship of Withers. No doubt she was half-way home already. She would wait till morning, for clearer judgment and information. Till then she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Officious Members. SECTION 18. A member of The Mother Church is not entitled to hold office or read in branch churches of ...
— Manual of the Mother Church - The First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts • Mary Baker Eddy
... it twenty, the public will be the gainers, as the article is rising fast. You are desired by no means to forget Bermuda; if you should, Great Britain will seize it this winter, or France on the first rupture, having been made sensible of its importance, by the officious zeal of that same Mr H. As your navy is increasing, will you commission me to send you duck for twenty or thirty sail? I can procure it for you to the northward on very good terms, and you have ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... a good reason even for my most wilful conduct, and an excuse for my most irrational, will easily credit that, in interfering in an affair in which you are concerned, I am not influenced by an unworthy, an officious, or a meddling spirit. No, dear May! it is because I think it better for you that we should speak upon this subject that I have ventured to treat upon it. Perhaps I broke it in a crude, but, credit me, not ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... garden cast their shadows on a pale wall: there was a white nursery of unlimited dimensions and a white bath-room with a fluffy mat which comforted the soles of his feet and tickled his toes. Another recollection was of the day when a lady already faintly familiar to him was introduced by an officious nurse as his new mother, and when he looked up at her, with interest in her relationship and admiration for her prettiness, he saw her making herself look very tall and stern as she said clearly, "I ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... hat, and lay by the band and ribband," said the officious dame; "and ye maun never, at no hand, speak o' leaving the land, or of selling the gowd chain, for your uncle has an unco pleasure in looking on you, and in counting the links of the chainzie; and ye ken auld folk canna last for ever; sae the chain, and the lands, and a' will be your ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... passed through the country that was acquainted with Arndt's antecedents, and being a dirty dog he thought it was his duty to inform the farmer that his hired man was an ex-convict, horse-thief and a desperado of the worst type. Some men are so officious and are so anxious to do their duty when it is in their power to injure a fellow-man who is trying to earn an honest living. Gus immediately got the "bounce." He was informed by his employer that he did not want to make his home a harbor for horse-thieves. ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... Windy, had his fingers but tightened a trifle. He wondered if the minister would have talked in the same way—blatantly and without knowledge—of the virtues of the dead. In a chair at the side of the coffin the bereaved husband, in new black clothes, wept audibly. The baldheaded, officious undertaker kept moving nervously about, intent upon the ritual of ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... which appeare outwardly in their words and actions, are the signes of our Honoring, and these goe by the name of WORSHIP, in Latine, CULTUS. Therefore, to Pray to, to Swear by, to Obey, to bee Diligent, and Officious in Serving: in summe, all words and actions that betoken Fear to Offend, or Desire to Please, is Worship, whether those words and actions be sincere, or feigned: and because they appear as signes of Honoring, are ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... The officious military gentleman did not feel called upon to explain why he had retained it. Now, all the while the party was at a halt, and the agony that poor Annette was suffering ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... answer until he had made sure that she was not irritating Rabbit with a too-officious guidance. When he saw that she was holding the reins loosely as he had told her to do, and was merely laying the weight of a rein on one side of the neck and then on the other, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... round there. It doesn't give anyone a chance. Why can't His Objectionable Excellency turn his hand to something useful, and clear some of it away? By the way, I tried to catch a karait this morning. I am going to start a menagerie for Peggy's edification. But our khit, who is a very officious person when he isn't wrapt in contemplation of nothing in particular, interfered and killed the little beast before I had time to explain. I told him he was a silly ass, but he seemed to think he had done something praiseworthy. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... They landed in Palestine, and found any thing but a welcome from the Christian inhabitants. Under the mild sway of Saladin, they had enjoyed repose and toleration, and both were endangered by the arrival of the Germans. They looked upon them in consequence as over-officious intruders, and gave them no encouragement in the warfare against Saphaddin. The result of this Crusade was even more disastrous than the last; for the Germans contrived not only to embitter the Saracens against the Christians of Judea, but to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... reprint them, and the booksellers were forbidden to deliver any copies that might still be in hand. The decree, however, contained no prohibition of the continuance of the work. It was probably not meant to do anything more serious than to pacify the Jesuits, and lend an apparent justification to the officious pastorals of the great prelates. Some even thought that the aim of the government was to forestall severer proceedings on the part of the parliament of lawyers;[133] for corporations of lawyers have seldom been less bigoted or obstructive than ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... darics!" bawled the officious Spartan, never relaxing his grip. "Hark you, friends, it's plain as day. Dexippus of Corinth has a Syrian lad like this. The young scoundrel's robbed his master and ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... blows:— Shall I live on, to see this bastard kneel And call me father? better burn it now, Than curse it then. But, be it; let it live:— It shall not neither.—[To ANTIGONUS.] You, sir, come you hither: You that have been so tenderly officious With Lady Margery, your midwife, there, To save this bastard's life,—for 'tis a bastard, So sure as this beard's grey,—what will you adventure To save this ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... his constables, brought in the prisoners. Sarah Good, a poverty-stricken, wandering, and wretched victim of ill-fortune and ill-usage, was put to the bar. Every effort was made by the examining magistrate, aided by the officious interference of the marshal, or other deluded or evil-disposed persons,—who, like him, were permitted to interpose with charges or abusive expressions,—to overawe and confound, involve in contradictions, and mislead the poor creature, and force her ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... kindness as heaven sheds dew. Who indeed could doubt it?—least of all you, who are living on her kindness day by day, as flowers live on light? There is none of that officious parade which blunts the point of benevolence; but it tempers every action with a blessing. If trouble has come upon you, she knows that her voice, beguiling you into cheerfulness, will lay your fears; and as she draws her chair beside ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... and so you will be unless you kick. Well, I'm off now," added he, taking up his hat. "I dare say I've offended you, and you'll call me an officious humbug. I may be a fool for concerning myself about a young muff like you; but anyhow I've told you what I think of ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... from many considerations that the noble Earl took a lively and almost officious interest in the public honor and character of his friend, for Hariot appears to have been as careless of his own scientific reputation as his contemporary Shakspeare is said to have been of ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... of the defects in his education, and of the gross ignorance that overspread his dominions, resolved to extend his ideas, and improve his judgment by travelling; and that he might be the less restricted by forms, or interrupted by officious curiosity, he determined to travel in disguise. He was extremely ambitious of becoming a maritime power, and in particular of maintaining a fleet in the Black-sea; and his immediate aim was to learn the principles of ship-building. He appointed an embassy for Holland, to regulate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... want you and Sidney to come over and live at Quien Sabe. I know—you can't make me believe that the reporters and officers and officious busy-faces that pretend to offer help just so as they can satisfy their curiosity aren't nagging you to death. I want you to let me take care of you and the little tad till all this trouble of yours is over with. There's plenty of place for you. You can ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... route we were to take, and so we had to push our way through it, sleigh and all, he scarcely condescending to help his squaw when it stuck between the stumps of the trees, she also looking with supreme contempt on me when I attempted to help her; indeed she, I fancy, considered me rather officious than otherwise. I travelled on for several days with this unattractive couple, and yet I believe that they were really fond of each other. They were hospitable in their way also, for their pot was always well supplied with meat, and they gave me as much as I could ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... then entered enthusiastically into his views. He observed that delays were dangerous; 'the barring-out,' he said, 'should take place the very next morning to prevent the possibility of being betrayed.' On a previous occasion (he said), some officious little urchin had told the master the whole plot, several days having been allowed to intervene between the planning of the project and its execution, and, to the astonishment of the boys, it appeared they found the master at his desk ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... chase for a rare book, and some other matters, with the adventures of a seventeenth-century ancestress of this book's author, who eloped with a servant, zigzagged as much as possible. It is quite good reading, but a little mechanical. Perhaps it is not too officious to remark that Filles du Feu is to be interpreted here in the sense of our "Faces ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... misled, Sire," said De Luynes in his turn, when this officious but well-meaning counsellor had withdrawn; "your Majesty will not be obeyed so readily as many would lead you to anticipate. Concini is too rapacious willingly to leave the country while there remains one jewel to be filched from your royal crown; and he is too ambitious to abandon without ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... pleasurelessly about with Vick—apparently sharing my depression—trotting subduedly, with tail half-mast high, at my heels, and at length sit down on a bench under a mulberry-tree. The scentless flame of the geraniums and calceolarias fills, without satisfying my eyes; the gnats' officious hum offends my ears; and thoughts in comparison of which the calceolarias are sweet and the gnats ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the sacred spring; Bid her the victims lead, the rites prepare, And you yourself a sacred fillet wear: The rite began to Stygian Jove we'll end, My cares shall vanish as the flames ascend, 785 His image wasting as the pyre consumes"; She spoke—the step of age officious ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... Manfred had despatched all his men various ways in pursuit of Isabella. He had in his hurry given this order in general terms, not meaning to extend it to the guard he had set upon Theodore, but forgetting it. The domestics, officious to obey so peremptory a Prince, and urged by their own curiosity and love of novelty to join in any precipitate chase, had to a man left the castle. Matilda disengaged herself from her women, stole up to the ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the elect of knowledge, of the "initiated," of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble: it separates.—One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was nothing of the nervousness observable in either the official or the officious repositories of the nationality which one sees in Continental countries, and especially in Germany. It was plain that England, though a military power, is not militarized. The English shows of force are civil. Nowhere but in England ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... doubt that Addison saw through this officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggrieved by it. So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do him no good, and, if he were thought to have any hand in it, must do him harm. Gifted with incomparable powers of ridicule, he had never even in self-defence, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the satire on the benevolent societies which exist to furnish a kind of officious sense of virtue to their aristocratic members. "The Society for the Redemption of the Abandoned Women of St. Peter's Parish" is presided over by a gentleman who is responsible for the abandoned condition of a goodly ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Jacqueline had kindled Maximilian's Austrian hopes in order to get him out of Mexico, and here he was borrowing that woman's guile. And here was Maximilian, too, softening under the enervating blandishment, softening behind his frowns for the officious meddler. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... that this is a visible summons to us all to thankfulness, especially we that were under the terror of its increase, perhaps it may be thought by some, after the sense of the thing was over, an officious canting of religious things, preaching a sermon instead of writing a history, making myself a teacher instead of giving my observations of things (and this restrains me very much from going on here, as I might otherwise do); but if ten lepers were healed, and but one returned ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... him. The people could be led, but they couldn't be driven. And therefore Mr. Mix, who had naturally made himself solid with the reactionaries and the church-going element (except those liberals who regarded him as an officious meddler), and who had actually succeeded in being mentioned as the type of man who would make a good Mayor, or President of Council, followed out a path which, unless his geography of common-sense was wrong, could hardly end at ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... mathematics—by and by put her shawl round her shoulders and button her overshoes. Take her home in the evening. Drink her health and kiss her when Gurli is sure to see it. If necessary, be a little officious. She won't be angry, believe me. And give her a big dose of mathematics, so big that Gurli has no option but to sit and listen to it quietly. Come again in a week's time and ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... was best. And bit by bit she told every advocate the proposal of every other advocate "Well, Lawyer Beeby thinks—" and "Well now, Mr. Clay, the minister, advises—" and so on and so on, till it was all buzzing through thirty benevolent and officious heads. And thirty benevolently-officious wills were striving to plant each one its own particular scheme of benevolence. And Alvina, naive and pathetic, egged them all on in their strife, without even knowing what she was doing. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... can possibly help it. But I, who have studied my part after the manner of English actors, could easily dispense with the Cuban prompter's services. His prompting is perplexing, and fills me with prospective terrors of a 'break-down.' Often while I am in the middle of a speech, my officious friend at the footlights has already whispered the remainder, besides uttering the words which belong to the next speaker. If I pause for purposes of 'by-play,' the gentleman in the trap is convinced ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... snow-clad mountains to the village of Yangpi, at the back of Tali. There was a long delay here. News of my arrival spread, and the people hurried along to see me. No sooner was I seated at an inn than two messengers from the yamen called for my passport. They were officious young fellows, sadly wanting in respect, and they asked for my passport in a noisy way that I did not like, so I would not understand them. I only smiled at them in the most friendly manner possible. I kept them for some time in a fever of irritation at their inability to make ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... to know how to deal with you: I hate to be Officious, it has a horrid look; and to let you alone till you die at the Vine of mildew, goes against my conscience, Don't it go against yours to keep all your family there till they are mouldy? Instead of sending ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... his own case had been made worse by the intervention of Mr. Temple, the British minister and brother of Lord Palmerston; not in the least as blaming him or considering it officious. He adopted the motto, 'to suffer is to do,' 'il patire e anche operare.' For himself he was not only willing—he rejoiced—to play ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... appear, Miss Wimple's Hoop was a shaved-whalebone fact; and the quilted petticoat would never have been missed, but for the officious scrutiny of the eyes, and the provoking prating of the tongues, of a sophisticated few who marvelled greatly at the pliancy and the "perfect set" of Miss Wimple's Alboni,—"and that demure little prig, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... to any one, even himself, and he felt that she had deserted and turned against him also, forgetting that he had given her no clew to his present place of abode, and had sent a message indicating that he would regard any effort to discover him as officious and intrusive. He quite honestly believed that by this time she had come to share in the general contempt and hostility which is ever cherished toward those whom society regards as not only depraved and vile, but also dangerous ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... fairy, which, like a faithful English Brownie, performed innumerable services for the farmers and householders in its neighbourhood, more especially that of feeding the cattle, and cleaning their sheds in wet weather; until at length some officious person, considering such practices as unchristian proceedings, laid the kindly spirit for three generations, banishing him to that common receptacle for such beings—the Red Sea. The spot in which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... no more of the Paul business, Charles, as I said at the time, and besides, it is quite apart from this business. Margaret Schlegel has been officious and tiresome during this terrible week, and we have all suffered under her, but upon my soul she's honest. She's not in collusion with the matron. I'm absolutely certain of it. Nor was she with ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... and blinded by my own vanity. As a very natural result I felt that I was at liberty to laugh at my mishap, and that nobody could possibly guess whether my mirth was genuine or only counterfeit. Sophism is so officious! ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... suitable place to stay, we were approached by a motherly but very officious old lady, clad in black, who, after telling us that she was going to entertain some notable person at her home as a guest when he came to view the pageant, advised us to proceed to the Mayflower Inn, where we were ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... despondency of mind—in other words, lowness of spirits—to which pregnant women are more or less liable greatly depends on the state of their general health and the natural temper and character of the individual; but it can be greatly aggravated, and may often be excited by circumstances or officious persons. Let me, then, urge upon you the important necessity of keeping the mind as tranquil and cheerful as possible, particularly during the first four months of pregnancy. A judicious course of this kind will produce the most ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... shabbily dressed, and he, although his appearance was by no means ordinary, was certainly not of the type which inspires immediate respect in even the grill-room of a fashionable restaurant. Nevertheless, they received prompt and almost officious service. Tavernake, as he watched his companion's air, her manner of seating herself and accepting the attentions of the head waiter, felt that nameless impulse which was responsible for his having followed her from Blenheim House ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Mr. Odell found some thirty persons assembled, most of them women. If there were any "official members" present, they made themselves in no way officious in regard to the preacher, who, after pausing at the door leading into the little altar or chancel for a short time, and looking around with an expression of inquiry on his face, ascended the pulpit-stairs and took his seat. All was as ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... French girl had no notion of letting her charges be imposed upon, and she glared haughtily at the shopkeeper when he seemed too officious. ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... that he was a Roman, and told them his name, they pretended to be struck with terror, smote their thighs, and fell upon their knees to ask him pardon. The poor man, seeing them thus humble themselves before him, thought them in earnest, and said he would forgive them; for some were so officious as to put on his shoes, and others to help him on with his gown, that his quality might no more be mistaken. When they had carried on this farce, and enjoyed it for some time, they let a ladder down into the sea, and bade him go ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... think, who has spoken from the other side of the House, has alluded to the opinions which some of His Majesty's Ministers formerly entertained on the subject of Reform. It would be officious in me, Sir, to undertake the defence of gentlemen who are so well able to defend themselves. I will only say that, in my opinion, the country will not think worse either of their capacity or of their patriotism, because they have shown that they can profit by experience, because they have ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... might not be born out of Wedlock, and so be made uncapable of inheriting either of their Estates; with a great many more pressing Arguments on all Sides: To which at last she consented; and an honest officious Gentleman, whom they had before provided, was call'd up, who made an End of the Dispute: So to Bed they went together that Night; next Day to the Exchange, for several pretty Businesses that Ladies in her Condition want. Whilst they were abroad, came the Vermin of the Parish, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... shoulders, but Clement Courtney had accepted it cheerfully, and had even written to his widowed mother, who lived alone in a Dorsetshire village, asking her advice about the girl. Gladys was disturbed in her solitude by Miss Peck, who came to the door in rather an excited and officious manner. She was a little, wiry spinster, past middle life, eccentric, but kind-hearted. She had bestowed a great deal of gratuitous and genuine kindness on her lodgers, though knowing very well that she would not likely get any return but gratitude for it; but times were hard ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... dynamic person, your energetic world's worker, who chafes at being laid up with a sprained ankle. The Honorable Freddie enjoyed it. From boyhood up he had loved lying in bed; and now that fate had allowed him to do this without incurring rebuke he objected to having his reveries broken up by officious relations. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... position when he finally decided as to Fort Sumter. It is unnecessary to follow the repeated consultations that took place. There were preparations for possible expeditions both to Fort Sumter and to Fort Pickens, and various blunders about them, and Seward made some trouble by officious interference about them. An announcement was sent to the Governor of South Carolina that provisions would be sent to Fort Sumter and he was assured that if this was unopposed no further steps would be taken. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... in the centre of the French river. At the next bridge (Louis XVI.) there was a general muster of carriages, each adapted for six or eight passengers, and drawn by one or two horses. Here was a loud clamour of "St. Cloud" and "Versailles" among the drivers, some of whom were even more officious than the Jehus of Greenwich, or the wights of Charing Cross or Piccadilly. I resisted all their importunities, and passed on through the Champs Elysees, or a dusty road through a grove, intersected with ill-formed paths, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... again been falsely accused. In his indignation at the treatment to which she had been exposed, Lancelot bore her off to Joyeuse Garde, where he swore he would defend her even against the king. Arthur, whose mind, in the mean while, had been poisoned by officious courtiers, besieged his recreant wife and knight; but although repeatedly challenged, the loyal Lancelot ever refused to bear arms ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... fulfilled. The elder brother had his points, but they were few, the chief one being that he was fairly good at games, which, after all, is but a negative quality. But the younger, who was as useless as he was generally officious, was entirely devoid of any redeeming feature. His ways were the ways of a slum child playing in the gutter, and his sense of humour was limited to shouting rude remarks after other people, knocking off hats, and ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... present condition of the man, his distance from home, friends, and all the natural ties that render calamity less frightful and insupportable. I would gladly have said a word to soften the pain which the baron had inflicted; but it would have been officious, and might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... were very officious in going back to assist," observed the Major; "a pretty mess we should be in, if we were in an enemy's country, and without ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... said Dawn, seeking to calm her, lest the excitement would be too much. "After all it mightn't be so bad. Lots of boys take a few paltry oranges out of the gardens and no one makes such a fuss but that old creature. He just wants to be officious." This was an ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... to-day," said the stranger, in a kind voice, which arrested my attention, and quite dispelled any anger at what I might otherwise have considered an officious interference in ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... deliberately from step to step. Fritz, who had recovered himself much more rapidly, seemed to have forgotten that he had himself borne any part in the disgraceful scene; he looked at his father with kind of a pitying superiority, and began to assist him in the repair of his toilet, with the air of an officious outsider, all of which the crest-fallen father endured with great fortitude. He seemed only anxious to explain the situation to the two women, who were still viewing ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... though it is only interest. It is that which gains them their advantage over witty men; whose love of liberty and ease makes them willing too often to discharge their burden of attendance on these officious gentlemen. It is true, that the nauseousness of such company is enough to disgust a reasonable man; when he sees, he can hardly approach greatness, but as a moated castle; he must first pass through the mud and filth with which it is encompassed. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... extravagances were expressed, but made the matter worse. To Schiller's superiors, above all, such things were inconceivable: he might perhaps be a very great genius, but was certainly a dangerous servant for his Highness the Grand Duke of Wuertemberg. Officious people mingled themselves in the affair: nay, the graziers of the Alps were brought to bear upon it. The Grisons magistrates, it appeared, had seen the book: and were mortally huffed at being there spoken of, according to a Swabian adage, as common highwaymen.[8] ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... race of men," now speaks Hunding, "to whom nothing is holy of all that is revered by others; hated are they of all men—and of me!" He then reveals how he himself had that day been called out for vengeance with his clan against this officious champion of damsels. He had arrived too late for action, and returning home, behold, discovers the fugitive miscreant in his own house! As he granted the stranger hospitality for the night, his house shall shelter him for that length of time; but "with strong weapons arm yourself ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... full,—our whole country is so overrun,—with these officious middle-men whom the world does not truly want; chiffonniers of trade, who only pick up a living out of the great press and waste and overflow; and our boys are so eager to slip in to some such easy, ready-made opportunity,—to get ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... I had driven over there with my friends, we had taken luncheon at the inn and returned in the afternoon. And what did they know of Rock Lake? Who had told them of it? That officious ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... in Italy during the last years of the authority of the Eastern Roman Empire in the peninsula. It is hardly likely that the Emperor ordered the death of the pontiff as recorded, and more probable that his over-officious representatives regarded it as a means of ingratiating themselves with their master. The passage is strictly contemporaneous, as the Liber Pontificalis, at least in this part, is composed of brief biographies of Popes written immediately after their decease ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... speak to us again; the effort had been too great. The woman accompanied us down-stairs, showing, in her troubled officious hurry to anticipate Arthur's wishes, and the way in which she hung about the gate as we rode out, what it had been ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... toss his arms up and down over the pit—not of destruction, but of preservation. He had started early, and, whilst he was setting the teeth on edge of all within hearing, by setting an edge to his saw, some very officious friend ran to him, to tell him that his wife was increasing his family, without even his permission having been asked. Instead, therefore, of making a dust in his own pit, he flung down his file, took up his lanthorn, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... reached the vacated seats, from which he silently, and in deep inward wrath, gathered up the creations of cardboard and patent cloth, and retreated, grinding his teeth as he heard the veteran call out behind him, "Would yeez moind comin' this way a bit, Mishter?" He paid no attention to that officious old man, but hurried back to the smoking-car, where he extracted Wilkinson's flask from its flannel surroundings, removed the metal cup, poured out a stiff horn, and diluted it at the filter. "Take this, old man," he said sternly, pressing it to the lips of the sufferer, "it'll ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... stepped between them. Sinclair, drunk with rage, called for McCloud; but he submitted quietly to Kennedy's reproof, and with a semblance of self-control begged that McCloud be sent for. Kennedy, without complying, gradually pushed Sinclair out of the room and, without seeming officious, walked with him down the hall and quite out of ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... who had no rivals in the love Which to himself he bore, Esteem'd his own dear beauty far above What earth had seen before. More than contented in his error, He lived the foe of every mirror. Officious fate, resolved our lover From such an illness should recover, Presented always to his eyes The mute advisers which the ladies prize;— Mirrors in parlours, inns, and shops,— Mirrors the pocket furniture of fops,— Mirrors on every lady's zone, From which his face reflected shone. What could ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... observe her as she sat beside Graham, while he took that meal. In his absence she was a still personage, but with him the most officious, fidgety little body possible. I often wished she would mind herself and be tranquil; but no—herself was forgotten in him: he could not be sufficiently well waited on, nor carefully enough looked after; he was more than the Grand Turk in her estimation. She would gradually assemble the various ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... last will and apparel. Comforts the women and him on their concern for her. Another letter brought her from Colonel Morden. The substance of it. Belford writes to hasten up the Colonel. Dr. H. has also written to her father; and Brand to Mr. John Harlowe a letter recanting his officious one. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... once spoken of the disgusting air of patronage which he assumed toward me, and of his frequent officious interference with my will. This interference often took the ungracious character of advice; advice not openly given, but hinted or insinuated. I received it with a repugnance which gained strength as I grew in years. Yet, at this distant day, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... true "ideas," if any but the Divine Being is so, has surely no need to be trained into such truth by any factitious scheme of education. In all that he thus originates, he is himself a Novum Organon of knowledge, and capable of teaching others, especially those officious men who would help him with their second-hand authorship, and their paltry catechisms of common-places. I allude here to the fundamental principle of what in some books is called "The Productive System of Instruction," and to those schemes of grammar which are professedly founded ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... buried his face in his hands, and gave way to an outburst of Intense grief. Yielding, finally, to my reiterated entreaties, he threw himself upon his bed, and, as I had some private business to settle, I left him to the care of our officious hostess, who was only too happy to find one on whom she could display her self-acquired ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... for his children, Dr. Lambert was sometimes capable of a smooth sarcasm. Tom felt as though he had been officious; had, in fact, made a fool of himself, and drew off into the background. His father was often hard on him, Tom said to himself, in an aggrieved way, and yet he was only doing his duty, as a son of the house, in waiting ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... them, but there is no possibility that they can subsist, if the heart perish: and so, when we seem to begin with others, in such assistances, indeed, we do begin with ourselves, and we ourselves are principally in our contemplation; and so all these officious and mutual assistances are but compliments towards others, and our true end is ourselves. And this is the reward of the pains of kings; sometimes they need the power of law to be obeyed; and when they seem to be obeyed voluntarily, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... entering it, partly from fatigue, and partly from dejection of spirits. Mrs. Jewkes seem'd mighty officious to welcome me, and call'd me ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... much of Mr. Chester Downes; but she did mention the fact that when she had returned to Darringford House Mr. Hounsditch had been very officious in attending upon her and in showing her that she was a good deal tied down by the provisions of grandfather's will and that the lawyer was to advise her at every turn. Especially did she complain that Mr. Hounsditch had been officious ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... you suppose that he will thank you for your officious falsehood, when he will learn to-morrow that M. de Guiche had, on behalf of his friend, M. de Bragelonne, a quarrel which ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... to me that when a boy, I took great delight in standing at a basket-maker's in the same town where my father lived, to view them at work; and like other boys, curious to see the manner of their working these things and very officious to assist, I perfectly learned the method of it, and wanted nothing but the tools. And it coming into my mind that the twigs of that tree of which I made my stakes, might be as tough as a fallow willow, or osiers, growing in England, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... have come upon us extraordinarily fast since he came to live with us in Venice two years ago. First he discovered things that annoyed him in my private affairs, which was extremely disagreeable for all of us, and really he was rather unnecessarily officious about that; in fact, I consider that it was owing largely to the line he took that things reached their final very trying denouement. Since then disaster upon disaster has come upon us; Peter's unfortunate marriage, and consequent serious expenses, including the child ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... and the next day's parting was accompanied by reiterated requests for a repetition of the visit. The Panther, who since their arrival had oppressed the travelers with a multitude of officious attentions, escorted them into the woods, and there took leave of them with a gesture of his hand, relieving their eyes of his slippery, snake-like robe of spots. A knife from their stores, slung round his neck ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... assiduous and alert; far from neglecting the little particulars of his duty, and embarking in the mischievous amusements of the children belonging to the camp, he was always diligent, sedate, agreeably officious and anticipating; and in the whole of his behaviour seemed to express the most vigilant sense of his patron's goodness and generosity; nay, to such a degree had these sentiments, in all appearance, operated ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... on her brother's part left him sufficiently surprised. She wasn't at all funny at last—she was really fine; and he felt easily where she was strong—strong for herself. It hadn't yet so come home to him that she was nobly and appointedly officious. She was acting in interests grander and clearer than that of her poor little personal, poor little Parisian equilibrium, and all his consciousness of her mother's moral pressure profited by this proof of its sustaining force. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Earliest recollection of 'counter-erection'—the penis shrinking tensely into itself, producing local and general discomfort. This resulted from certain kinds of mauvaise-honte,—having to kiss aged persons, having officious help at micturition, bathing, dressing, etc., which caused a sort of physical disgust. Toward puberty the experience grew rare. One such occasion was at about eighteen, when solicited on the street by a prostitute. The very idea of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 'Officious fool!' muttered Cain, when he perceived what the mate had done. Then, recollecting himself, he cried, 'Seize that boy and bring ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... Betty: she is one of the worthies of our sex, and has a fine understanding.—I'm sure you'll like her.—But (for the world say it not to my brother, nor let Lady Betty know I tell you so, if ever you should be acquainted) I had carried the matter so far by my officious zeal to have my brother married to so fine a lady, not doubting his joyful approbation, that it was no small disappointment to her, when he married you: and this is the best excuse I can make for my furious behaviour to you at the Hall. For though I am naturally very ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the pale moon, as if in a fickle mood, was smiling and scowling by turns, as the fleecy clouds hurried swiftly past her. The fitful and sudden glances of light appeared doubly bright from the transient shadows made by the officious clouds. They, deeming that the moon took too much credit to herself as queen' of light for the hour, designed apparently to let her know that she reigned only at their ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... was present to me that Jasper Nettlepoint was not quite a young man to lean upon, having (as I at least supposed) a life of his own and tastes and habits which had long since drawn him away from the maternal side. If he did happen just now to be at home my solicitude would of course seem officious; for in his many wanderings—I believed he had roamed all over the globe—he would certainly have learned how to manage. None the less I was very glad to show Mrs. Nettlepoint I thought of her. With my long absence ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... side of me, and seemed to feel such entire confidence in the soundness and capacity of his pastor that he could sleep very comfortably from one end of the sermon to the other. Occasionally, to be sure, one of your officious blue flies, who, as every body knows, are amazingly particular about such matters, would buzz into his mouth, or flirt into his ears a passing admonition as to the impropriety of sleeping in meeting, when the good old gentleman would start, open his ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... In this way the discrepancy of dates mentioned above might easily have been obscured, and Buerger might still have been credited with a work which has proved a better protection against oblivion than "Lenore," had it not been for the officious sensitiveness of his self-appointed biographer, Karl von Reinhard. Reinhard, in an answer to an attack made upon his hero for bringing out Munchausen as a pot-boiler in German and English simultaneously, definitely stated in the Berlin Gesellschafters of November ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... to appease her with all the tenderness of filial submission, was so much exasperated at his cavalier behaviour, that her constitution could not support the transports of her spirits; and she was carried off by her women in a fit, while the officious clergyman was dismissed after his pupil, with all ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and multiply undisturbed in my garden. They are such pretty things, some of them, such charmingly audacious things, and it is so particularly nice of them to do all their growing, and flowering, and seed-bearing without any help or any encouragement. I admit I feel vexed if they are so officious as to push up among my tea roses and pansies, and I also prefer my paths without them; but on the grass, for instance, why not let the poor little creatures enjoy themselves quietly, instead of going out with a dreadful instrument and viciously digging them up one by one? Once I went ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in every enterprise: to be chairman of the committee; to settle every question that comes up; to "run" things according to his own ideas. Such people are often very useful. It is generally wisest not to meddle much with them. The work may not be done in the best way by these officious people; but without them a great deal of public work would never be done at all. The vice, however, seriously impairs one's usefulness. The officious person is hard to work with. Men refuse to have ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... terribly intelligible to me, could be distinctly heard by no other person: "Mind your own business, my lad, and let the leaks take care of themselves! Go about your work; and if you whisper a syllable of what you have told me to any other person, I WILL THROW YOU OVERBOARD, you officious, intermeddling little vagabond!" And he indorsed his fearful threat by an oath too ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... meet her husband? It is our business to fix the combat in such a shape as to bring all who are prepared for insurrection together in arms to play their parts. Do thou only see that our trusty friends are placed near to the Emperor's person, and in such a manner as to keep from him the officious and meddling portion of guards, who may be disposed to assist him; and whether the Caesar fights a combat with lord or lady, or whether there be any combat at all or not, the revolution shall be accomplished, and the Tatii shall replace the Comneni upon the Imperial throne of Constantinople. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... easily ran in zig-zag directions, when at fault, until it had re-scented his course. The expedient of Boone was the only one that seemed adequate to save him. His gun was reloaded. The dog was in advance of the Indians, still scenting his track. A rifle shot delivered him from his officious pursuer. He soon reached a point convenient for concealing his trail, and while the Indians were hunting for it, gained so much upon them as to be enabled to reach Boonesborough ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... busy, officious way, and with us to help him, brought our stores ashore, while the Indians prepared their own camping-place some ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... grinding of brakes and hiss of escaping steam, the express at last stopped slowly in the little station and the door of Paul's compartment was swung open by the officious guard with a "Lucerne, your Lordship," which effectually aroused him from ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Family Robinson.' A man feels a strange desire for some sort of vegetable milk, and crash comes down some unexpected cocoa-nut from some undiscovered monkey. A literary man feels inclined to pen a sonnet, and at once an officious porcupine rushes out of a thicket and shoots ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... continues to say: 'Have I not waked, that you might sleep; cared, that you might enjoy? Have not I been the cabinet of your secrets, which I did ever keep faithfully, without the loss of any one to your prejudice; but by the officious, trusty, careful, and friendly use of them, have gained unto you a sweet and great interest of honour, love, reputation, wealth, and whatsoever might yield contentment and satisfaction to your desires? Have I done all this, to suffer this thus by you, for whom ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... brought that book which had been published in elegant Latin, of his great military actions, and tied it with a cord about his neck. Montrose smiled at this new instance of their malice. He thanked them, however, for their officious zeal; and said, that he bore this testimony of his bravery and loyalty with more pride than he had ever worn the garter. Having asked whether they had any more indignities to put upon him, and renewing some devout ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... my mind of that long tramp along the edge of the sea. But greater matters press, and I may not linger on these. We had many a close shave from officious village busybodies, whose patriotism flew no higher than thought of the reward which hung to an escaped prisoner of war or to any likely subject ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... old maids have been regarded. Marriage is the natural means of forming a sphere, of taking root in the earth; it requires more strength to do this without such an opening; very many have failed, and their imperfections have been in every one's way. They have been more partial, more harsh, more officious and impertinent, than those compelled by severer friction to render themselves endurable. Those who have a more full experience of the instincts have a distrust as to whether the unmarried can be thoroughly ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... scoundrels, monsters athirst for gold and blood, you traffic with the monarch, with our fortunes, with our rights, with our liberties, with our lives!"—"The second legislative corps is no less rotten than the first one."—In the Convention, Roland, "the officious Gilles and the forger Pasquin, is the infamous head of the monopolizers." "Isnard is a juggler, Buzot a Tartuffe, Vergniaud a police spy."[3130]—When a madman sees everywhere around him, on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, toads, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... although unable to see him, for there was little light in the car, M. Max seemed to FEEL him smiling—"but this little device has proved so useful hitherto. In the event of any of those troubles—wretched police interferences—arising, and of officious people obtaining possession of a patron's name, he is spared the necessity of ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... And since, to seem the more officious And flatt'ring of his health, there, they have had, At extreme fees, the college of physicians Consulting on him, how they might restore him; Where one would have a cataplasm of spices, Another ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... you give me leave to say how I would desire to stand in your memory? As one, who was truly sensible of the honour you did him, though he was too proud to be vain upon it; as one, who was neither assuming, officious, nor teasing; who never wilfully misrepresented persons or facts to you, nor consulted his passions when he gave a character; and lastly, as one, whose indiscretions proceeded altogether from a weak ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... him, but they were so few in number, and their attendance was so negligent, that Charles observed it, and felt, for the first time, that he was no longer a monarch. Accustomed from his early youth to the dutiful and officious respect with which those who possess sovereign power are attended, he had received it with the credulity common to princes, and was sensibly mortified when he now discovered that he had been indebted to his rank and power for much of that obsequious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... I've an idea he's saved my life," said Lutyens, getting off and lying down at full length. Both teams were on the ground too, waving their boots in the air, and coughing and drawing deep breaths, as the saises ran up to take away the ponies, and an officious water-carrier sprinkled the players with dirty water till ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... were exaggerated, Evelyn, from a child. Be kind, of course; that's only your duty, but I call it officious and presumptuous to interfere in other people's lives. You of all people! At your age! ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... punishment and oblique satire on servility and selfishness. It is in that case Diamond cut Diamond—a trial of skill between the legacy-hunter and the legacy-maker, which shall fool the other. The cringing toad-eater, the officious tale-bearer, is perhaps well paid for years of obsequious attendance with a bare mention and a mourning-ring; nor can I think that Gil Blas' library was not quite as much as the coxcombry of his pretensions deserved. There are some admirable scenes in Ben Jonson's Volpone, showing ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the King and Queen on the subject of Hamlet's madness very ridiculous. But he gives the one as a father, and is sincere in it; he gives the other as a mere courtier, a busy-body, and is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent. In short, Shakspeare has been accused of inconsistency in this and other characters, only because he has kept up the distinction which there is in nature, between the understandings and the moral habits of men, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the arguments in his favour. Against him were the chances that his companion might show fight; that he might check his prisoner's exit until his comrade on the box could come to the rescue; or that some officious bystander might act on the side of the law; or that a shot might drop him as he fled; or, finally, and most probably of all, that he might be ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... pleasure to me to see mules, horses, donkeys, camels, little children, and poor old men thrust out of the way, as if I were sacred and they were all dirt. How they must have cursed me! I told my kawwasses that I did not wish them to show themselves officious by doing more than was absolutely necessary for the dignity of the British Consulate and the custom of the country. But their escort certainly was necessary to a great extent. When the common people saw a kawwass, they knew one was of importance, and made way for one; otherwise ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... too officious, In her behalfe that scornes your seruices. Let her alone, speake not of Helena, Take not her part. For if thou dost intend Neuer so little shew of loue to her, Thou shalt ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... considered himself entitled to give direction to the diplomacy of Cettinje, he was furious over the evident favor with which Monson was regarded by the Prince, who often followed his advice. It was a sore point with the Montenegrins, from the Prince down, that Jonine was so officious in his intervention even in military advice, where he had not the least competence; and in general the Montenegrins resented the dictation of the Russian staff, even where it had every reason to urge its own views of the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... the officious neighbor. "Mose, you ought of asked her—when you see her coming up the street if she wasn't looking for you." "Maybe," said Mose, "but then I didn't know, and I don't want to butt into other folks business" "Huh," snorted the woman, "spose I hadn't butted in. Where'd you be. You ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... workhouse where Oliver Twist was born and brought up. A stout, consequential, hard-hearted, fussy official, with mighty ideas of his own importance. This character has given to the language the word bumbledom, the officious arrogance and bumptious conceit of a parish authority or petty dignitary. After marriage the high-and-mighty beadle was sadly henpecked and reduced to a Jerry Sneak.—C. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... fore-mentioned principles, without having had it in his power to tell a single word, or give him the least hint, that he might know the truth and state of things; because the negro Babo, performing the office of an officious servant with all the appearance of submission of the humble slave, did not leave the deponent one moment; that this was in order to observe the deponent's actions and words, for the negro Babo understands well the Spanish; and besides, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... smallest part Of what I feel, and suffer in my heart, For you, whom best I love and value most; But to your service I bequeath my ghost; Which, from this mortal body when untied, Unseen, unheard, shall hover at your side; Nor fright you waking, nor your sleep offend, But wait officious, and your steps attend. How I have loved, excuse my faltering tongue, My spirit's feeble, and my pains are strong: This I may say, I only grieve to die, Because I lose my charming Emily. To die, when Heaven had put you in my power! Fate could ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... lost it. It went altogether the time I was working for my medical. I got it back again out in India when I was alone, on the edge of the jungle, when there wasn't much cholera about, and I'd nothing to do but think. Then some officious people got me what they called a better berth in Bombay; ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... hidden from Papa. Papa's good opinion of the Prince has sensibly risen, in the course of this Journey, "so rational, serious, not dangling about among the women as formerly;"—and what a shock would this of Korn's Hotel be, should Papa hear of it! Poor Papa, from officious tale-bearers he hears many things: is in distress about Voltaire, about Heterodoxies;—and summoned the Crown-Prince, by express, from Reinsberg, on one occasion lately, over to Potsdam, "to take the Communion" there, by way of case-hardening against Voltaire and Heterodoxies! ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... themselves the trouble of studying the idioms of the country, communicate with the neophytes. These interpreters attended us in all our herborizations; but they rather understand than speak Castilian. With their indolent indifference, they answer us by chance, but always with an officious smile, "Yes, Father; no, Father," to every ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Johnson was, to the last, little regarded by the great world; from which, for a vulgar vanity, all honor, as from its fountain, descends. Bozzy, even among Johnson's friends, and special admirers, seems rather to have been laughed at than envied; his officious, whisking, consequential ways, the daily reproofs and rebuffs he underwent, could gain from the world no golden, but only leaden, opinions. His devout Discipleship seemed nothing more than a mean Spanielship, in the general eye. His mighty ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... is my duty to make sure," persisted the officious spinster. "My conscience will never be easy in the thought that perhaps if I had spoken, I might have saved the boy from some ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... encounter? Was she deliberately snubbing him, now that they were on land? Was he, a prince of the royal blood, to be tossed aside by this purse-proud American as if he were the simplest of simpletons? And what did she mean by stationing an officious hireling before her door to order him away when he undertook to pay her a friendly visit?—to offer his own and Hobbs' services in case they were needed in Paris. Why should she lock her confounded door anyway,—and draw the curtains? There were other ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... myself down and would have appealed against the sentence, but the Bishop, who had suffered at the Council and whose ears still burned, was pitiless. Before I could utter three words a dozen officious hands plucked me up and thrust me to the door. Outside worse things awaited me. A shower of kicks and cuffs and blows fell upon me; vainly struggling and shrieking, and seeking still to gain his lordship's ear, I was hustled along the passage to the courtyard, and ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... proud; not from his eye, lest she be too coquettish; not from his ear, lest she be too curious; not from his mouth, lest she be too talkative; not from his heart, lest she be too sentimental; not from his hands, lest she be too officious; nor from his feet, lest she be an idle gadabout; but from a subordinate part of man's anatomy, to teach ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... those spices that were by her dedicated to embalm and preserve his sacred body from putrefaction, should so far preserve her own memory, that these demonstrations of her sanctified love, and of her officious and generous gratitude, should be recorded and mentioned wheresoever his Gospel should be read; intending thereby, that as his, so her name, should also live to succeeding generations, even till time itself shall be ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... Beatrice cursed him for a slow, officious fool. He tested the ladder, to see it was safe, then he cautiously clambered up. At the top he stood leaning sideways, bending over the ladder to peer into the room. He could see all sorts of things, for he ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... defrauding the revenue was fair game. And if a "gauger" lost his life in some one or other of the bloody encounters that frequently took place between the smugglers and the revenue officers, why, so much the worse for the "gauger." He was an unnecessarily officious sort of a person, who had better have kept out of the way. In fact, popular sentiment was entirely with the smugglers, who by the bulk of the population were regarded with the greatest admiration. Smuggling, indeed, was so much a recognised ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... party, free from any suspicion of intrigue with foe or faction. The causes of his Senatorial defeat thus gave him a certain party authority and leadership, which were felt if not openly acknowledged. On his part, while never officious or obtrusive, he was always ready with seasonable and judicious suggestions, generous in spirit and comprehensive in scope, and which ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... fire and get tea ready, and then stayed with Esquimau to talk to the old man. When he found I was going to speak about religion, he called to his children—two men and a squaw—to come and listen. Another man came up, and in rather an officious manner informed me that it was no use for me to talk to the Indiana about religion; that they would not listen to me, and did not intend to accept Christianity. The Great Spirit, he continued, has made us all, and he has given one religion to the whites and another to the Indians. ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... seen in their papers. But I have not only had the mortification to find what I sent rejected, but to lose my originals, not having taken copies of what I wrote." In this preface Defoe makes touching allusion to his age and infirmities. He begs his readers to "excuse the vanity of an over-officious old man, if, like Cato, he inquires whether or no before he goes hence and is no more, he can yet do anything for the service of his country." "The old man cannot trouble you long; take, then, in good part his best intentions, and impute his ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... pretty officious! Never saw you until two or three weeks ago," he muttered. "Not accustomed to being treated in that offhand manner. It's ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... reception of Dodsley's "Oeconomy of Human Life," produced a whole family of oeconomies; it was soon followed by a second part, the gratuitous ingenuity of one of those officious imitators, whom an original author never cares to thank. Other oeconomies trod on the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Mrs. Hseh. I'll, in fact, contribute some on your ladyship's account, and when I get the banquet ready and invite you, venerable ancestor, to come and partake of it, I'll also wrap fifty taels in a piece of paper, and dutifully present them to you, as a penalty for my officious interference in matters that don't concern me. Will this be all ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and, perhaps, he has, even in this, been too lavish of his praise. He seems to have thought, that never to mention his benefactress would have an appearance of ingratitude, though to have dedicated any particular performance to her memory would have only betrayed an officious partiality, that, without exalting her character, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... stranger, seeing this little inelegance, kindly thrust three fingers with a sudden and light dive into his friend's pocket, and effectually repulsed the forwardness of the intrusive lining. The supercilious stranger no sooner felt the touch than he started back, and whispered to his officious companion,— ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... love. At last it occurred to Orsino that his hopeless love-suit might prosper better if he sent this pretty lad to woo Olivia for him. Viola unwillingly went on this errand, but when she came to the house, Malvolio, Olivia's steward, a vain, officious man, sick, as his mistress told him, of ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... me, for a more gilded position. But I had the child, which was all I cared about. Thank God, for her sake, that I was legally married to poor little Lola, she has at least no stain on her birth with which to reproach me. The officious individual who is personally conducting me to the Valley of the Shadow warns me that I must be brief—I kept the child with me as long as I could, people were wonderfully kind, but it was no life for her. I've come down in the social scale even since you knew me, Barry, and at last I sent ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Creature so officious, that 'twill be known to every one at one time or other, so busie, and so impudent, that it will be intruding it self in every ones company, and so proud and aspiring withall, that it fears not to trample on the best, and affects nothing so much as a Crown; feeds and lives very high, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... so she was making up her mind that the moment had not come in which she must apprise Alice of Mr Grey's intended visit. As Alice had questioned her at the breakfast table she would say nothing about it then, but waited till the teacups were withdrawn, and till the maid had given her last officious poke to the fire. Then she began. She had Mr Grey's letter in her pocket, and as she prepared herself to speak, she pulled it out and held it on the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... pension. 'His friend Levett, his physician in ordinary, paid his daily visits with assiduity; attended at all hours, made tea all the morning, talked what he had to say, and did not expect an answer; or, if occasion required it, was mute, officious, and ever complying.... There Johnson sat every morning, receiving visits, hearing the topics of the day, and indolently trifling away the time. Chymistry afforded some amusement.' Hawkins (Life, p. 452), says:—'An upper room, which had the advantages of a good light and free ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... very easy to explain! All I can say is that young Mr. Burton is making himself very officious, and very disagreeable. He has adopted a profession which here, at the Prefecture of Police, we naturally detest"—the Russian smiled, but not at all pleasantly—"I mean that of the amateur detective! He is determined ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... brother, the same who acted as porter, now entered the apartment, bearing some simple refreshment, and a flask of wine. "He had found it," he said with officious humility, "by rummaging through every ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... and unamenable to them. It is a respect we owe to their authority, to leave to those acting under that the transaction of their affairs, without an intermeddling on our part, which might justly appear officious. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... case he ventured to "lecture in favor of immediate Abolition," and to be warned that: "If our people will not suffer our own citizens to tamper with the question of slavery, it is not to be supposed that they will tolerate the officious intermeddling of a foreign fanatic." Then as if by way of giving him a taste of the beak and talons of the American amour propre, he and his family were put out of the Atlantic Hotel in deference to the wish of an irate Southerner. Thus introduced the English orator advanced speedily ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... you've got anything to say! I don't see what you mean, and you are damned officious. Yes, that's it—damned officious." The peevishness was becoming ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the handwriting of a fussy officious "bumble" friend of the wealthy man, who dwelt in the town of Covelly. It ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... grave. There, now I think I have no further need— For unto all at last there comes a time When no sweet care can do us any good! Not in my life that I remember of, Could my neglect have injured any one, And if I have by my officious love, Thrown harmful shadows in the way of some, Be piteous to my natural weakness, friends: I never shall ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... say?—too soon made glad, Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace—all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked My gift of a nine ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... his beat for a cup of coffee on a cold morning, or night, or reads a newspaper, or smokes, or stops to converse while on duty. The punishment for these offences is a stoppage of pay for a day or two. First offences are usually forgiven. Many well-meaning but officious citizens enter complaints against the men. They are generally frivolous, but are heard patiently, and are dismissed with a warning to the accused to avoid giving cause for complaint. Thieves and disreputable ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... relations, who was Dragoman to the French embassy, and who, in his turn, related the story to the Marquess de Vauban, the ambassador. This nobleman became interested for the unfortunate family, and especially for Sophia, whom the officious Dragoman described as being likely to fall into the snares that were laid for her, and to become an inmate of the haram of some Pasha, or even of a Turk of inferior rank. Prompted by pity, curiosity, or perhaps by some other motive, the ambassador paid a visit to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... is dead and already somewhat ungratefully remembered in the field of his labours and sufferings. "He was a good man, but very officious," says one. Another tells me he had fallen (as other priests so easily do) into something of the ways and habits of thought of a Kanaka; but he had the wit to recognise the fact, and the good sense to ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Barker, however, as Margaret had anticipated, had been active in spreading the news of her engagement; for, before very long, callers were plenty, and flowers too, and many were the congratulations that poured in. Then she saw the wisdom of having informed the Duke of her position before any officious acquaintance could do it for her. The Duke, indeed, saw very few people in New York, for he hated to be "entertained," but he knew a great many men slightly, and some one of them would probably have obliged ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... crowd of officious guards dashed forward, and with the hardened copper blades of their spears quickly severed Inaguy's bonds, whereupon the latter strode forward and, puffed up with pride at again being made the mouthpiece of a god, stood before the grovelling figure ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... in Germany to see human nature cropping out, even under these ideal conditions; for it is difficult to see how the state could be more grandmotherly in her officious care of her own. But this is not enough. Physical safety is not enough, the demand is for political freedom, and for a government answerable to the people and the people's representatives. Rich men, powerful men, representative men by the thousands, men whom one meets of all sorts and conditions, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... real enthusiasm; or to have his desk broken open, and its compromising contents sent to the persons for whom they were least intended. The smouldering elements of discontent may have been fanned by the gossip of dependants, or the officious zeal of relatives, and kindled into a jealous flame by the ostentation of regard for others beyond the circle of his home. Lady Byron doubtless believed some story which, when communicated to her legal advisers, led them to the conclusion that the mere fact ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... and dignified manner of the brave colonel rebuked the officious priests, and they returned without venturing to utter any of the contemptuous remarks which they had bestowed on his ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... brought from the nest, the larvae lay quite straight and still; but almost at once they bent far over in the spinning position. Then some officious worker would come along, and the unfortunate larva would be snatched up, carried off, and jammed down in some neighboring empty space, like a bolt of cloth rearranged upon a shelf. Then another ant would approach, antennae ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... half an hour after that the French landlady was receiving her new guest; and so eager was she to show to the English gentleman her gratitude for his substantial presents, that her officious kindness was ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... of Liberty congratulate themselves upon the odium under which they are at present labouring, as the causes which have produced it have obliged so many of her false adherents to disclaim with officious earnestness any desire to promote her interests; nor are they disheartened by the diminution which their body is supposed already to have sustained. Conscious that an enemy lurking in our ranks is ten times more formidable than when drawn out against us, that the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Stranger. In the Midst of their Midnight Entertainment, Cador all on a sudden complain'd that he was taken with a most violent pleuretic Fit, and was ready to swoon away. Our Lady being extremely concern'd, and over-officious, flew to her Closet of Cordials, and brought down every Thing she could think of that might be of Service on this emergent Occasion. She was extremely sorry that the famous Hermes was gone from Babylon, and condescended to lay her warm Hand upon the Part ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... horses also, such as they are, because, so many caravans coming that way, they are often wanted. The person that I spoke to to get me a camel would have gone and fetched one for me; but I, like a fool, must be officious, and go myself along with him; the place was about two miles out of the village, where it seems they kept the camels and ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... rich, had attempted no such thing. She had taken the boy out of charity, and without a thought of being unconstitutional. But in had come this officious "Limpet" and upset the headmaster, and she was scolded, and Mrs. Varden was scolded, and Mr. Jackson was scolded, and the boy was scolded and placed with Mr. Pembroke, whom she revered less than any man in the world. Naturally enough, she considered ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... ever been to a West-end picture shop, you will have suffered some annoyance on looking too attentively at any item in the exhibition, by the approach of an officious attendant, who presses you to purchase it. He begins by flattery; he felicitates you on your choice of the best picture in the room—the one that has been 'universally admired by critics ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... had to gather him up and help him pulley-hauley fashion into the car ahead, while an officious ticket-taker demanded my name and address. I found in my wallet the card of a U.S. senator and gave him that, whereat he apologized profoundly and addressed me as "Colonel"—a title with which he continued to flatter me all the rest of the journey except once, when he ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... work to interfere with the orderly course of things, and effect a conjunction between two in no way fitted for each other, either in external circumstances or similarity of character. But let us trace the progress of this artificial passion, fanned into a blaze by the officious Mrs. Martindale. After having agitated the heart of Mary with the idea of being beloved, while she coolly calculated its effects upon her, the match-monger sought an early opportunity for another ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... a dissension between two parties, was dining with one of them, in company with several others. This guest spoke to the hostess disparagingly of the enemy of her husband, who, hearing the remark, rebuked his officious guest by remarking to him: "Doctor, my lady and myself would prefer to find out the foibles and sins of our neighbors ourselves." The rebuke was effectual, and informed the doctor, who was new in the country, of an honorable feeling in the refined population ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... not vault over the ropes. He stepped through them languidly, and, rejecting the proffered assistance of a couple of officious friends, drew on a boxing-glove fastidiously, like an exquisite preparing for a fashionable promenade. Having thus muffled his left hand so as to make it useless for the same service to his right, he dipped his fingers into the other glove, gripped ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... who had been decorated by the French government! The men in the grill then talked openly of his flaws and the verdict, officious or otherwise, was failure. Flaws! He was not a big painter. He was merely a self-centered, impecunious, improvident Irishman, indifferently skillful, whose vanity and self-indulgence had driven his son off into a vague green world, God alone knew where. He ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... maxim I have quoted will, it seems, fit in exceedingly well, because to requite the services of many is a matter of labour, and a whole life would not be long enough to do this for them. So that, if more numerous than what will suffice for one's own life, they become officious, and are hindrances in respect of living well: and so we do not want them. And again of those who are to be for pleasure a few are quite enough, just like sweetening in ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... Halifax, intending to get copies of the oath required, for the purpose of imposing it on the inhabitants. When he reached Truro one of the Archibalds discovered his mission and presenting a pistol, used its persuasive influence to induce him immediately to return home. So officious did Patterson become that his sons several times were obliged to hide him in the woods, taking him to Fraser's Point ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... one factor we had entirely forgotten to reckon. As we were proceeding in a body back to the hall, we met all the Maori girls coming out, and a high state of indignation they seemed to be in. Some officious person had carried Miss Cityswell's dictum to their ears, and up went all the brown noses in the air as a consequence. They were not going to stop in the hall to be grossly and gratuitously insulted! No, thank you! If they were not good enough for Pakeha men to dance with, they had no further ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... tired babies on his knees, or tumbled into a seat and wooed the drowsy god. The third night out he tried sleeping flat in the aisle of the car on the floor until the brakeman ordered him up, and then two men proposed to fight the officious brakeman if he did not leave the man alone. To save a riot Robert Louis agreed to obey the rules. It was a ten-day trip across the continent, filled with discomforts that would have tried the constitution of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... and picturesque descriptions of Italian life and scenery we have ever met with. And we cannot be too thankful to Mr. Story that he leaves a theme so poetical in itself to be poetical, without any officious help from himself, and that, though an artist, he does not enter on any of those disquisitions which would have made Sir Joshua shift his trumpet. On the whole, we are inclined to forgive him the polyglot lumber of his chapter on the Evil Eye in consideration of the scenery and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... getting peevish with me, old Ham," he said, squatting down on the nearest chair; "this is what I call a stupid, officious, unnecessary letter. Why this haughtiness? Why these crushing inferences? Why this unkindness ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... no time to conclude. "Why did you not speak about this sooner?" he interposed with haste. "I have long entertained this suspicion; but as, whenever I met you, this conversation was never broached, I did not presume to make myself officious. But if such be the state of affairs just now, I lack, I admit, literary qualification, but on the two subjects of friendly spirit and pecuniary means, I have, nevertheless, some experience. Moreover, I rejoice that next year is just the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... young man to lean upon, having (as I at least supposed) a life of his own and tastes and habits which had long since drawn him away from the maternal side. If he did happen just now to be at home my solicitude would of course seem officious; for in his many wanderings—I believed he had roamed all over the globe—he would certainly have learned how to manage. None the less I was very glad to show Mrs. Nettlepoint I thought of her. With my long absence I had lost sight of her; but I had liked her of old; ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... the workhouse where Oliver Twist was born and brought up. A stout, consequential, hard-hearted, fussy official, with mighty ideas of his own importance. This character has given to the language the word bumbledom, the officious arrogance and bumptious conceit of a parish authority or petty dignitary. After marriage the high-and-mighty beadle was sadly henpecked and reduced to a Jerry Sneak.—C. Dickens, Oliver ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... next year perhaps, you visit Paris, you will be safe from my officious interference! Isaura will be ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reassured Mrs. Hill or not, I do not know, but anyhow she departed that night for Berlin, leaving us loaded with endless instructions, extra money, and a tiny red German dictionary. I never felt so officious in my life as when I called a cab and ushered Jess and Anne into it after the train had pulled out. I can see now why it is that Thomas Cook and Son have been ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich and the misery of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eulogy on her son; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of her husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly prattle. If ever Madame D'Arblay aimed at more, we do not think ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who had come upstairs after me, always officious and eager, manifested by her gestures her sentiments of indignation on beholding the careless reception accorded by Chrysantheme to her lord and master, and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... discovered and betrayed to the skipper by some officious noodle, and Captain Willis ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... impressed with him, for he seemed very officious and altogether domineering in the presence of the sheriff, but her opinion may have been influenced perhaps by Joe's determination to have him whether or no. She thanked him for his promise of good offices in Joe's behalf, and he took her arm and impeded her greatly in ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... heart alive, my dear, how late you are!" said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... give; No legal guards shall keep enthrall'd my mind, No Slaves command me, and no teachers blind. Tempted by sins, let me their strength defy, But have no second in a surplice by; No bottle-holder, with officious aid, To comfort conscience, weaken'd and afraid: Then if I yield, my frailty is not known; And, if I stand, the glory is my own. "When Truth and Reason are our friends, we seem Alive! awake!—the superstitious dream. Oh! then, fair truth, for thee alone I seek, Friend to the ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... on himself. His visits to the lodge had been remarked, and on this very morning he had been arrested, and conveyed with his daughter, in a carriage escorted by gendarmes to the capital. My detection followed of course; papers found on my person had proved that I was an agent of England; and the officious M. Gilet had spent the morning in exhibiting to the peasantry of the neighbourhood the order of the "Committee of Public Safety," a name which froze the blood, to take me under his charge, and conduct me forthwith ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... some preliminary soliloquizing in deep undertones, had made up his mind that the suspicious shuffling-by of probably some inoffensive Italian workman demanded investigation, and lumberingly risen to his feet and made for the door. Then, like a bunch of firecrackers, Puppy was at the heels, all officious assistance, and the two would disappear like an old and a young ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... been most officious, most impertinent. I have as complete a right to form my acquaintance as he has to form his. What would you have said, had I consulted you as to the propriety of banishing Dr Grantly from my house because he knows ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Langley. I will call in again, Miss Milner, to-morrow morning, and then I will explain what it is we really want. We are in a hurry now," continued Phillis, loftily, turning away with a dignified inclination of her head toward the officious stranger. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... few in number, and their attendance was so negligent, that Charles observed it, and felt, for the first time, that he was no longer a monarch. Accustomed from his early youth to the dutiful and officious respect with which those who possess sovereign power are attended, he had received it with the credulity common to princes, and was sensibly mortified when he now discovered that he had been indebted to his rank and power for much of that obsequious regard which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... themselves—ofttimes mistaking a really well-meant interest in her welfare for an idle and impertinent curiosity. Mrs. Layton had been highly born and nurtured, and there seemed to her delicate mind a something rude and unfeeling in the manner with which her too officious friends and neighbors would touch upon the sources of grief which were to her so sacred. And therefore, perhaps unwisely, she held herself aloof from them, replying to their different queries with that calm and easy dignity which effectually precluded all approach ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... unboasted, but scarce less certain influence of Lady Blackchester, his affair, simple as it had become, might have been somehow accelerated. But it was equally impossible to doubt the rough honesty of the father, and the eager and officious friendship of Lord Dalgarno; nor was it easy to suppose that the countenance of the lady, by whom he was received with such distinction, would be wanting, could it be effectual in ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... I should expect officious and quite gratuitous commiseration over the fate of the late Empire. You, however, will readily perceive it to be possible that I should rather be congratulated. You would not exchange your dignified leisure, your careless toils, for the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... her brother's part left him sufficiently surprised. She wasn't at all funny at last—she was really fine; and he felt easily where she was strong—strong for herself. It hadn't yet so come home to him that she was nobly and appointedly officious. She was acting in interests grander and clearer than that of her poor little personal, poor little Parisian equilibrium, and all his consciousness of her mother's moral pressure profited by this proof of its sustaining force. She would be held up; she would be strengthened; he ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... take care, however, not to involve himself in such officious troubles for the future. As for the accounts, he was ready at all times, and desirous to have them settled. He had been plagued enough, and had even paid money out of his own pocket, which he was sure, whenever a ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... others seem to have been let pass, and only Jeremiah detained, which makes the charge more evidently a trumped-up excuse for laying hands on him. Jeremiah calls it in plain words what it was—'a lie'—and protests his innocence of any such design. But the officious Irijah knew too well how much of a feather in his cap his getting hold of the prophet would be, to heed his denials, and dragged him off to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... unfortunate emigrants had been so long accustomed to conform to the strict discipline of the ship that they felt like sheep suddenly deprived of a shepherd, or soldiers bereft of their officers when thus left to think for themselves. Then the self-sufficient and officious among them began to give advice, and to dispute noisily as to what they should do, so that in a few minutes their voices, mingling with the gale and the cries of terrified children, caused such a din that the strong spirit of the widow Lynch ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... Governor Micheltorena's order of March 29, the temporal control of the Mission was restored to the padre. But, though the order was a kindly one, and relieved the padre from the interference of officious, meddling, inefficient, and dishonest "administrators," it was too late ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... which had been captured in the fighting in the Swat Valley. This admission, that the Mamunds had been implicated in the attack on the Malakand, was sufficiently naive. The cavalry rode on to the village. The horse was not to be found, but the officious informers from the first village eagerly pointed out where it had been stabled. In consequence of this information, and to stimulate the tribesmen to carry out the original terms, Mr. Davis decided to make an example and authorised ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... well-appointed apartment. He accordingly bought these articles at a curiosity shop. During the first weeks of his residence in the city he made some feeble efforts to perfect himself in mathematics, in which he suspected he was somewhat deficient. But when the same officious friend laughed at him, and called him "green," he determined to trust to fortune, and henceforth devoted himself the more assiduously to the French ballet, where he had already ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... exhausted. She looked after me, she would fain have detained me longer. Her manner towards me had been altered ever since I had begun to treat her with hardness and indifference: she almost cringed to me on every occasion; she consulted my countenance incessantly, and beset me with innumerable little officious attentions. Servility creates despotism. This slavish homage, instead of softening my heart, only pampered whatever was stern and exacting in its mood. The very circumstance of her hovering round me like a fascinated bird, seemed to transform me into a rigid ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... delight, dining him, and suppering him, and going through the 'pump-handle movement' with him. Mr. Dickens was, in consequence, intensely bored by this attestation of popular idolatry so peculiar to the United States, and looked upon us as officious, absurd, and disgusting. Officious we were, and absurd enough, surely, but far from being disgusting. He ought hardly to beget disgust whose youth and inexperience leads him to extravagance in his kindly demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... be. As a body you will not have it in your power to undertake war against whom you like, or to conclude peace. But in private any one who chooses will conduct the army on any quest which takes his fancy. And when ambassadors come to you to demand peace, or whatever it may be, officious people will put them to death and prevent your hearing the proposals which brought them to you. The next step will be that those whom you as a body may choose as generals will be of no account; but any one who likes to elect himself general, and will adopt the formula 'Shoot ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... My officious friend lifted the nugget from the bucket and laid it before me, and for a few minutes I gloated over and passed my hand over its unequal surface, and weighed it in my imagination until I was roused from my reverie by those ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... "You are over-officious, sir," rejoined Mistress Nutter, coldly; "when we need your assistance we will ask it. My own servant, Simon Blackadder, will ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... needs all this paines, those season'd pens, That standing lifeguard to a booke (kinde friends), That with officious care thus guard thy gate, As if thy Child were illigitimate? Forgive their freedome, since unto their praise They write to give, not ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... asked to be returned to the professorship at the Military Institute, but General Johnston held his letter up and appealed to Jackson's patriotism and the cause for which all were fighting, to reconsider his action and to overlook this officious intermeddling and remain at his post. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... officious; but my forward cares Would fain preserve a life of so much value. My heart is wounded, when I see such virtue Afflicted by ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... not permitted unmolested access to the phenomenon with which I was so closely concerned. An officious young guardsman warned me away brusquely and I was not allowed to come near until I swallowed my pride and claimed connection with the Intelligencer. Even then it was necessary for me to explain myself to several nervous soldiers on pain of being ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... striking up an acquaintance with the dreadful creature installed there. Heaven knew she wanted her child back and had made every plan of her own for removing her; what she couldn't for the present at least forgive any one concerned was such an officious underhand way of bringing about the transfer. Maisie carried more of the weight of this resentment than even Mrs. Wix's confidential ingenuity could lighten for her, especially as Sir Claude himself was not at ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... died, the crowd melted away. Policemen became officious. From areaways up and down the Avenue forms emerged furtively, walked discreetly to corners and skurried down side streets. Here and there a crimson banner flecked the asphalt. Steve and the tall private issued from the last ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... which he was resolved not to disclose. The archbishop of Alexandria, for whose safety they eagerly devoted their lives, was lost among a uniform and well-disciplined multitude; and on the nearer approach of danger, he was swiftly removed, by their officious hands, from one place of concealment to another, till he reached the formidable deserts, which the gloomy and credulous temper of superstition had peopled with daemons and savage monsters. The retirement of Athanasius, which ended only with the life of Constantius, was spent, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... strange and mysterious about her ailment; her attacks were so fitful; now she appeared brilliant and vivacious, with gleams of her former great beauty, the gracious and agreeable hostess; again, her condition was that of sheer indifference and semi-torpor. And who was the officious and familiar ayah, her attendant and shadow, an obtrusive creature with bold black eyes and a resolute mouth? Why did she speak so authoritatively to her mistress? Why did she wear such handsome jewellery and expensive silk saris, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... words be discordant to the station of the speaker, the Roman knights and plebians will raise an immoderate laugh. It will make a wide difference, whether it be Davus that speaks, or a hero; a man well-stricken in years, or a hot young fellow in his bloom; and a matron of distinction, or an officious nurse; a roaming merchant, or the cultivator of a verdant little farm; a Colchian, or an Assyrian; one educated at Thebes, or ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... than anything which had fallen to the lot of its ally now awaited Peru, which first attempted an officious mediation and then declared war on the 4th of April. Since Peru and Bolivia together had a population double that of Chile, and since Peru possessed a much larger army and navy than Chile, the allies ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... affection from the mind. When Priam had his whole thoughts employed on the body of his Hector, he repels with indignation, and drives from him with a thousand reproaches, his surviving sons, who with an officious piety crowded about him to offer their assistance. A good critic (there is no better than Mr. Fox) would say, that this is a master?stroke, and marks a deep understanding of nature in the father of poetry. He would despise a Zoilus, who would conclude from this passage that ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... possible was said about past disagreements, as much as possible about future agreements, and the end of it was that Gordon agreed to take the field again. At the same time the I.G. took care to suggest the removal of an excuse for future misunderstandings in the person of an officious, inefficient interpreter whom Robert Hart himself described as a "'Talkee talkee, me-no-savey,' the sort of person whose attempt at Mandarin [official Chinese] is ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... more that long clarion call: it is the last time—the very last; for all the others have sung a dozen times apiece and have gone to sleep again. So would this one have done, but cocks, like minstrels among men, are vain creatures, and some kind officious fairy whispered in his ear that there was an appreciative listener hard by, and so to please me he sang, just one ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... all is cleared away again, and Bernini's great fountain faces Borromini's big Church of Saint Agnes, in the silence; and the officious guide tells the credulous foreigner how the figure of the Nile in the group is veiling his head to hide the sight of the hideous architecture, and how the face of the Danube expresses the River God's ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and found any thing but a welcome from the Christian inhabitants. Under the mild sway of Saladin, they had enjoyed repose and toleration, and both were endangered by the arrival of the Germans. They looked upon them in consequence as over-officious intruders, and gave them no encouragement in the warfare against Saphaddin. The result of this Crusade was even more disastrous than the last; for the Germans contrived not only to embitter the Saracens against the Christians of Judea, but to lose the strong city of Jaffa, and cause the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... anything, at a moment's warning: the other knows very well what she would be at, and sticks to it, and is more governed by substantial reasons than by caprice or vanity. Pandarus again, in Chaucer's story, is a friendly sort of go-between, tolerably busy, officious, and forward in bringing matters to bear: but in Shakespeare he has 'a stamp exclusive and professional': he wears the badge of his trade; he is a regular knight of the game. The difference of the manner in which the subject is treated ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... day short of Sol, Sawtelle got Five-Jet Admiral Gordon's office on the sub-space radio. An officious underling tried to ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... you, Miss Baron. May God help and guide you, for you may have trouble of which you little dream. What you say about your side and my side has no place in my thoughts. I'll help settle such questions with soldiers. Neither do I wish to be officious, but there is something in my very manhood which protests against a fair young girl like you ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... had scarcely left her during a single moment, and, very fortunately, as we lived in the country, we were not pestered with any formal, and worse than officious, calls of condolence. I now took my horse and rode to a friend, a neighbouring clergyman, and invited him to dine and take a bottle with me. He pleaded a previous engagement; but when I told him the object of my visit, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... to value less than I could wish, is all the return I can make you. Will you give me leave to say how I would desire to stand in your memory? As one, who was truly sensible of the honour you did him, though he was too proud to be vain upon it; as one, who was neither assuming, officious, nor teasing; who never wilfully misrepresented persons or facts to you, nor consulted his passions when he gave a character; and lastly, as one, whose indiscretions proceeded altogether from a weak head, and not an ill heart. I will ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... much more so with regard to women; who, of whatever rank they are, are entitled, in consideration of their sex, not only to an attentive, but an officious good-breeding from men. Their little wants, likings, dislikes, preferences, antipathies, fancies, whims, and even impertinences, must be officiously attended to, flattered, and, if possible, guessed at and anticipated, by a well-bred man. You must never usurp to yourself those conveniences ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... Opposition in this country are ashamed of what they and their friends have done in Ireland. Your answer, I think, much improved by the transposition, especially as it avoids the necessity of your submitting any advice to His Royal Highness, which might have been said to be an officious interference, as you are not in any situation which calls upon you to ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... and rose slowly. "You know something, Charley?" he said in a deceptively mild voice. "One of these days you're going to get officious with the wrong spaceman, one that isn't as tolerant as I am, and you're going to ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... the vaulted roof, while he added—"Never let me see her traitor face again!" The baroness withdrew in terror; and Edward, calling Sir Piers Gaveston, commanded him to place himself at the head of a double guard, and go in person to bring the object of his officious introduction to meet the punishment due to his crime. "For," cried the king, "be he prince or peasant, I will see him hanged before my eyes, and then return his wanton paramour, branded with ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... which he had conceived." The United-States Gazette for Oct. 9 states, more sarcastically, that "the general is said to have manifested the utmost composure, and with the true spirit of heroism seems ready to resign his high office, and even his life, rather than gratify the officious inquiries ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... known even in my time. But if it becomes popular it will lose its charm. Monsieur and his family will no longer be able to shake hands with every guest. There may be table-cloths. The hens—I always thought they were the poulets we ate fattened before our eyes—will be banished, and some officious A.P.M. will put the place out of bounds, suspecting it to be a haunt of vice. Its look and its smell, I admit, would arouse suspicion in the mind of any conscientious A.P.M., but Monsieur's patrons, if rough, were ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... I could give it to you," said Tackleton. "As I can't, thankee. Between ourselves (as I told you before, eh?) I don't much think I shall have the less joy in my married life because May hasn't been too officious about me, and too demonstrative. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... cities are so full,—our whole country is so overrun,—with these officious middle-men whom the world does not truly want; chiffonniers of trade, who only pick up a living out of the great press and waste and overflow; and our boys are so eager to slip in to some such easy, ready-made opportunity,—to get some ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... his general habits were, had high breeding, and, as we learn from Boswell's gossip, was not entirely free from aristocratic tendencies,—nay, is said to have aspired to a royal crown?[27] Or is the coronet on his tomb an unauthorised device of the officious friends who are said to have spent 500l. in giving the exile a ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... doors. We were asked to alight; one man took the gun; others offered to take our hats, to unload the pack-mule, etc. Two or three of them were Zambeses, and not very good-looking; they made themselves so officious, that Velasquez confessed to me afterwards that he was rather afraid of them, and thought they were too pressing in their attentions, and meant to rob us. Our fears were groundless; they had been suddenly startled in the midst of an illegal game, and were ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... own moods. After we lay down his book, little impression is left of the places through which he has passed, and a strong one of his own character. With his fellow-traveller, though kindness sometimes made him over-officious, he was so well pleased, as to project a voyage up the Baltic, and a visit to the northern countries of Europe, in his society. He had before indulged himself with a visionary scheme of sailing to Iceland, with ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... fortune, became disgusted with garrison life, resigned his commission, and took a wife. It seems difficult to explain the marriage of two persons who had not an idea in common. On the one hand, a number of those officious friends and relations, who, as Phrosine says, would marry the republic of Venice to the Grand Turk, had taken much pains to arrange it: on the other, Chaverny was of good family; before his marriage he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... heavier, but there was just a suspicion of bloat over all his frame. Jim was clean built, statuesque—a Jason rather than a Hermes. He was by six inches taller, but the other had just as long a reach. And, as the officious patrons of the "pub" strapped on the gloves and made the usual preparation of wet sponge and towel, it seemed in all respects an even match—in all respects but one; Jim was twenty-odd, Mike ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of officious hands held her cloak, a dozen officious voices called her chair. And my Lady Barbara thanked her helpers with smiling lips that were still pomegranate red, and yet the curtains of her chair caught her first sob as they descended about her, and it seemed but a disheveled mass ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... been quite so far from going away as now when he believed she had just come back. She felt oozing through the walls the spirit of small houses and righteous people. At that instant she knew that in running away she had merely hidden her doubts behind the officious stir ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... past fortnight a pamphlet has been published in Germany under the title Videant Consules (a pamphlet having all the appearance of a Berlin semi-official, or officious, document) which gives us the key (my readers will agree that I have already placed it in the lock) of William II's sudden ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... melodramatic stage effect, and a regardlessness of consequences perfectly unprecedented." We were, in the words of truth and soberness, fast losing our moral ascendency in Europe—by a series of querulous, petty, officious, needless, undignified interpositions; by the exhibition of a vacillating and short-sighted policy; by appearing (novel position for Great Britain) "willing to wound, but yet afraid to strike;" by conceiving and executing idle and preposterous schemes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... imagination will also be awake and active at five. He will look out on the world with anthropomorphic (or rather with paedomorphic) eyes. He will be living on a great flat earth—unless some officious person has tried to muddle his wits by telling him the earth is round; amidst trees, animals, men, houses, engines, utensils, that are all capable of being good or naughty, all fond of nice things and hostile to nasty ones, all thumpable and perishable, and all conceivably esurient. And the child ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... reminded us of Caleb Balderston. If there was a word said by any of the lookers-on—for many came to have a gaze at the lions—he was out in a moment, and brought the offender to account. In short, by his officious attention he afforded us much amusement, and greatly contributed to our proper enjoyment of the dinner. Our candles were original ones—a few threads of cotton drawn through a ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... at once fell upon the obsequious servant of Creusa, who with such officious attention had filled his cup. He violently seized the old man, and accused him of his murderous intentions. Unprepared for this sudden attack he admitted his guilt, but pointed to the wife of Xuthus as the instigator of the crime. Ion was about to avenge himself upon Creusa, when, by means ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
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