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More "Vexatious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... influence, did not wish to create fresh entanglements by embroiling the United Provinces in a war with Denmark. De Geer therefore at once began on his own responsibility to equip ships in the various seaports of Holland and Zeeland which had been the chief sufferers by the vexatious Sound dues, and he succeeded in enlisting the connivance of the Estates of Holland to his undertaking. Before the end of April, 1644, a fleet of thirty-two vessels was collected under the command of Marten Thijssen. Its first efforts were unsuccessful. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... than the time appointed, and earlier than the lady; whose arrival was hindered, not only by the distance of the place where she dined, but by some other cross accidents very vexatious to one in her situation of mind. He was accordingly shown into the drawing-room, where he had not been many minutes before the door opened, and in came——no other than Sophia herself, who had left the play before the end of the first act; ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... impatient once more to embrace him. He had been, already, several months travelling towards him by land and water; and just as he was beginning to believe that the most difficult half of the journey had been accomplished, he found himself delayed by an obstruction vexatious as unexpected. ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... double. Not in order to resist or evade my brother's directions, but for the very opposite purpose—viz., that I might fulfil them to the letter; thus and no otherwise it happened that I showed so much scrupulosity about the exact value and position of his words, as finally to draw upon myself the vexatious reproach ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ratio increased. The aggregate for the whole country was reduced by one half from that of 1811, and amounted to little more than one fourth of the prosperous times preceding Jefferson's embargo of 1808, with its vexatious progeny of restrictive measures; but the proportion of the South increased. The same was observable in the Middle states, containing the great centres of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. There a ratio to the total, of a little under fifty per ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... claimed that the command, by right of seniority of commission, belonged to him. On the first night out the Alliance and Bonhomme Richard collided and were obliged to return to port for repairs. Vexatious delays prevented the sailing of the squadron until ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... vexatious!" said Margaret Dunscombe "here I've got this beautiful piece of blue satin, and can't do anything with it; it just matches that blue morocco it's a perfect match I could have made a splendid thing of it, and I have got some cord and tassels ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... five hundred miles out of my way, at a considerable expense. Oh, I shall be so glad to get home. As I told you before, I am quite well; indeed, in better health than I have been for years, but it is very vexatious to be stopped in the manner I have been. God bless you, my darling. Write to ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... humble servant, and that's exaggeration—well, that was the way I spent four years in Moscow. I can't tell you, my dear sir, how quickly, how fearfully quickly, that time passed; it's positively painful and vexatious to remember. Some mornings one gets up, and it's like sliding downhill on little sledges.... Before one can look round, one's flown to the bottom; it's evening already, and already the sleepy servant is pulling ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... is burned, and presently forgotten; and it is a consolation for his ever having been at all, that some one is sure to be the richer and happier and freer for his ceasing to be. True, he may assume new earthly conditions, may pass into other vexatious shapes of life; but the change must ever be for the better in respect of the interests of those who have suffered by the powers and capabilities of the shape which he relinquishes. He may become a snake; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... and before they could all be killed, they had torn to pieces half-a-dozen of the Texians, and dreadfully lacerated as many more. The evening was, of course, spent in revelry: the dangers and fatigues, the delays and vexatious of the march were now considered over, and high were their anticipations of the rich plunder in perspective. But this was the only feat accomplished by this Texian expedition: the Mexicans had not been deceived; they had had intelligence ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... 14th.—After all the vexatious haggling for a house, I gained my object to-day by a judicious piece of bribery which I had intended to accomplish whenever I could. I now succeeded in sending—for I could not, under the jealous eyes in Uganda, get it done earlier—a present of fifteen pints mixed ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... that was the complement of the one that was eager within him, a love that was complete, passionate, exclusive, unalterable. And from that moment it was as though he had come under the influence of another star, the beneficent rays of which were blending with his own; vexatious events grew slowly remoter, fewer, warier of attacking him, tardier in their approach. They seemed reluctantly to abandon their habit of selecting him as their victim. He actually saw his luck turn. And now ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... to Felipe (June 25, 1588) reports the capture of the treasure-ship "Santa Ana" off the California coast, by the English adventurer Thomas Candish, which has caused much loss and hardship to the Spaniards in the Philippines. Complaint is made of vexatious imposts levied on the Philippine trade by the viceroy of Mexico; the Audiencia ask that he be ordered to cease these measures, also that he shall not meddle with letters sent from Spain to the islands, or with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... distrait.)—"The Squire—yes, very true—quite proper." (Then looking up, and with naivete)—"Can you believe me, I never thought of the Squire. And he is such an odd man, and has so many English prejudices, that really—dear me, how vexatious that it should never once have occurred to me that Mr. Hazeldean had a voice in the matter! Indeed, the relationship is so distant—it is not like being her father; and Jemima is of age, and can do as she pleases; and—but, as you say, it is quite proper that he should be ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... and a natural spirit of independence when men are not afraid to dress like vagabonds and behave a little extravagantly, if it suits their taste. It must be said, however, that the police regulations or St. Petersburg, without being onerous or vexatious, are quite as good as those of any large city in Europe. When men are deprived of their political liberties, the least that can be done for them is to let them enjoy as much municipal freedom as may be consistent with public peace. I should never have suspected, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the passage of the desert between El-Arish and Belbeis exceeded thirty-three degrees. On placing the bulb of the thermometer in the sand the mercury rose to forty-five degrees. The deceitful mirage was even more vexatious than in the plains of Bohahire'h. In spite of our experience an excessive thirst, added to a perfect illusion, made us goad on our wearied horses towards lakes which vanished at our approach; and left behind nothing but salt and arid sand. In two days my cloak was completely covered with ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Virginia, Nevada.—"I am an enthusiastic student of mathematics, and it is so vexatious to me to find my progress constantly impeded by these mysterious arithmetical technicalities. Now do tell me what the difference ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mining interest by vexatious legislation. Under this head come many grievances, some special to the mines and some affecting all Uitlanders. The dynamite monopoly, by which the miners had to pay 600,000l. extra per annum in order to get ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is so vexatious. She is so determined upon preaching to the women, that I have been obliged to ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'mourn' for more than a week, nor remain at home for more than a month, nor sleep on the ground." Doubtless, tens of thousands thanked him, and thank him still, for this war against a popular, but most vexatious, absurdity. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... to savour the recollection of triumph. He mused a little, from time to time, on Constance, whose behaviour slightly piqued his curiosity. That she was much occupied with the thought of him, he never doubted, but he could not feel quite sure of the colour of her reflections—a vexatious incertitude. He lazily resolved to bring her to clearer avowal ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... the mob is the most sanguinary, that of soldiers the most expensive, and that of civilians the most vexatious.—Colton. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... unhappy visitor heard within the shuffling slippers and vexatious scraping cough of the detestable master. Marneffe opened the door, but only to put himself into an attitude and point to the stairs, exactly as Hulot had shown him the door of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... "knew Latin pretty well," and, on Ben Jonson's evidence, he knew "less Greek." That he knew ANY Greek is surprising. Apparently he did, to judge from Ben's words. My attitude must, to the Baconians, seem frivolous, vexatious, and evasive. I cannot pretend to know what was Shakspere's precise amount of proficiency in Latin when he was writing the plays. That between his own knowledge, and construes given to him, he might easily get at the meaning of all ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... all petty, but aggravating in themselves. She is not only a common scold, but a babbling woman, who often hath slandered and scandalized her neighbors, for which her poor husband is often brought into chargeable and vexatious suits and cast ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... wants more than this—there is, in fact, a great deal more in the compass of two volumes,[279] containing between them less than six hundred pages—all I can say is that he is vexatious and unreasonable, and that I have no sympathy whatever with him. Of course the book is of its own kind, and not of another. Some people may like that kind less than others; some may not like it at all. But ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... part of his reign, being anxious to fix himself securely in his seat, the usurper conveyed, or confirmed, a grant to the citizens to hold Middlesex to farm for the yearly rental of 300 pounds; to appoint their own sheriff and their own justiciar; to be exempt from various burdensome and vexatious taxes in force in other parts of the kingdom; to be free from all denominations of tolls, customs, passage, and lestage, throughout the kingdom and along the seaboard; and to possess many other equally important privileges. This valuable charter was renewed ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... Castilians from riding upon mules! In practice this precious decree, like other villainous prohibitory laws that try to prevent honest people from doing what they have a perfect right to do, proved so vexatious and ineffective withal that it had to be perpetually fussed with and tinkered. One year you could ride a mule and the next year you couldn't. In 1492, as we shall see, Columbus immortalized one of these patient beasts by riding it a few ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... commissions, responsible as they are to an insistent and uninformed public opinion, and possessed as they inevitably become of the peculiar official point of view, inevitably drift or are driven to incessant, vexatious, and finally harmful interference. The efficient conduct of any complicated business, be it manufacturing, transportation, or political, always involves the constant sacrifice of an occasional or a local interest for the benefit of the economic operation of the whole organization. But it is just ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... and instead of that she had gotten herself into this fix. If they found her safe and sound she ought to be spanked and taught to keep her hands off the Mill affairs until she was older. But down in his heart he knew this was only a vexatious expression of his concern—you couldn't punish ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... then Ariel, in the likeness of an ape, would make mouths at him. Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With a variety of suchlike vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him, whenever Caliban neglected the work which Prospero ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... depended. He advised that the suit should be dropped and the money saved. Other experiences only increased his repugnance to his profession.[211] A singularly strong impression had been made upon him by the Memoirs of Teresa Constantia Phipps, in which there is an account of vexatious legal proceedings as to the heroine's marriage. He appears to have first read this book in 1759. Then, he says, the 'Demon of Chicane appeared to me in all his hideousness. I vowed war against him. My vow has been accomplished!'[212] Bentham thus went to the bar as a 'bear to the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... that the opinion of my having some abstract right in my favor would not put me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be sure that there were no rights which, in their exercise under certain circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs and the most vexatious of ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... from the days of his youth, when each people supposed itself to have been cheated by the Union, and Englishmen resented the advent of swarms of needy adventurers, talking with a strange accent and hanging together with honourable but vexatious persistence. Johnson was irritated by what was, after all, a natural defence against English prejudice. He declared that the Scotch were always ready to lie on each other's behalf. "The Irish," he said, "are not ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... been formerly almost ruined by a long suit in chancery,[77] which was decreed for me with costs. He asked what time was usually spent in determining between right and wrong, and what degree of expense? Whether advocates and orators had liberty to plead in causes, manifestly known to be unjust, vexatious, or oppressive? Whether party in religion or politics was observed to be of any weight in the scale of justice? Whether those pleading orators were persons educated in the general knowledge of equity, or ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... decision of their constituents to the extent that Mr. Shackleton's Bill, rejected in 1903, obtained second reading by 39 votes in 1904, and by 122 in 1905. But dislike of the measure had not abated; so many vexatious amendments were embodied in the Bill in Committee as to render it worse than useless; and at last all but the Tory members retired from the Grand Committee in disgust, and the Bill was discharged from the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... troubles and inconveniences which flow from the existence of these large landholders—land-thieves, land-sharks, or land-grabbers, they are more commonly and plainly called. Thus the townlands of Monterey are all in the hands of a single man. How they came there is an obscure, vexatious question, and rightly or wrongly the man is hated with a great hatred. His life has been repeatedly in danger. Not very long ago, I was told, the stage was stopped and examined three evenings in succession by disguised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Kentucky, they went back and set up a claim of $2,000 against their father's estate, when these despoiled slaves had to deposit the last of their estate as security, having been for more than twelve years thus harassed and perplexed by vexatious lawsuits. When the Union army under General Nelson came into that country, and had that trumpeted battle at Ivy Mountain, and our troops reached Prestonburg, twenty-five miles from Piketon, these hunted and plundered ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... theatres where they wanted supers and earned by this when in work from sixteen shillings to a guinea a week. At the end of her day she was so tired that she slept like a top. She made the best of her difficult lot. Her keen sense of humour enabled her to get amusement out of every vexatious circumstance. Sometimes things went wrong, and she found herself with no money at all; then her trifling possessions found their way to a pawnshop in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, and she ate bread and butter till things grew brighter. She never ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... take the sting out of several of our later mishaps. About twelve thousand surrendered in the Transvaal, six thousand in the Orange River Colony, and about two thousand in the Cape Colony, showing that the movement in the rebel districts had always been more vexatious than formidable. A computation of the prisoners of war, the surrenders, the mercenaries, and the casualties, shows that the total forces to which we were opposed were certainly not fewer than seventy-five thousand well-armed mounted men, while they may have considerably exceeded that ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... can ever hope to grasp concerning this lymphatic, unimaginative race. They obey the laws—a criminal requires imagination. They never start a respectable revolution—you cannot revolt without imagination. Among other things they pride themselves on their immunity from vexatious imposts. Yet whisky, the best quality of which is worth tenpence a bottle, is taxed till it costs five shillings; ale, the life-blood of the people, would be dear at three-pence a gallon and yet costs fivepence a pint; tobacco, which could profitably be sold at twopence a pound, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... cousin to the late Marquis of Cibo. For Cibo has many kinsmen at court who still resent the circumstance that the matching of his wits against Eglamore's earned for Cibo a deplorably public demise. So they conspire against Eglamore with vexatious industry, as an upstart, as a nobody thrust over people of proven descent, and Eglamore goes about in hourly apprehension of a knife-thrust. If he could make a match with you, though, your father—thrifty man!—would be easily appeased. Your cousins, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... bad indeed. Poor Miss Sneyd. Though I have no younger sister, I feel for her. To be neglected before one's time must be very vexatious; but it was entirely the mother's fault. Miss Augusta should have been with her governess. Such half-and-half doings never prosper. But now I must be satisfied about Miss Price. Does she go to balls? Does she dine out every where, as well as ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... epoch. At that period the state of things in the valleys was far from satisfactory. Not to recount, as among the causes, those political disabilities to which reference has been previously made, I will refer to some additional circumstances of a vexatious and depressing character. One was the hindrances to the obtaining the most indispensable religious books, such as Bibles, catechisms, hymn-books. With each parcel of Bibles and New Testaments, the moderator was obliged to sign a formal undertaking that not a single copy should be sold, nor ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... were compelled to remain all the next day at the anchorage to shift them. This detention was very vexatious, for we were not only losing a fair wind, but lying in ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... had been sent, who might have conferred with each other, and who might have divided, when they had reached Neath, and gone to different mines, to inquire for the witnesses. These thoughts disturbed me. Those, also, which had occurred when I first heard of the vexatious way in which things were situated, renewed themselves painfully to my mind. My own obstinacy in resisting the advice of Mr. Burges, and the fear of injury to my own reputation, and to that of the cause I had undertaken, were ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... on the table with her hand. "How vexatious you are!" she exclaimed. "Well, the next day was the sixteenth; so the festivities of the year were over, and the feast itself was past and gone. I see people busy putting things away, and fussing about still, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... plush-covered rocking-chair that rocked on a track of its own, and thus saved the yellow-and-red hotel carpet, the Honourable Dave Beckwith patiently explained the vexatious process demanded by his particular sovereign state before she should consent to cut the Gordian knot of marriage. And his state—the Honourable Dave remarked—was in the very forefront of enlightenment in this respect: ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... gaily describing what she had witnessed at her grandfather's. Meanwhile she had nestled comfortably among the cushions of a lounge; and when she mentioned Antyllus's unseemly conduct, she spoke of it, with a carelessness that startled Berenike, as a vexatious piece of rudeness which must ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... deg.. Height 9040 feet. Started pretty well on foot; came to steep slope with crevasses (few). I went on ski to avoid another fall, and we took the slope gently with our sail, constantly losing the track, but picked up a much weathered cairn on our right. Vexatious delays, searching for tracks, &c., reduced morning march to 8.1 miles. Afternoon, came along a little better, but again lost tracks on hard slope. To-night we are near camp of December 26, but cannot see cairn. Have decided it is waste of time ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... dispersed on trivial pretences. But not to sleep immediately. Directly Dangle was alone he began, with infinite disgust, to scrutinise his darkling eye, for he was a neat-minded little man in spite of his energy. The whole business—so near a capture—was horribly vexatious. Phipps sat on his bed for some time examining, with equal disgust, a collar he would have thought incredible for Sunday twenty-four hours before. Mrs. Milton fell a-musing on the mortality of even big, fat men with dog-like ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... undertook a tour through the country, and the diversity and beauties of Nature I met with in this charming season expelled every gloomy and vexatious thought. Just at the close of day the gentle gales retired, and left the place to the disposal of a profound calm. Not a breeze shook the most tremulous leaf. I had gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking round with astonishing ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... must always pay the price, usually a vexatious one. Bores stopped him on the street to repeat ancient and witless stories. Invented anecdotes, some of them exasperating ones, went the rounds of the press. Impostors in distant localities personated him, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... dull one; indeed, you make a very great mistake, for it abounds with interesting facts and thoughts. Your account of the tameness of the birds which apparently have wandered from the interior, is very curious. But I must begin on another subject: there has been a great and very vexatious, but unavoidable delay in the publication of your book. (678/1. "Facts and Arguments for Darwin," 1869, a translation by the late Mr. Dallas of F. Muller's "Fur Darwin," 1864: see Volume I., Letter 227.) Prof. Huxley agrees with me that Mr. Dallas ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... those tribulations, then, which can both profit us and harm us, we know not what we should pray for as we ought. Yet none the less since they are hard, since they are vexatious, since, too, they are opposed to our sense of our own weakness, mankind with one consent prays that they may be removed from us. But we owe this much devotion to the Lord our God that, if He refuses to ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... "behind that wall lies a carboniferous bed, undiscovered by our soundings. It is vexatious that all the apparatus of the mine, deserted for ten years, must be set up anew. Never mind. We have found the vein which was thought to be exhausted, and this time it shall be ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... [Greek: duocheres] 'inauspicious', 'ill- omened'; but as we do not know exactly what was in Demosthenes' mind, it is better not to give the word a meaning which it does not bear elsewhere. It may, however, mean 'vexatious'. ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... The vexatious question of so-called legation asylum for offenders against the state and its laws was presented anew in Chile by the unauthorized action of the late United States minister in receiving into his official residence two persons who had just failed in an attempt at revolution and against ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... living in the neighborhood, by means of diving-machines, ascertained the position and state of the ship, and made proposals to government to adopt means of raising her and getting her again afloat. After a great many vexatious delays and interruptions on the part of those who were to have supplied him with assistance, he succeeded in getting up the Lark sloop. His efforts to raise the Royal George were so far successful, that at every time of high tide she was lifted from her bed; and on the 9th of October she ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... merry Christmas. I think it is such nonsense. Who does have a merry Christmas now, except children and paupers? And, all being well—or rather ill, so far as I am concerned—we shall meet before long. We are coming to Elberthal. I will tell you why when we meet. It is too long to write—and too vexatious" (this word was half erased), "troublesome. I will let you know when we come, and our address. How are you ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... had applied to the Pope to annul the marriage with Catharine (S342) on the ground of illegality; but the Emperor Charles V, who was the Queen's nephew, used his influence in her behalf. Vexatious delays now became the order of the day. At last, a court composed of Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio, an Italian, as papal legates, or representatives, was convened at Blackfriars, London, to test ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... were at length collected; but nearly three months had been consumed in forcing a way through almost impassable woods and morasses in the worst of weather, and in vexatious inaction from deficiency of means to advance; service far more destructive than severe fighting. A heavy swell caused by the rains had carried away the bridge, but Mr. Pellew constructed another by which the army crossed to Saratoga. The General ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... labours the point, as if he thought I should be uneasy that he did not.' I am indeed sorry he should be ill on my account; and I will allow, that the suspense he has been in for some time past, must have been vexatious enough to so impatient a spirit. But all ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Ariel, in the likeness of an ape, would make mouths at him. Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With a variety of such-like vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him whenever Caliban neglected the work which Prospero ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... left, Claude had the place to himself again, and the work went on as usual. The stock did well, and there were no vexatious interruptions. The fine weather held, and every morning when Claude got up, another gold day stretched before him like a glittering carpet, leading...? When the question where the days were leading struck him on the edge of his bed, he hurried to dress and get down-stairs in ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... continued in Schroeter's employment. At the end of that time the Prussian Government chose him to superintend the erection of a new observatory at Koenigsberg, which after many vexatious delays, caused by the prostrate condition of the country, was finished towards the end of 1813. Koenigsberg was the first really efficient German observatory. It became, moreover, a centre of improvement, not for Germany ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... could not help contrasting to the disadvantage of Singapore the examination of Chinese and other Asiatic passengers. Theoretically, in Singapore, there is no Customs service. It is a free port, and so, theoretically, one may land there free of vexatious examinations, such as one experiences at some Continental ports or on the wharves at San Francisco. But, as a matter of fact, they who have occasion to walk along the sea front in Singapore may see Asiatic passengers at any of the landing places turning out their baggage in sun or ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... hyperbole, in applauding those servants of the public who have prospered in their undertakings; clamorous, to a degree of prosecution, against those who have miscarried in their endeavours, without any investigation of merit, without any consideration of circumstances. A keen sense of these vexatious peculiarities conspiring with the shame of disappointment, and eager desire of retrieving the laurel that he might by some be supposed to have lost at the Falls of Montmorenci, and the despair of finding such an occasion, excited an ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... that the fact of the Irish not having rebelled should not be made a plea for treating them worse than those who had; and in the front of all their requests was one for the abolition of those unjust and vexatious duties which shackled their trade and manufactures. But the jealousy of the English and Scotch manufacturers was still as bitter, and, unhappily, still as influential, as it had proved in the time of William III. And, to humor the grasping selfishness of Manchester and Glasgow, Lord North ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... and Pendennis had had their conversation together. But that bird was flown; Colonel Altamont had received his Derby winnings and was gone to the Continent. The fact of his absence was exceedingly vexatious to Mr. Morgan. "He'll drop all that money at the gambling-shops on the Rhind," thought Morgan, "and I might have had a good bit of it. It's confounded annoying to think he's gone and couldn't have waited a few days longer." ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with gleaming berries, green, pink and red, present pleasing aspect. As a change to the scenery of the jungle, a coffee estate has a garden-like relief. But picking berry by berry is slow and monotonous work, vexatious, too, to those mortals whose skin is sensitive to the attacks of green ants. Then comes the various processes of the removal of the pulp, first by machinery, finally by the fermentation of the still adhering ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... a cause for rejoicing, and for applauding the might of your sorceries, Messire Manuel, whereas you are plainly thinking of vexatious matters." ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... cataracts on the Nile, and he had to be supplied with labourers to carry his luggage where the navigation was interrupted. Accordingly the priests at Philae petitioned the king that their temple might be relieved from this heavy and vexatious charge, which they said lessened their power of rightly performing their appointed sacrifices; and they further begged to be allowed to set up a monument to record the grant which they hoped for. Euergetes granted the priests' prayer, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... subject, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction." We can only praise either as it is "clothed in circumstances." Commonly we are led to praise the one by getting too much of the other. Confounded in a tangle of fussy, vexatious, perhaps malicious restrictions, men cry loudly for liberty. When people all about us are doing things by their own sweet will, we are converted to praise of regulation and discipline and ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... before the down freight train would leave that point. Sure enough, they discovered, this side of Adairsville, three rails torn up and other impediments in the way. They "took up" in time to prevent an accident, but could proceed with the train no further. This was most vexatious, and it may have been in some degree disheartening; but it did not cause the slightest relaxation of efforts, and, as the result proved, was but little in the way of the dead game, pluck and resolutions ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... Business. Business would not permit me hitherto to come to see you. These Floods of Business that I have been plung'd in would not permit me to pay my Respects to you. I have been so busy I could not come. I have been harass'd with so many vexatious Matters that I could not get an Opportunity. I have been so taken up with a troublesome Business that I could never have so much Command of myself. You must impute it to my Business, and not to me. It was not for Want of Will, but Opportunity. I could ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... imperfection; and therefore every one was willing to increase the mortifying smart of it, and keep alive the conscious shame he felt of wearing a fool's cap which was entirely of his own making. This vexatious, and in some degree, vindictive ridicule to which he was daily exposed, and which, in time, he might have softened and disarmed by an humble and penitent deportment, gave such an insupportable wound to his foolish ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... the subject, but she set up her screen of silence. It was disappointing, for Albinia had believed better things of her sense, and hardly made allowance for the different aspect of the love-sorrows of seventeen, viewed from fifteen or twenty-six—vexatious, too, to be treated with dry reserve, and probably viewed as a rock in the course of true love; and provoking to see perpetual tete-a-tetes that could hardly fail to fill Sophy's romantic ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... land, passengers from infected places are similarly inspected at the frontiers and their luggage "disinfected"—in all cases a pious ceremony of no practical value, involving a short but often a vexatious delay; only those found suffering from cholera can be detained. Each nation is pledged to notify the others of the existence within its own borders of a "foyer" of cholera, by which is meant a focus or centre of infection. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... and I can hardly return it in this condition. It is really vexatious," she replied, wondering how to lead the conversation back to the place where it was interrupted. She might have succeeded, but fate seemed against her. A passenger, who knew them both, strolled by and ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... their grain at his mill and to bake at his oven; he had corvees—the right to a certain amount of unpaid labor from his tenants; his land was exempt from the taille, the most burdensome of taxes; and he had many other and diverse seigneurial rights, often, indeed, more vexatious to the tenant than they were profitable to the seigneur. [Footnote: Rambaud, Hist. de la Civilisation Francaise, II., 84-90.] These rights of land-holders were survivals from an earlier period; but ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... golden hopes were neither more nor less than gilded bubbles: the vexations, on the other hand, are realities; solid, abiding, uncompromising realities. 'And what are these vexations?' you will perhaps exclaim; 'I see nothing so vexatious about the matter; I know not what are the hardships and the drudgery alluded to.' Then listen. And do not confine yourself to the article of drudgery, but keep a sharp look-out for ignominy, for degradation, for everything, in short, that is ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... scrubbed down, and the part down to the hall had a thin strip of carpet on it secured by brazen rods; the margins on either side of this carpet had to be beeswaxed and the brass rods polished. There was a great deal of unnecessary and vexatious brass of one kind or another scattered about the house, and as there were four children in the family, besides Mrs. O'Connor and her two sisters, the amount of washing which had constantly to be done ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... and terror, had to be cared for at once. Finally they met the young daughter coming back. In one case an old man and two infirm persons could not keep the daughter who was their sole support. And everywhere the enemy sneered, adding vexatious annoyance to their hateful task. In the house of the doctor, who is B.'s uncle, they gave his wife the choice between two maids. She preferred the elder and they said, "Well, then she is the one we are going to take." Mlle. L., the young one who has just got over typhoid and bronchitis, saw ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... had hardly recovered from his vexatious defeat in the skirmish where the Widow Hopkins was his principal opponent, when he received a note from Miss Silence Withers, which promised another and more important field of conflict. It contained a request that he would visit Myrtle Hazard, who seemed to be in a very excitable and impressible ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... local history which it is so much the fashion to treat in Venice. No one makes a profession of authorship. The returns of an author's work would be too uncertain, and its restrictions and penalties would be too vexatious and serious; and so literary topics are only occasionally treated by those whose main energies are ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the cost of his opposition to the vestry's will. If he only stood alone! If neither wife nor child had rights to be considered in advance of other mortals, and which, for the necessities of others, must surely not be waived! If Nature had not planted in him prudence, if he had only not that vexatious habit of surveying duties in their wholeness, and balancing consequences, he might, at the moment, enter into Don Quixote's joy. But,—and here he was at the head of the flight of stairs that led to her chamber, face to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... IT WAS vexatious to see what a to-do the whole town, and next the whole country, made over the news. Joan of Arc ennobled by the King! People went dizzy with wonder and delight over it. You cannot imagine how she was gaped at, stared at, envied. Why, one would have supposed that some great and fortunate ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sometimes objected to the trouble of keeping pass-books for the men?-I don't recollect doing that, but I might have said that it was vexatious. I think there were two or three cases in which I was anxious that the people should have pass-books, and I began them with them. They came with them for a certain time, but then they would come without the book, and that confused me altogether. However, I never was very much asked ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... of Louis XVI. and the widow of the Duke of Berry, to exile from France the new Gaston d'Orleans, and his numerous family, to bring down the heads of the court pygmies,—more dangerous, perhaps, with their influence over the King and his family and their vexatious intrigues in the Court of Peers than the Montmorencys and the Cinq-Mars,—this was a rele to which he never aspired and ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... is most vexatious that, in spite of all admonition, the Courier persists in its warlike tone and justification of the interference of the Continental Powers in the internal affairs of Spain, in opposition to all the known views and declarations ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... opponents in their anger say; All that through life has vex'd you, all abuse, Will this kind friend in pure regard produce; And having through your own offences run, Adds (as appendage) what your friends have done, Has any female cousin made a trip To Gretna Green, or more vexatious slip? Has your wife's brother, or your uncle's son, Done aught amiss, or is he thought t'have done? Is there of all your kindred some who lack Vision direct, or have a gibbous back? From your unlucky name may quips and puns Be made by these upbraiding Goths and Huns? To some great public ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... time did not pass away thus without some vexatious cares to ruffle it. The affair of the American ships was not yet over, and he was again pestered with threats of prosecution. "I have written them word," said he, "that I will have nothing to do with them, and they must act as they think proper. ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... crops. Poachers are sharply dealt with, and the peasant may not have a gun to protect him from wolves. There are laws enough against the wrongs wrought by landlords and gamekeepers, against the trampling down of young wheat, against vexatious complaints and fines, but the country people say that such laws are not fairly enforced. Especially is the case hard of those who live near the capitaineries or royal hunting-grounds. Here rural proprietors may not raise a new wall without permission, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... wants and sets him free to follow his own devices; it is itself his end, or at least a part of it. And from this it follows that the regulations of the state were not regarded by the Greeks—as they are apt to be by modern men—as so many vexatious, if necessary, restraints on individual liberty; but rather as the expression of the best and highest nature of the citizen, as the formula of the conduct which the good man would naturally prescribe to himself. So that, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... first, when the vexatious sense of the city of the Doges reduced to earning its living as a curiosity-shop was in its keenness, there was a great deal of entertainment to be got from lodging on Riva Schiavoni and looking out at the far-shimmering lagoon. There was entertainment indeed in simply getting ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... and their reloadings were carried on by means of whale-boats ferrying back and forth between ship side and dock side with the push cars to facilitate the freight movement at the land end of the connection. This was a laborious and a vexatious proceeding, necessitating the handling and rehandling of every bit of incoming or outbound cargo several times. But then, steamers did not come very often to Good Friday Island; one came every two ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... laughing, toying, wheedling, whimpering she," who once held lord Hastings under her distaff, but her annoying jealousy, "vexatious days, and jarring, joyless nights," drove him away from her. Being jealous of Jane Shore, she accused her to the duke of Gloster of alluring lord Hastings from his allegiance, and the lord protector soon trumped ...
— 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.
... but one thing lacking to her Christmas cheer," she remarked, after a pause, and with the too evident intention of saying something vexatious. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... for passengers or freight. I have myself been detained two or three days at a place after steam was up, the gang planks, all but one, drawn in, and after the time advertised for starting had expired. On this occasion we had no vexatious delays, and in about three days Pittsburg was reached. From Pittsburg I chose passage by the canal to Harrisburg, rather than by the more expeditious stage. This gave a better opportunity of enjoying the fine scenery of Western Pennsylvania, and I had rather a dread of reaching my destination ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... offered him his protection. Hutten at the same time proceeded to launch the most violent controversial diatribes and satires against Rome; one in particular, called 'The Roman Trinity,' wherein he detailed in striking triplets the long series of Romish pretensions, trickeries, and vexatious abuses. At Easter he held a personal interview at Bamberg with Crotus, on his ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... have, a very unfavorable influence upon them. From its satisfactory adjustment not only a firm and cordial friendship, but a progressive development of all their relations, may be expected. It is, therefore, my earnest hope that this old and vexatious subject of difference ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... that virtue; and the more composed, we are under any trouble, the more commendable is our wisdom, and the larger will be our recompense. Let the provocation be what it will, whether from a good-natured and conscientious, or a wicked, perverse, and vexatious man; all this we should take as from the over-ruling hand of God, as a punishment for our sins. Many times injured innocence may be abused by false oaths, or the power of wicked, jealous, or malicious men; but we often find it, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... only public meeting I witnessed during three years of warfare—a recruiting rally in the Manchester Hippodrome—was a poor outlet for one's activity. An offer of the command of the new 3rd line reserve unit at Southport naturally failed to quench my keenness to rejoin the Battalion, and after vexatious delays I at last sailed from Devonport for the East, on the Simla, on the 13th ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... know where it pinches me."[167] A wife ought not therefore to put her trust in her dowry, or family, or beauty, but in matters that more vitally concern her husband, namely, in her disposition and companionableness and complaisance with him, not to make every-day life vexatious or annoying, but harmonious and cheerful and agreeable. For as doctors are more afraid of fevers that are generated from uncertain causes, and from a complication of ailments, than of those that have a clear and adequate cause, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... or ten days, and superintending the Indians who were employed in driving the numerous caravan. Often, in order to add to our collections of new mineral substances, we found ourselves obliged to throw away others, which we had collected a considerable time before. These sacrifices were not less vexatious than the losses we accidentally sustained. Sad experience taught us but too late, that from the sultry humidity of the climate, and the frequent falls of the beasts of burden, we could preserve neither the skins of animals hastily prepared, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... proved that the student had recently entered during his absence, and that he had never seen him. He won the confidence of the students, and very soon their affections. He regarded a mass of petty regulations as being only vexatious, and yet by his tact and firmness his discipline became most effective. Very seldom was there any breaking of the laws. He was so honoured and loved that they tried to please him in all things. Of course, there were exceptions. I ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... the Chevalier d'Orville, who for four years had been soliciting from the Minister of War the post of major, or of King's lieutenant. He was known to be very poor; but he supported his lot without complaining of this vexatious delay in rewarding his honourable services. He regularly attended the Marechal de Segur, at the hour appointed for receiving the numerous solicitations in his department. One day the Marshal said to him: "You are still at Versailles, M. d'Orville?"—"Monsieur," he replied, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... the native sailors tossing overboard a blazing trunk; she stopped them in time, and behold, it contained my manuscripts. Thereafter we had three (or two) days fine weather: then got into a gale of wind, with rain and a vexatious sea. As we drew into our anchorage in a bight of Savage Island, a man ashore told me afterwards the sight of the JANET NICOLL made him sick; and indeed it was rough play, though nothing to the night before. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... darky gravely. "She done been kickin' up something vexatious. She absumlutely won't strike with the others—absumlutely won't! After the rest of 'em are through, in she comes a minute late, chiming away on her own hook, all independent like, as if she was ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... Constitution into the hands of a General Convention. Who can tell what such a convention would do with the Constitution; what it would do with the decisions of the Supreme Court, under which so many of the vexatious questions have been settled? It would be worse than attempting to settle our differences in a town meeting. I would hesitate long before I would submit such questions to a convention. Before they could be settled in that way, the Union would be gone ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... yes," muttered Hilary, as he heard the departing steps; "they've locked me up safe enough. Was anything ever so vexatious?" ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... thought of everything himself, and when she had thought of it it had already been done. This naturally pleased the master very much and caused him to speak with increasing kindness to Uli and to show more and more confidence in him. Nothing is more vexatious for a master than to come home in the evening tired or sleepy and find everything at sixes and sevens and his wife full of complaints; to see only half the work done that should have been accomplished, much of it botched and ruined, so that it had better have been let alone; and then into the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... enthusiasm which the exhibition of his invention aroused among the learned men and others in Paris, he met with obstructions of the most vexatious kind at every turn, in his effort to bring it into practical use. Just as the way seemed clear for its adoption by the French Government, something happened which is thus described in a letter to Mr. Smith, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... son, Prince Philip, a boy of fourteen years, a prisoner in the hands of his victorious enemies. "At this news," says Froissart, "the kingdom of France was greatly troubled and excited, and with good cause, for it was a right grievous blow and vexatious for all sorts of folk. The wise men of the kingdom might well predict that great evils would come of it, for the king, their head, and all the chivalry of the kingdom were slain or taken; the knights and squires who came back home were ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... if it can possibly avoid it, lay its eggs in any place where they are likely to be found by man. Moreover, their rude and little-modulated cries are in the summer season almost incessant, and the din which a considerable flock can produce is exceedingly vexatious. They thus do not fit the needs or comfort of man to the degree which is likely to give them a permanent ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... removing the Senecas, necessarily produced great agitation, and a very unsettled state among those who had no idea of emigrating. The chiefs on the reservations of Alleghany and Cattaraugus, harassed and perplexed by this vexatious state of things, at length determined to address the President on the occasion. This application procured the appointment of the council which was held at Cattaraugus on ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... ports and harbors, to purchase supplies and transship commodities. He said that they subjected our citizens, engaged in fishing enterprises in waters adjacent to their northeastern shore, to numerous vexatious interferences and annoyances, had seized and sold their vessels upon slight pretexts, and had otherwise treated them in a rude, harsh, and ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Bend, some distance up the river, and the deduction in this case was easy. The Bar-20 cared very little about what went on at Perry's Bend—that was a matter which concerned only the ranches near that town—as long as no vexatious happenings sifted too far south. But they had so sifted, and Perry's Bend, or rather the undesirable class hanging out there, was due to receive a shock ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... a fortress. Above all, the building is utterly unmeaning, it is neither a temple nor a tomb, neither has altar, statue, nor inscription. It is, in fact, a 'folly' of the same sort, but far more ambitious and costly, than that which is built at Barrackpoor, and it is vexatious to think that a very handsome church might have been built, and a handsome marble monument to Lord Cornwallis placed in its interior, for little more money than has been employed on a thing, which, if any foreigner saw it, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... overweening; and when she went abroad, she gave herself so many airs that she did nought but make wry faces, as if there came to her a stench from whomsoever she saw or met. But, letting be many other vexatious and tiresome fashions of hers, it chanced one day that she came back to the house, where Fresco was, and seating herself near him, all full of airs and grimaces, did nothing but puff and blow; whereupon quoth he, 'What meaneth this, Ciesca, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Wych Hazel had reason to remember her walk of that morning. It was a shorter way than he had come, that by which her conductor took her, and in parts easy enough; but in other parts requiring his skill as well as hers to get her over them. He said not a word further; he served her in silence: the vexatious thing was, that he was able to serve her so much. Many a time she had to accept his hand to get past a rude place; often both hands were needed to swing her over a watercourse or leap her down from a rock. She ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... amply sufficient for folks of their species, they had no need to look for an ox. With keen delight and an appetite to match they were just about to eat up the egg between them, when an unbidden guest appeared in the shape of Master Reynard the fox. This was a most awkward and vexatious visitation. How was the egg to be saved from the jaws of him? To wrap it up carefully and carry it away by the fore paws, or to roll it, or to drag it, were methods as impossible as they were hazardous. But Necessity, that ingenious mother, furnished the never-failing invention. The sponger being ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... favorite English method for considering vexatious questions—was appointed, under the chairmanship of Mr. James (afterwards Lord) Bryce, "to consider the best methods of establishing a well- organized system of secondary education in England." The ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the muses, exasperated at this vexatious perseverance of the painter, who he imagined had come to tease and insult him, "I would," said he, "sacrifice a cock to Esculapius, were I assured that any person had been taken up for extirpating such a troublesome Goth as you are from the face of the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of disorganization and want of definite aim were to come. While many artists desired to continue relations with the Society of Arts, others regarded the conditions imposed by that Society as vexatious and embarrassing. Particularly they objected to the introduction into their exhibition of the works of the Society's students. They represented further that the exhibition had been 'crowded and incommoded by the intrusion of persons whose ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... least pecuniarily, liable for an unjust sentence.[632] We shall elsewhere have occasion to dwell on the value which the equestrian order attached to this immunity, and we shall see that its relief at the freedom from vexatious prosecution is of itself no sign of corruption. One of our authorities does indeed emphatically assert the ultimate prevalence of bribery in the equestrian courts:[633] and circumstances may be easily imagined which would have made this resort natural, if not inevitable. A band of capitalists ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... frock-coats had not been disciplined, and in accordance with the tone of the general service we midshipmen were tacitly indulged in a similar freedom. This tolerance may have been in part a reaction from the vexatious and absurd interference of a decade before with such natural rights as the cut of the beard—not as matter of neatness, but of pattern. Even for some time after I graduated, unless I misunderstood my informants, officers in the British navy were not permitted to wear a full beard, nor a mustache; ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the Gallas. For years they had been at enmity, and the marauding expeditions which the soldiers of the mountain had lately made into their territory, had increased that bad feeling, and quite destroyed any hope of reconciliation. This was the more vexatious, as now that Mastiate had, by her treaty with Gobaze, obtained possession and garrisoned all the districts around Magdala, it was but natural to expect that she would make some efforts at least to seize upon a fortress that lay within her dominions. Not many days after the departure of Gobaze ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... one of sufficient importance to awaken in the monarch's mind any very serious anger, and so, instead of inflicting any heavy punishment upon the offender, he contented himself with attempting to tease and torment him with sundry vexatious indignities and annoyances. ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... bowed the visitor out, he returned to Monroe with an expression of weariness on his handsome face. "So many affairs to think of! so many people to see! Really, it is becoming vexatious. I believe I shall turn hunks, and get a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... The Germans are as badly off as any people. But we are all badly off. So far as world air transit goes any country can, if it chooses, choke any adjacent country. Directly any trade difficulty breaks out, any country can begin a vexatious campaign against its neighbour's air traffic. It can oblige it to alight at the frontier, to follow prescribed routes, to land at specified places on those routes and undergo examinations that will waste precious hours. But so far as I can see, no European ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... that my eyes were closed up and incapable of supporting the light, and occasioned me such acute anguish that I could get no sleep but by the effect of laudanum. This misfortune at this crisis was peculiarly vexatious and mortifying for me, as it put it out of my power to accompany the Pasha, who departed with the army for Dongola on the 26th, taking his route on the west bank of the river, and leaving the Divan Effendi and a small party of soldiers to expedite the loading and forwarding the boats ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... gentlemen, I flattered myself that I was temporarily done with the vexatious details of insurance, and I was getting ready to bank up one of the flowerbeds with black dirt when who should come along but another neighbor, and a very charming one, too—Angus Cameron Macleod? For two years we have been more or less intimate. Macleod combines many strangely ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... subject, but she set up her screen of silence. It was disappointing, for Albinia had believed better things of her sense, and hardly made allowance for the different aspect of the love-sorrows of seventeen, viewed from fifteen or twenty-six—vexatious, too, to be treated with dry reserve, and probably viewed as a rock in the course of true love; and provoking to see perpetual tete-a-tetes that could hardly fail to fill Sophy's romantic head ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... houses of correction were subjected to a strict superintendence; all associations, those only excepted which were of ancient standing, and recognised by the laws, were dissolved. He burnt all the notes of those who had been a long time in arrear with the treasury, as being the principal source of vexatious suits and prosecutions. Places in the city claimed by the public, where the right was doubtful, he adjudged to the actual possessors. He struck out of the list of criminals the names of those over whom prosecutions had ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... go back by Mallaig. I don't just understand why, but they're lookin' for you down that line. It's a vexatious business when your friends, meanin' the polis, are doing their best to upset your plans and you no able to enlighten them. I could send word to the Chief Constable and get ye through to London without ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... could not, however, be effected without the agency of a tyrannical police. He did not shrink from the most vexatious interferences with the much-prized freedom of Italian private life, using the espionage of servants on their masters as a means of carrying out his moral reforms. That transformation of public and private life which the Iron Calvin was but just able to effect ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the interests of public health alcohol may not be too easily or too cheaply obtainable, that (2) the restraints on its sale may be a source of revenue to the State, and that (3) at the same time this regulation of the sale may not be a vexatious and useless attempt to interfere unduly with national customs. States have sought to attain these ends in various ways. The sale of alcohol may be made a State monopoly, as in Russia, or, again, it may be carried on under disinterested municipal ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... When a vexatious litigant began to contest the will by which Mr. Vane was Lord of Stoken Church, and Mr. Vane went up to London to concert the proper means of defeating this attack, Mrs. Vane would gladly have compounded by ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... annoyed at learning the continuance and extent of the vexatious opposition to his wishes; but, begging me not to be influenced by the injustice committed, strongly urged the necessity of my using every endeavour for immediate action,—I at once pointed out to His Majesty that the only way to accomplish this was, to restore confidence to the men by maintaining ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... that were always arising on account of the insulting exactions of toll and tribute in the Austrian border cities. A sharp war broke out, and the Swiss city of Lucerne took the opportunity of destroying the Austrian castle of Rothemburg, where the tolls had been particularly vexatious, and of admitting to their league the ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the co-operation of employers, workmen, and the general public; the three must act and endure together, or we delay and maybe imperil victory. We ought to requisition the aid of every man who can handle metal. It means that the needs of the community in many respects will suffer acutely vexatious, and perhaps injurious, delay; but I feel sure that the public are prepared to put up with all this discomfort, loss, and privation if thereby their country marches triumphantly out of this great struggle. [Cheers.] We have every reason for confidence; ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was bent over the list she was writing; but the vexatious color, feeling itself shielded in her face, crept round till it made her ear tips rosy. Saidie put out her forefinger, with a hardly perceptible motion, at the telltale sign, and nodded at Aunt ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... It was vexatious enough that Madalena had not been able to explain the mystery of last night. But this was ten times ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... for those who always sigh And fear an ill to-morrow; Who, when they have no troubles nigh, Will countless evils borrow; Who poison every cup of joy, By throwing in a bramble; And every hour of time employ In a vexatious scramble. What though the heart be sometimes sad! 'T is better not to show it; 'T will only chill a heart that's glad, If it should chance to know it. So, cheer thee up if evil's nigh, Droop not beneath thy sadness; If sorrow finds ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... inexperienced and infant republic, Solon had laid it down as a principle of his code, that as all men were interested in the preservation of law, so all men might exert the privilege of the plaintiff and accuser. As society grew more complicated, the door was thus opened to every species of vexatious charge and frivolous litigation. The common informer became a most harassing and powerful personage, and made one of a fruitful and crowded profession; and in the very capital of liberty there existed the worst species of espionage. But justice was not thereby facilitated. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... favourable, giving us to understand that the Major had been much employed in the West Indies, where he still held a moderately lucrative, semi-military appointment, being then in England to settle certain long and vexatious accounts, as well as to take Emily, his only child, from school. He was expected to return to the old, or some other post, in the course of a few months. A portion of this I gleaned from Emily herself, and ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... said the doctor. "If I am not mistaken, we have accomplished nearly half of our journey in ten days; but, at the rate at which we are going, it would take months to end it; and that is all the more vexatious, that we are threatened with a lack ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... reads the Duchess novels. I think, however, she has the grace to be ashamed of it, for she blushed scarlet when I handed her 'A Modern Circe.' I could have told her that such a blush on such a cheek would almost atone for not being able to read at all, but I refrained. It is vexatious all the same, for, though one doesn't expect to find perfection here below, the 'nut-brown mayde,' externally considered, comes perilously near it. After she had gone I discovered a slip of paper which had blown under some stones. It proved to be an itinerary. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... artificial. It has been sustained by I know not how many laws, breaking in upon the plainest principles of general expediency. At the last session of Parliament, the manufacturers petitioned for the repeal of three or four of these statutes, complaining of the vexatious restrictions which they impose on the wages of labor; setting forth, that a great variety of orders has from time to time been issued by magistrates under the authority of these laws, interfering in an oppressive manner with the minutest details of the manufacture,—such as limiting ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... dear!" said Margaret, when he had gone; "what horrid creatures men are, and what a temper I'm in, and what a vexatious place the world is! I wish I were a pauper! I wish I had never been born! And I wish—and I wish I had those League papers fixed! I'll do it to-night! I'm sure I need something tranquillising, like assessments and decimal places and unpaid dues, to keep me from screaming. I hate them all—all ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... be owned, had reason to roar—became calmed at the evident innocence of the servants and the gentle sounds of this British lamb. He therefore went to the rescue, and explained the matter to No. 2, who in his turn meekly expostulated: "Very vexatious! Dear me! My capital boots made expressly for Alpine climbing! But we must make the best of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... think much better and more wisely, they always act exactly like other men. They know very well how to subdue all appetites and passions, and to despise both pain and pleasure; and this knowledge affords much delightful contemplation, and is easily acquired; but the practice would be vexatious and troublesome; and, therefore, the same wisdom which teaches them to know this, teaches them to avoid carrying it ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... thing is soon put to rights. In Languedoc, as I understood, they have no barns whatever, and therefore this practice is universal. The wheat was not very heavy, it resembled barley rather than wheat; the average crop about sixteen English bushels. Nothing is so vexatious as the French measures; I do not understand them yet, though I ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... attention. The exorbitant rates exacted by an arbitrary valuation of the goods, the practice of exacting duties twice on the same goods, first from the seller and afterwards from the buyer, and the vexatious disputes and delays drawn on the merchants by these oppressions, were loudly complained of; and some instances of this kind were said to exist at the very time when I was in Benares. Under such circumstances, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... man might be excused for calling the Century of Nuisances, rather than the Century of Commerce. I will now leave it to the consciences of the rich and influential among us, and speak of a minor nuisance which it is in the power of every one of us to abate, and which, small as it is, is so vexatious, that if I can prevail on a score of you to take heed to it by what I am saying, I shall think my evening's work a good one. Sandwich-papers I mean—of course you laugh: but come now, don't you, civilised as you are in Birmingham, leave them all about the Lickey hills and your public gardens and ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... their triumph, the Basilian fathers commenced in earnest the task of Church reform, and passed several decrees of a character vexatious to the Pope, particularly one for the total abolition of annates. A second breach was the consequence. Eugenius, under pretence of furthering the negotiation then pending for the reunion of the Greek and Latin branches of the Church, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "In the case of the fascinating Sylvie, I do not know when I have had so much trouble about a woman. It is interesting, but vexatious. Sometimes I think I shall have to give up and gallop off ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the diaphragm is that of choking off air movement and consequently reducing evaporation. This gives exactly the same results as the use of moisture, but the machine is easier to operate and seemed to do away with the vexatious moisture problem which, together perhaps, with some fancied resemblance of felt diaphragms to hen feathers, has resulted in the widespread use of this ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... Pleasure of the One is from the Torment of the other; yet Nothing is more evident, than that both are derived from and owing to the same craving principle in our nature, the Desire of Food; for when this is entirely lost, it is more vexatious to eat, than it is to let it alone, tho' the whole Body languishes, and we are ready to expire for Want of Sustenance. Hitherto I have spoken of honour in its first literal Sense, in which it is a Technic ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... down, and the part down to the hall had a thin strip of carpet on it secured by brazen rods; the margins on either side of this carpet had to be beeswaxed and the brass rods polished. There was a great deal of unnecessary and vexatious brass of one kind or another scattered about the house, and as there were four children in the family, besides Mrs. O'Connor and her two sisters, the amount of washing which had constantly to be ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... individualists obey reluctantly, when they obey at all, any laws which they regard as unreasonable or vexatious. Indeed, they are increasingly opposed to any law, which affects their selfish interests. Thus many good women are involuntary smugglers. They deny the authority of the state to impose a tax upon a Paquin gown. The law's delays and ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... commander-in-chief. Fletcher, therefore, in his character as such, called for a portion of the men; but scarcely one could he get. He was met by excuses and evasions, which, especially in the case of Connecticut, were of a most vexatious character. At last, that colony, tired by his importunities, condescended to furnish him with twenty-five men. With the others, he was less fortunate, though Virginia and Maryland compounded with a sum of money. Each colony claimed the control of ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... from the clear fact that it is your duty to manage your household wisely and prudently, which we have seen cannot be done without business system, of which you must be the head, I assure you that such a system is neither intricate nor vexatious. It does not necessarily entail upon you the least participation in the actual labor of the family. It does not absolutely require your personal presence at the scene of those labors, although the woman who considers it beneath her dignity to go into her kitchen, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that they had little to fear. It was not very probable that her armies would cross the Elbe, or that her fleets would force a passage through the Sound. But the naval strength of England and Holland united might well excite apprehension at Stockholm and Copenhagen. Soon arose vexatious questions of maritime right, questions such as, in almost every extensive war of modern times, have arisen between belligerents and neutrals. The Scandinavian princes complained that the legitimate ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wanted. It was in quite a different trap that I rode in on my visit to Glenveigh. During my journey there we talked, my guide and I, of what constitutes a good landlord. It was a negative sort of goodness which he expected from the good landlord—"that he would not harry the tenants with vexatious office rules; that he would let them alone on their places so long as they paid their rent; that he would not raise the rent so that all grown on the land would be insufficient to pay it." Since the Land League agitation some landlords have granted a reduction ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... this, a most vexatious thing happened; for when he had resolved to take off the debts, and was considering the proper form and fit beginning for it, he told some of his friends, Conon, Clinias, and Hipponicus, in whom he had a great deal ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... recovered from his vexatious defeat in the skirmish where the Widow Hopkins was his principal opponent, when he received a note from Miss Silence Withers, which promised another and more important field of conflict. It contained a request that he would visit Myrtle Hazard, who seemed to be in a very excitable and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Dagobert, with a sigh of regret. "I thought to make my first parade through Paris with you this morning; but it must be deferred in favor of your work. It is sacred: since it is that which sustains your mother. Nevertheless, it is vexatious, devilish vexatious. And yet no—I am unjust. See how quickly one gets habituated to and spoilt by happiness. I growl like a true grumbler, at a walk being put off for a few hours! I do this! I who, during eighteen years, have only hoped to see you once more, without daring to reckon ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... real tobacco, came from the warm Devon land, but little of it reached so far, on account of the distance, the difficulties of intercourse, the rare occasions on which the merchant succeeded in escaping the vexatious interference, the downright robbery of the way. Intercourse was often ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... is a little vexatious, and think that perhaps the youth who stays at home may after all score over the youth who is sent to roam. There is a little feeling all the time which you felt as a child on seeing all sorts of delights arranged for ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... condition for men and women who desired to do their duty by the state, and though the wise emperors did everything in their power to encourage it, a very large proportion of the men of the upper classes regarded it as a burden and a vexatious interference with their liberty. It was not necessarily that they had any desire to be vicious, nor indeed would marriage be much of a hindrance to vice; it was that they desired to be free. The cause of their disinclination ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... is a cause for rejoicing, and for applauding the might of your sorceries, Messire Manuel, whereas you are plainly thinking of vexatious matters." ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... Having again filled the vexatious little pipe, she puts the silver tube to my lips with a bow. Courtesy forbids my refusal; but I find ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... 1679, the house of William Morse, of Newbury, was, for more than two months, infested in a most strange and vexatious manner. The affair was brought into court, where it played a conspicuous part, and was near reaching a tragical conclusion. The history of the proceedings in reference to it is ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... emotions subsided, and they could talk again. She leant upon the wall, and he sat upon it so that he could keep an eye open for any returning dogs. Two, at any rate, were up on the hillside and keeping up a vexatious barking. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... It is most vexatious that, in spite of all admonition, the Courier persists in its warlike tone and justification of the interference of the Continental Powers in the internal affairs of Spain, in opposition to all the known views and declarations of the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... citizen of the particular country in which his estate lies. The proprietor of stock is properly a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country. He would be apt to abandon the country in which he was exposed to a vexatious inquisition, in order to be assessed to a burdensome tax; and would remove his stock to some other country, where he could either carry on his business, or enjoy his fortune more at his ease. By removing his stock, he would put an end to all the industry ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... extant a wild story relating to some vexatious events that happened at his funeral, which, at the end of Congreve's Life, by a writer of I know not what credit, are thus related, as I find the account transferred to a ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... recommending that priests be allowed to marry, and calling for the suppression of many of the cloisters. It is further urged that foundations for masses and for the support of idle priests be abolished, that various vexatious provisions of the Canon Law be repealed, and that begging on any pretext be prohibited. The twenty-fourth article deals with the Bohemian schism, saying that Huss was wrongly {72} burned, and calling for ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... limits of the English Kingdom, however, stories about "duty work" clash oddly on the ear, and yet I am assured that in the lesser island of Turk such work has been insisted on and "processed" for within twelve or eighteen months. Vexatious processes are not undertaken just now for ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the unhappy visitor heard within the shuffling slippers and vexatious scraping cough of the detestable master. Marneffe opened the door, but only to put himself into an attitude and point to the stairs, exactly as Hulot had shown him the door ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... properly nursed and recovered from the fatigue you must have undergone in your long march. The papers you have brought me are indeed, of very great importance, and come at a particular fortunate moment, as they in all probability, will save me from a very vexatious lawsuit, with which I have been threatened." So saying, he rang the bell, and desired the servant to take John into the housekeeper's room, and to see that every possible attention was paid him. John, after having had some refreshments, began to wonder that he did not see Marion again. ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... example, —after a weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale, the body may get loose from the ship by reason of a violent storm; and drifting far away to leeward, be retaken by a second whaler, who, in a calm, snugly tows it alongside, without risk of life or line. Thus the most vexatious and violent disputes would often arise between the fishermen, were there not some written or unwritten, universal, undisputed law applicable to all cases. Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative enactment, was that of Holland. It was decreed by the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... processes by which authority was given to custom-house officers to make search for smuggled goods; since they were general in their terms and authorized the search of any premises by day, they might have been made the means of vexatious visits and interference. In February, 1761, an application for such a writ was brought before the Superior Court of Massachusetts, which was not subject to popular influence. James Otis, advocate-general of the colony, resigned his ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... is becoming every day more and more like an absolute king that we must complain of him. He is certainly perfectly honorable as a man, an estimable father of a family, a tender spouse and a good economist, but it is vexatious to see how he allows all the trees of liberty to be felled and stripped of their beautiful foliage that they may be sawed into beams to support the tottering house of Orleans. For that, and that only, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... had been stirs and quarrels among the disciples regarding his boats, and John's and James' boats too, he said, and by the jealous and envious, he muttered, who would like to come between us and the Master. Joseph asked who had raised the vexatious question, but Peter avoided it, and went about the wharf grunting that none could answer it: was it to Matthew, the publican, he was to give his boats? one, he said, who never was on the water in his life till I took him out for a sail a week come Tuesday. A fine use they'd be ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... always pay the price, usually a vexatious one. Bores stopped him on the street to repeat ancient and witless stories. Invented anecdotes, some of them exasperating ones, went the rounds of the press. Impostors in distant localities personated him, or claimed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Hambrough, as a great many more, he says, he believes do, but nothing but the reconciling of the Presbyterian party will save us, and I am of his mind. At the office all the afternoon, where every moment business of one kind or other about the fire-ships and other businesses, most of them vexatious for want of money, the commanders all complaining that, if they miss to pay their men a night, they run away; seamen demanding money of them by way of advance, and some of Sir Fretcheville Hollis's ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... south-westerly gale on the fourth day out forced us to heave to. I would have liked to have run before the wind, but the sea was very high and the 'James Caird' was in danger of broaching to and swamping. The delay was vexatious, since up to that time we had been making sixty or seventy miles a day, good going with our limited sail area. We hove to under double-reefed mainsail and our little jigger, and waited for the gale to blow itself out. During that afternoon we saw bits of wreckage, the ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... you think of it? Now I will not mention her again,—I will refer to her, when I shall have vexatious occasion, as "that woman." And, indeed, "that woman" and Honorius set us up in comprehension of matters progressing. It seems that quite twenty years have passed since Sarah's soul slid through a knife-gash; ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... successfully, and this dreaded disease has been extirpated from the Western States and also from the Eastern States, with the exception of a few restricted areas, which are still under supervision. The danger has thus been removed, and trade and commerce have been freed from the vexatious State restrictions which were deemed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Dalton turned in his bed. Something beyond the chilliness was wrong with him, and he did not know what it was. There is no condition so vexatious as an unexplainable lack of ease; and Old Dalton twisted, gathered up his knees, straightened them again, tensed, relaxed, shifted the bedclothes, and busily but vainly cast about for the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 1601, Raleigh became involved in a vexatious quarrel between certain of his own Dorsetshire servants. The man Meeres, whom he had appointed as bailiff of the Sherborne estates nine years before, after doing trusty service to his master, had gradually become aggressive ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... you have a cheque-book. Horrible things, aren't they?—such a nuisance remembering to fill out those little stubs. Of course, I forgot to bring mine with me—I always do; and equally, of course, a vexatious debt turns up and finds me without an Occidental Bank ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... to the letter of the covenant was a sufficient test of true religion unless accompanied with a change in the inner life. She was a nonconformist among those who, refusing to conform to the Church of England, had now themselves become conformists of the strictest type. To Mrs. Hutchinson the "vexatious legalism of Puritanism" was as abhorrent as had been the practices of the Roman and Anglican churches to the Puritans, and, though the latter did not realize it, they were as unjust to her as Laud had been to them. ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... of the expression "the testimony of Zacharias" ([Greek: te Zachariou marturia]), which he points out "might signify either 'the testimony borne to Zacharias,' i.e. his recorded character, or 'the testimony borne by Zacharias,' i.e. his martyrdom." By a vexatious mistake in reprinting, "to" was accidentally substituted for "by" in my translation of this passage in a very few of the earlier copies of my sixth edition, but the error was almost immediately observed and corrected in the rest of the edition. ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... prince of the blood of England, to the empty and precarious glory of a foreign dignity. But he had not always firmness sufficient to adhere to this resolution: his vanity and ambition prevailed at last over his prudence and his avarice; and he was engaged in an enterprise no less expensive and vexatious than that of his brother, and not attended with much greater probability of success. The immense opulence of Richard having made the German princes cast their eye on him as a candidate for the empire, he was tempted to expend vast sums of money ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... London, and better than London; and London is the world, and is German. How gladly would Pauli, that honest, noble German soul, stay, if he had but an occupation. The subjection of the mind by the government here becomes more vexatious, more apparent, more diabolical. One form of tyranny is that of Augustus, the more thorough, because so sly. They will not succeed in the end, but meanwhile it is horrible to witness. More firmly than ever I settle myself down ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... a borrowed book, and I can hardly return it in this condition. It is really vexatious," she replied, wondering how to lead the conversation back to the place where it was interrupted. She might have succeeded, but fate seemed against her. A passenger, who knew them both, strolled by and ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... our presently inquiring souls from any farther care as to the reason for a violet's spur,—or for the extremely ugly arrangements of its stamens and style, invisible unless by vexatious and vicious peeping. You are to think of a violet only in its green leaves, and purple or golden petals;—you are to know the varieties of form in both, proper to common species; and in what kind of places they all most fondly live, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... peace—the world's merchant shipping already comes near being so neutralised, and the slight further simplification required to leave it on a neutral peace footing would be little else than a neglect of such vexatious discrimination as is still in force. If no nation could claim the allegiance, and therefore the usufruct, of any given item of merchant shipping in case of eventual hostilities, on account of the domicile of the owners or ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... enough, but it was also vexatious, that such peaceful people as we were should be considered so terrible. I sent a bullet after the ship, to induce her to stop; she then hoisted the English flag, but never slackened her speed; so that finding we ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... the class are all so like one another in every way that you might as well try to discriminate between every individual sheep of a flock in a pasture. And yet, such is the natural contradictiousness and vexatious disposition of the British parent, that you'll always find him coming to inquire after just one of those very particular Tommies or Bobbies. Charles Warrington:—Cyril Anastasius Guy Whatyoumay—call ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... not offered in the spirit of ridicule. The Uitlander question is too serious for joking. They are reproduced to enable those who have no knowledge of the Boer—his petty tyrannies and annoying and irritating habits, and the vexatious regulations from which the Uitlander continually suffered—to form an idea of the terrible mental gulf which existed between oppressor and oppressed. As the constant dropping of water will wear away stone, so the constant fret of Boer treatment wore out ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... with tails have given good results in experimental work; but the tails are annoying and an unnecessary weight, and may better be dispensed with. Every boy has had the vexatious experience of sending up a kite in a light breeze with a tail made light in proportion, only to find that, on reaching stronger air currents above, the kite has begun to dive and grow unmanageable. Then, when he has taken the kite down and added a heavier tail, ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... says she, "an abhorred, barbarous, capricious, detestable, envious, fastidious, hard-hearted, illiberal, ill-natured, jealous, keen, loathsome, malevolent, nauseous, obstinate, passionate, quarrelsome, raging, saucy, tantalizing, uncomfortable, vexatious, abominable, bitter, captious, disagreeable, execrable, fierce, grating, gross, hasty, malicious, nefarious, obstreperous, peevish, restless, savage, tart, unpleasant, violent, waspish, worrying, acrimonious, blustering, careless, discontented, fretful, growling, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... all these promises—hidden, perhaps, from the profane—the calm of that countenance has something, I know not what, that is vexatious. More sad, more serious than gracious, that face is marked by the melancholy of constant meditation. For this reason Mademoiselle des Touches listens more than she talks. She startles by her silence and by that deep-reaching ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... only tied up when they are on the road.' She would wish to find some fault with him, but as she forcibly says, 'if he be of opinion that the tails of these noble animals are not only a natural ornament, but of real use to defend them from the vexatious insects that in summer are so apt to annoy them, how far from a dispraise is this humane consideration!' The other anecdote is of a different kind. When Sir Charles goes to church he does not, like some other gentlemen, bow low to the ladies ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... I learnt that two men had set off in quest of water and had been absent all night. That they should have taken this step without first asking permission was wrong, but that nobody had mentioned the circumstance to me till then was still more vexatious as, by firing shots and throwing up rockets, these men might have found their way back in the dark. I was very glad however to hear them at length answer our shots, and not at all sorry to see them come in thoroughly drenched with the empty kettles ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... saint (St. Vuilgefortis), whom the Jesuit Sautel, in his Annus Sacer Poeticus, has celebrated for her beard—a mark of divine favour bestowed upon her for her prayers.' Omniana, 1812, ii. 54. 'Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixere! What! can nothing be one's own? This is the more vexatious, for at the age of eighteen I lost a legacy of fifty pounds for the following epigram on my godmother's beard, which she had the barbarity to revenge by striking me out of her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... occupied. But at the same time we are compelled to say, on general grounds of prudence and of justice, that it is a monstrous thing that communities should be disturbed with contests so absurd as these, which deserve to be censured in the old Parliamentary language as frivolous and vexatious. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... going to his father for money towards meeting his actual debt. Fred was keen enough to foresee that anger would confuse distinctions, and that his denial of having borrowed expressly on the strength of his uncle's will would be taken as a falsehood. He had gone to his father and told him one vexatious affair, and he had left another untold: in such cases the complete revelation always produces the impression of a previous duplicity. Now Fred piqued himself on keeping clear of lies, and even fibs; he often shrugged his shoulders and made a significant grimace ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... same majority. He moved again that the chairman should leave the chair. He was beaten again. He divided on the second clause. He was beaten again. He then said that he was sensible that he was doing very wrong; that his conduct was unhandsome and vexatious; that he heartily begged our pardons; but that he had said that he would delay the bill as far as the forms of the House would permit; and that he must keep his word. Now came a discussion by which Nancy, if she had been in the ventilator, [A circular ventilator, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... under which the provincials so long had suffered. Military licence, therefore, and civil corruption alike, he put down with a resolute hand, never acting through intermediaries, but himself investigating every complaint, rewarding merit, and punishing offences. The vexatious monopolies which previous governors had granted, he did away with; and, while he firmly dealt with every symptom of disloyalty, his aim was "not penalty but penitence" [nom paena sed saepius paenitentia]—penitence shown in a frank acceptance ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
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