"Shrewish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compensating elevation in that of her rival by which the Nibelungen Lied places Chriemhild on a height as lofty and unapproachable as that occupied by the Norse Valkyrie; the Brynhild of Voelsunga Saga is something of a virago, the Gudrun is jealous and shrewish. But for actual material, the compiler is absolutely to be trusted; and Voelsunga Saga is therefore, in spite of artistic faults, a priceless treasure-house for the real features of ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... people, had little respect for the witch-doctor of her husband's tribe, and so, when he suggested that a further payment of two more fat goats would doubtless enable him to make stronger medicine, she promptly loosed her shrewish tongue upon him, and with such good effect that he was glad to take himself off with his zebra's tail and his ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... other the like chimerical errands, that witty Hanbury, then a much more admirable man than we now find him, is prowling about in the German Courts, off and on, for some ten years in all, six of them still to come. A sharp-eyed man, of shrewish quality; given to intriguing, to spying, to bribing; anxious to win his Diplomatic game by every method, though the stake (as here) is oftenest zero: with fatal proclivity to Scandal, and what in London circles ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... his fate. What fault was it of his that her father and his father had fallen out over the mine? He had shown by the stock that the treachery had been Blount's and neither of them was to blame. What fault was it of his that she had a shrewish mother who was bent upon ruining her life? Had he not endured abuse and suffered grievous wounds before he had asserted his rights? And with Virginia herself, when had there ever been a time when he had forgotten his lover's part—except on that last day, when he had turned ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... pupil with him, but he left his wife at home. At the court of Francis I. he was received with great honours, and amid those new and gracious surroundings, away from the tantalising charms of his wife and her shrewish tongue, he began to have an honest ambition to do great things. His work for France was undertaken with enthusiasm, but no sooner was he settled and at peace, than the irrepressible wife began to torment him with letters to return. Each ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... rules and regulations," said the intruder, in a somewhat shrewish voice. "You'd better light the lamp if you want to see'em; though the spelling ain't so noticeable ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... was so terrified that he had no reasoning power left in him. Even when the carriage came in sight he would not have been a bit surprised to have seen the crofter and his shrewish ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... solus, you will be roused from your sound night's sleep in the morning at eight bells, or eight o'clock A.M., by the tinkling of a shrewish-sounding hand-bell, which says, as plainly as ever the chimes of Bow hailed Whittington lord mayor of London, "Arise, and shave, and make your toilet, and prepare to come forth; for the cow is milking, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... so it is, my lady,' said the elder woman, with another bob; 'an' I won't delay you, Ma'am, five minutes, if you plaze, an' it's the likes of you,' she said, in a shrewish aside, with a flash of her large eyes upon John Tracy, 'that stands betune them that's willin' to be good and the poor—so yez do, saucepans and bone-polishers, bad luck ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... froward a temper?" cried Edward, not without reason. "Why, Warwick, thou art as shrewish to a jest as a woman to advice. Thy kinsman's fortunes shall be my care. Thou sayest thou hast enemies,—I weet not who they be. But to show what I think of them, I make thy namesake and client a gentleman of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... method has at times attained to the level of literature. Charlotte Bronte might possibly have found no other topic had she disdained the plain little woman with a shrewish tongue; and where had Charles Kingsley been if the vision of a curate rampant had not rejoiced his heart? Still, I am not sorry that this novel is burned. Even now it was ridiculous, and the time might have come when this book, full of high, if foolish aims, and the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... was being curled by an apprentice at the back of the shop, and his natural scalp shone as bare as a billiard-ball; but two patches of brindled grey hair stuck out from his brow above a pair of fierce greenish eyes set about with a complexity of wrinkles. Just now, a coating of lather covered his shrewish underjaw. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... year 1572 Kingston got a new cucking stool; the Kingston scolds had become past bearing. It cost L1 3s. 4d., and as soon as it was finished there was a very shrewish woman ducked in it. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... resist the attacks of Indians. Inside these villages the rough, rude justice of the Puritan days still persisted. The stocks and the pillory and the stool of repentance were things of the present. A shrewish housewife might still be made to stand at her cottage door with {76} the iron gag of the scold fastened upon her shameful face. A careless Sabbatarian might still find himself exposed to the scorn of a congregation, with the words ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... mistake." A highly ingenious dexterous little man in affairs of War, sharp as needles, vehement but cautious; though of abstruse temper, thin-skinned, capricious, and giving his Brother a great deal of trouble with his jealousies and shrewish whims. By this last consummate little operation he has astonished Daun as much as anybody ever did; shorn his elaborate tissue of cunctations into ruin and collapse at one stroke; and in effect, as turns out, wrecked his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a feeling of horror at the sight or thought of Philippina; she was dismayed too when, despite the darkness, she noticed the shrewish look of incorrigible wickedness in Philippina's face. An ineluctable voice put her on her guard. In so far as she could do it without grievously offending Philippina, she withdrew from further association with ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... marriage but twelve months; and being left free once more, he, in the year of grace 1661, entered into the bonds of holy matrimony for a third time, with Elizabeth Minshul, a lady of excellent family and shrewish temper, who rendered his daughters miserable in their father's lifetime, and defrauded them after ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... des Exiles, no more the deadly tedium of daily service at the desk of the caisse, no more the shrewish tongue of Mama Therese, the odious oglings of Papa Dupont, the ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... talking to her: she is so sympathetic, so big-minded, so understanding. Then, hearing the clock strike, tear themselves from her with a sigh, and return home—some of them—to stupid shrewish wives. ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... poverty. She was shocked to hear that one of her own sisterhood should be reduced to such straits as these. The lightning had struck uncomfortably near home. Besides she had always been fond of Laura. Yes, she knew Mrs. Farley's, a shrewish Irishwoman, who kept a cheap theatrical boarding house in Forty ——th Street. Ten years ago, in the days when she was a stage beginner, struggling to make both ends meet, she had lived there and as she looked ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... Palestine, and also in the wars for the faith in India. In the course of his wanderings he had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by the Franks, in Syria, and was ransomed by a friend, but only to fall into worse thraldom by marrying a shrewish wife. He has ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... drove, and was welcomed by a shrewish woman whose sour face was warmed for once in a way into something ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... thought to be thrust forth the very day of our poor father's burial, by a shrewish town-bred ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brushed my hand. Hereupon I would strive to turn my thoughts upon the labours of to-morrow only to find myself recalling the sound of her voice, now deep and soft and infinite sweet, now harsh and shrill and hatefully shrewish; or her golden-brown eyes, thick-lashed and marvellous quick in their changes from sleepy languor to ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Mme. de Marville, who, moreover, had formed a tolerably correct estimate of her husband. A temper naturally shrewish was soured till she grew positively terrible. She was not old, but she had aged; she deliberately set herself to extort by fear all that the world was inclined to refuse her, and was harsh and rasping as a file. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... brave gallants all, And don your helms amain; Deathe's couriers, Fame and Honour, call Up to the field againe; No shrewish tear shall fill our eye When the sword hilt's in our hand; Heart-whole we'll parte and no whit sighe For the fayrest of the land. Let piping swaine and craven wight, Thus weepe and puling aye; Our business is like to men to fighte And like ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... mistress of Riverview in earnest, ruling my grandfather with a rod of iron, for though bold enough with men, and especially with the men of his own family, he would succumb in a moment to a woman's shrewish temper. ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... to have him taken to the hospital to save thy life." Haydn and Loisa, being Catholics, never thought of seeking divorce: their only hope of celebrating a formal marriage lay in the death of both her brutish husband and his shrewish wife—"when four eyes shall close." Loisa's husband was the first to oblige, for in August, 1791, his death wrings a charitable ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... heads of our Saviour; and the predominant expression is calm, dignified, intellectual, with a tinge of melancholy. This picture was painted at the age of twenty-eight; he was then suffering from that bitter domestic curse, a shrewish, avaricious wife, who finally broke his heart." We have engraved this portrait in the head-piece to this subject (p. 187), along with those of his wife and of ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... good-natured Joe Pitkin, marrying the prettiest girl in the village, had been sore at heart, even in his new-wedded happiness, at the thought of leaving the deformed, sensitive boy alone with the careless father and the shrewish stepmother. But his young wife had been the first ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... when he married the governess before that second winter's snow had mantled the hallowed grave, her soul rebelled in indignation and dismay. For a year her heart had held out against him, and softened only when she saw that he was breaking under the self-imposed burden,—a shrewish second wife. However, Mrs. Sanford "held the fort," as has been said, and Marion, high-spirited, sensitive, refined, and loving, was entering on ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... and sends an orderly who procures us a lodging, meanwhile giving us coffee. Attended by two soldiers, carrying our baggage, we retrace our steps to the centre of the town, and take possession of very sorry apartments, the best portion of a gaunt filthy house. We are installed by the mistress, a shrewish person, who, making pretensions to gentility, receives her guests under protest that she does not keep a hotel, but is willing to accommodate strangers,—a phrase repeated a hundred times while we were under her roof, and emphatically when ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... boys do? Three midshipmen,—armed only with their tiny dirks,—what chance would they have among so many? There were scores of these sinewy sons of the Desert,—without counting the shrewish women,—each armed with gun and scimitar, any one of whom ought to have been more than a match for a "mid." It would have been sheer folly to have attempted a rescue. Despair only could ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... Christian school? Nay, verily; for never shall I forget how that Ursula Tetzel, and in fellowship with her a good half of the others, pursued my sweet, sage Ann, the most diligent and best of us all, to drive her out of our midst; but in vain, thanks to Sister Margaret's upright justice. Nay, the shrewish plotters were fain at last to see the scrivener's daughter uplifted to be our head, and this compelled them to bend ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... most men find in loving their wives, he found consolation in the love of his daughter. Secretly, as though his paternal affection were a crime, he caressed Julia, and his wife was not long in discovering that the father cared more for a loving daughter than for a shrewish wife. She watched him jealously, and had come to regard her daughter as one who had supplanted her in her husband's affections, and her husband as robbing her of the love of her daughter. In truth, Mrs. Samuel Anderson had come to stand so perpetually on guard against imaginary encroachments on ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... reading than all the Works of Colley Cibber," and in which charity is defined as consisting rather in a disposition to relieve distress than in an actual act of relief; Parson Trulliber with his hogs, his greediness, and his willingness to prove his Christianity by fisticuffs; shrewish Mrs. Tow- wouse with her scold's tongue, and her erring but perfectly subjugated husband,—these again are portraits finished with admirable spirit and fidelity. Andrews himself, and his blushing sweetheart, do not lend themselves so readily to humorous ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... her servants, to her own children, and to young actresses whom she suspected of possessing talents. She had a shrewish temper which she masked before others with an exaggerated calm ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... private life the biographer cannot, unfortunately, show the same indulgence. The supreme criterion for the appreciation of certain women, and the irresistible argument, is the man whom they have loved. Assuredly we may pardon many things recorded of the Grande Mademoiselle, even her shrewish relations with her step-mother, even her haughty contempt for her half-sisters, but we cannot pardon her M. de Lauzun. We are all well acquainted with that individual, with his cunning and supercilious cast of countenance, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... I'll all extinguish / held by each page in hand, By the which same token / shalt thou understand I present am to serve thee. / I'll tame thy shrewish wife That thou this night enjoy her, / else ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... what did Millicent mean by her shrewish cry that Spencer was paying for Helen's holiday? So engrossed was he in other directions that his early doubts with regard to "The Firefly's" unprecedented enterprise in sending a representative to this out-of-the-way Swiss valley had been lulled to sleep. Of course, he had caused ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... his shrewish wife had reaped her benefits. Ben was not the selfish type of farmer who insists on twentieth-century farm implements and medieval household equipment. He had added a bedroom here, a cool summer kitchen there, an ice house, a commodious porch, a washing machine, even a crude bathroom. ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... breath, and to look with shrewish triumph at the girl who leaned against the wall. "I like not waking up," said Audrey to herself. "It were easier to ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Zinaida Grigorievna, was a plump, energetic, and shrewish woman. Her short hair was beginning to get grey. She was very jealous of her influence and maintained it ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... who was in love, became jealous, and the Sheriff came on to the scene, and the outlaws, finding him on their ground, took him prisoner, and Dame Durden, who secretly had been married to the Sheriff, and from whose shrewish tongue the Sheriff had fled, came to free him. She declared that if the Sheriff of Nottingham would acknowledge her, she would get him free from the stocks, into which the outlaws had put him, and would take him home. But the prospect of having to stand Dame Durden's ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... other people. The constitutional thimble-rig is carried on to-day, dear boy, more seriously than ever. The infamous monarchy, displaced by the heroism of the people, was a sort of drab, you could laugh and revel with her; but La Patrie is a shrewish and virtuous wife, and willy-nilly you must take her prescribed endearments. Then besides, as you know, authority passed over from the Tuileries to the journalists, at the time when the Budget changed its quarters and went from the Faubourg Saint-Germain to the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Sproul had forgotten his troubles for a time. He had been dozing. The shrewish night wind of autumn whistled over the ledges of Cod Lead Nubble and scattered upon his gray beard the black ashes from the bonfire that the shivering men of Smyrna still plied with fuel. The Cap'n sat upright, his arms clasping his doubled ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... large circle has been formed, consisting chiefly of Women on chairs and camp-stools, with an inner ring of small children, who are all patiently awaiting the arrival of a troupe of Niggers. At the head of one of the flights of steps leading up to the Parade, a small and shrewish Child-nurse is endeavouring to detect and recapture a pair of prodigal younger Brothers, who ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... Angelo you must excuse vs all, My wife is shrewish when I keepe not howres; Say that I lingerd with you at your shop To see the making of her Carkanet, And that to morrow you will bring it home. But here's a villaine that would face me downe He met me on the Mart, and that I beat him, And charg'd him with a thousand markes in gold, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... girl sat in a corner of her father's law library watching, with wide, serious eyes, a scene the like of which was common enough a generation or two ago. The weeping old woman told a halting story of a dissipated son, a shrewish daughter-in-law, and a state of servitude on her own part,—a story pitifully sordid in its details. The farm had come to her from her father's estate. For forty years she had toiled side by side with her husband, getting a simple, but comfortable, living from ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... such a lovely voice!" cried Ruth. "You can't make even the Shrew sound shrewish—in her ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,— Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue! ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... his enemies, all of whom seemed to experience a barbarous delight at his struggles, some encouraging him, with loud laughter and in broken English, to continue them, while others taunted and scolded at him more like shrewish squaws than valiant warriors, assuring him that they were great Shawnee fighting-men, and he a little Long-knife dog, entirely beneath their notice: which expressions, though at variance with all his preconceived notions of the stern ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... might well be paraphrased thus: "When in doubt, put her into white lawn!" Even "J. P. M.," that gentle spirit to whom so many hidden things were revealed, sent his shrewish "Kate" off for a canter through the woods in a white gown, and, if memory serves, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... dropped near him was a feast that brought feathered visitors about and won their confidence and cheerful companionship. When he awoke he lay there lolling and blinking, following the blue rovings of the titmice and listening to the foolish squabbles of the sparrows and the shrewish scoldings of the wrens. He always started when a lark sprang at his feet and a cataract of melody ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... blunt for a lover; but being glad to get Katharine married, he answered that he would give her twenty thousand crowns for her dowry, and half his estate at his death: so this odd match was quickly agreed on, and Baptista went to apprise his shrewish daughter of her lover's addresses, and sent her in to Petruchio ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Angelo, you must excuse us all. My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours: Say that I linger'd with you at your shop To see the making of her carcanet, And that to-morrow you will bring it home. But here's a villain that would face me down. He met me on the mart; and that I beat him, And charg'd him with a thousand ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... people, but they both inconsiderately died at a very early period of my life, leaving me a few hundred dollars and a thickheaded uncle, to whom was attached an objectionable aunt, the proprietress of a long nose and a shrewish temper. The nose was adapted to the consumption of snuff, and the temper was effective in the destruction of my happiness and peace of mind. The worthy couple, with a prophetic eye, saw that I was destined to become, in ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... done less than usual to deform the proportions and deface the impression of his design. Indeed, the connection of the two serious plots in the first part is a rare example of dexterous and happy simplicity in composition: the comic underplot of the patient man and shrewish wife is more loosely attached by a slighter thread of relation to these two main stories, but is so amusing in its light and facile play of inventive merriment and harmless mischief as to need no further excuse. Such an excuse, however, might otherwise be found in the plea that ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... independent community that attended to its own affairs with great thoroughness. The corporation, itself the outgrowth of a medieval religious guild, regulated the affairs of every one with little regard for personal liberty. It was especially severe on rebellious servants, idle apprentices, shrewish women, the pigs that ran loose in the streets, and (after 1605) persons guilty of profanity. Regular church attendance and fixed hours of work were required. The corporation frequently punished with fines (the poet's father on one occasion) ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... said softly. "I was shrewish and ill-tempered, and deserve a severe lesson in courtesy. I did not mean to be disagreeable," she added with a little sigh, "but my nerves are all a-quiver to-day and this awful news has weighed upon my spirit. . ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... to reckon with in the room in which she worked, as Faith was quick to discover. Even the forewoman, who was thin-lipped and shrewish, seemed a little afraid of her. Presently she asked ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... image of the Lady, whose form is set in ripples of stone and crossed by mystic fish, while her drapery weeps from her sides as water flowing away. The most charming part of the character-painting is where the shrewish Lynette, as her estimate of the scullion-knight gradually rises in view of his mighty deeds, evinces her kindlier mood, not directly in speech, but by catches of love-songs breaking out of the midst of her scornful gibes: this is a very subtle and suitable and poetical way of eliciting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... expected, knows him by heart. Fenelon and Bossuet never weary of quoting him. La Fontaine polishes his own exquisite style upon his model; and Voltaire calls him "the best of preachers." Hooker escapes with him to the fields to seek oblivion of a hard life, made harder by a shrewish spouse. Lord Chesterfield tells us, "When I talked my best I quoted Horace." To Boileau and to Wordsworth he is equally dear. Condorcet dies in his dungeon with Horace open by his side; and in Gibbon's militia ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... were at the head of a highly respectable and industrious coloured family. They had three children. Esther, the eldest, was a girl of considerable beauty, and amiable temper. Caroline, the second child, was plain in person, and of rather shrewish disposition; she was a most indefatigable housewife, and was never so happy as when in possession of a dust or scrubbing brush; she would have regarded a place where she could have lived in a perpetual state of house cleaning, as an ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... pocket," her dear voice quavered; "he had it in his pocket, my brave, strong, beautiful Billy did, when he asked me to marry him. It was King Cophetua wooing the beggar-maid—and the beggar was an impudent, ungrateful, idiotic little piece!" Margaret hissed, in her most shrewish manner. "She ought to be spanked. She ought to go down on her knees to him in sackcloth, and tears, and ashes, and all sorts of penitential things. She will, too. Oh, it's such a beautiful world—such a beautiful world! Billy loves me—really! ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell |
