Cantankerous Quotes & Sayings

According to Free Trait Theory, we are born and culturally endowed with certain personality traits - introversion, for example - but we can and do act out of character in the service of "core personal projects."
In other words, introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly. Free Trait Theory explains why an introvert might throw his extroverted wife a surprise party or join the PTA at his daughter's school. It explains how it's possible for an extroverted scientist to behave with reserve in her laboratory, for an agreeable person to act hard-nosed during a business negotiation, and for a cantankerous uncle to treat his niece tenderly when he takes her out for ice cream. — Susan Cain

Rebels and dissidents challenge the complacent belief in a just world, and, as the theory would predict, they are usually denigrated for their efforts. While they are alive, they may be called 'cantankerous,' 'crazy,' 'hysterical,' 'uppity,' or 'duped.' Dead, some of them become saints and heroes, the sterling characters of history. It's a matter of proportion. One angry rebel is crazy, three is a conspiracy, 50 is a movement. — Carol Tavris

Because we're getting to know each other, and you're stubborn and cantankerous and moody and difficult. — E.L. James

Ramsey made the mistake of guessing it didn't and shook his head, gaining him a scowl and a blasphemy from the cantankerous baron — Julie Garwood

Being around people with whom you feel a connection, on many levels, not just a professional one, is very relaxing. Your ears are more open to someone who is not a cantankerous bastard. — Jacqueline Bisset

Well, we never expected this!" they all say. "No one liked her. They all said she was pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach, prickly, too fond of her tales, haughty, prone to versifying, disdainful, cantankerous, and scornful. But when you meet her, she is strangely meek, a completely different person altogether!"
How embarrassing! Do they really look upon me as a dull thing, I wonder? But I am what I am. — Murasaki Shikibu

A beautiful person is not defined by a hair style, a pair of shoes, it's not the logos on the T-shirt, the sport's team on a hat, the designer's name on a hand bag, or even how you smell.

Instead, beauty lies in who you are when no one is watching, the person you are when there's nothing to hide behind. No amount of concealer can cover up a cantankerous heart, but all the make-up in the world can't add a single lumen to the brightness of a beautiful soul. — Justin Young

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave "V" words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land's-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp. — Robert Pirosh

Returning to the boat we passed bridges, railroad tracks, warehouses, factories, wharves and what not. It was like following in the wake of a demented giant who had sown the earth with crazy dreams. If I could only have seen a horse or a cow, or just a cantankerous goat chewing tin cans, it would have been a tremendous relief. But there was nothing of the animal, vegetable or human kingdom in sight. It was a vast jumbled waste created by pre-human or sub-human monsters in a delirium of greed. It was something negative, some not-ness of some kind or other. It was a bad dream and towards the end I broke into a trot, what with disgust and nausea, what with the howling icy gale which was whipping everything in sight into a frozen pie crust. When I got back to the boat I was praying that by some miracle the captain would decide to alter his course and return to Piraeus. — Henry Miller

Fear, born of the stern matron Responsibility, sits on one's shoulders like some heavy imp of darkness, and one is preoccupied and, possibly, cantankerous. — William McFee

The day I die, I'll be too busy thinking to notice he waved his hand as he left the ship.
- Nelson Moon, shipwright and designer of the Altered Moon. Current location: Cantankerous Base, Planet Tarris, Arzian Alliance — A.Z. Kelvin

As there are three of us come on purpose for the game, you won't be so cantankerous as to spoil the party by sitting out. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

The wives who are not deserted, but who have to feed and clothe and comfort and scold and advise, are the true objects of commiseration; wives whose existence is given over to a ceaseless vigil of cantankerous affection. — William McFee

I get to live down my reputation for being cantankerous if I slowly evolve towards being a really good live show. — Ariel Pink

Beware of self-indulgence. The romance surrounding the writing profession carries several myths: that one must suffer in order to be creative; that one must be cantankerous and objectionable in order to be bright; that ego is paramount over skill; that one can rise to a level from which one can tell the reader to go to hell. These myths, if believed, can ruin you.
If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego. — David Brin

Old men are cantankerous: they like to get their own way. — Peter Hook

Leaving any bookstore is hard, especially on a day in August, when the street outside burns and glares, and the books inside are cool and crisp to the touch; especially on a day in January, when the wind is blowing, the ice is treacherous, and the books inside seem to gather together in colorful warmth. It's hard to leave a bookstore any day of the year, though, because a bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them. — Jane Smiley

For little boys are rancorous
When robbed of any myth,
And spiteful and cantankerous
To all their kin and kith.
But little girls can draw conclusions
And profit from their lost illusions. — Phyllis McGinley

Showing up unannounced was risky. This guy was known for being cantankerous at best, violent at worst. But she was ready. As soon as the door opened, she let loose a stream of urine right on his doorstep . . . and then ran like hell. A few days more of that, she knew, and he' d be all hers. — Marah J. Hardt

I don't think that the flesh is necessarily treacherous, evil, bad. It is cantankerous, and it is independent. The idea of independence is the key. It really is like colonialism. The colonies suddenly decide that they can and should exist with their own personality and should detach from the control of the mother country. At first the colony is perceived as being treacherous. It's a betrayal. Ultimately, it can be seen as the separation of a partner that could be very valuable as an equal rather than as something you dominate. — David Cronenberg

That's the second time you called me 'honey.' I can't decide if I like it or if
I'm starting to feel objectified," he teased.
She sighed. "I seriously don't think I can walk down an aisle with you."
His voice dipped lower, a slow drawl. "Careful, Sinclair. Those are very heady words to a guy like
me."
She left him standing there, by himself, at the base of the steps.
With a grin, he turned and watched her go. Yep, still cantankerous.
But that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy the view from behind. — Julie James

One little temper tantrum isn't going to scare me away."
"I can't guarantee it won't happen again."
"I work every day with cantankerous beasts who growl and bite, when I'm only trying to help. I think I can handle you."
"I'd like to see you handle me," he said, eyeing her up and down.
She ignored the double entendre, but she was pretty sure he wasn't sizing her up as an adversary on the tae kwan do mat. She put a hand to her stomach, which was doing a strange flip-flop. "Don't think I couldn't take you down," she said seriously. "I've trained in the martial arts."
He smirked. "That I've got to see. — Joan Johnston

What part of 'directly' didn't you understand?"
"Same part of 'play well with others' you never understand, O cantankerous one," I muttered.
He laughed, surprising me [ ... ] "I'd be a lot less cantankerous if you admitted you wanted to fuck me and we got down to it. — Karen Marie Moning

Vaughn had his back to the entrance, so he turned around to look.
No.
Fucking.
Way.
It was the cantankerous Ms. Doe.
Catching sight of him in that very same moment, she stopped dead in her tracks. Vaughn was pretty
sure she muttered Oh shit under her breath.
His sentiments exactly. — Julie James

When I was a kid in Nebraska, a cantankerous farmer, known for plinking with his '22 at passing cars in which he perceived enemies, ingeniously rigged up a shotgun in his house, trained on the inside of his front door so as to widely distribute any intruder. — Dick Cavett

I was coming," I said irritably. Fingers handcuffed around my wrist, Barrons dragged me toward the stairs.
"What part of 'directly' didn't you understand?"
"Same part of 'play well with others' you never understand, O cantankerous one," I muttered.
He laughed, surprising me. I never know what's going to make him laugh. At the oddest moments, he seems to find humor in his own bad temper.
"I'd be a lot less cantankerous if you admitted you wanted to fuck me and we got down to it."
Lust ripped through me. Barrons said "fuck" and I was ready. "That's all it would take to put you in a good humor?"
"It'd go a long way."
"Are we having a conversation, Barrons? Where you actually express feelings?"
"If you want to call a hard dick feelings, Ms. Lane. — Karen Marie Moning

Even if the Moon didn't exist - even if it had been vaporized billions of years ago by cantankerous Klingons - there would still be (somewhat lower) tides raised by the Sun. For creatures dependent on the oceans' ebb and flow, life could go on. — Seth Shostak

Defend myself? I cannot defend the verbal repressions of a boy. A curmudgeonly, cantankerous, ill-tempered, counterfeit boy. — Coco J. Ginger

Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation. — David Ogilvy

The more ugly, older, more cantankerous, more ill and poorer I become, the more I try to make amends by making my colours more vibrant, more balanced and beaming. — Vincent Van Gogh

For the past thirty-nine years since I had graduated from college, I had called my parents on Sundays. They had expected and looked forward to the ritual. After Dad died, I still called Mom on Sundays. Most of the time I dreaded the call because she had become more and more insular and was full of complaints about the assisted living facility, the other residents, her health, everything. She had become narrow in her interests in life, more negative, more critical, and unhappier. I was reminded of something I had heard from a psychologist about what happens as we age. He said we become more of who we are, not less. Our energy to fight back the negative attributes we all possess is not as strong as we get older. So we can become more cantankerous, more irritable. I also remembered what my father had often said: "There but for the grace of God go I." That Sunday I placed the — Janis Heaphy Durham

Brenda had been the landlady of the Pied Horse for twenty years and, as Jack, the village grocer, came in every single day, she knew just how cantankerous, stubborn and mean-spirited he could be. It was a common knowledge that his older daughter, Emily, had left home after a beating and had never been home since. His wife, Mary, was a sweet-natured woman who was well liked by everyone, but she was a bag of nerves and too weak to stand up to such a bully. — Lesley Pearse

He was increasingly irritable and suspicious, and a cantankerous mood could fly over him as quickly as the shadow of a bird. But Jesse was neither close-mouthed nor sulky for long, and over the weeks that he and Charley were on the road, he unscrolled yarns and anecdotes that excited interest in Charley only insofar as they permitted him a corresponding reminiscence. — Ron Hansen

Likewise, she will know that if I start watching reality TV, quoting Dr. Phil, riding roller coasters, and seem to have forsaken bacon in favor of anything soy - it's time to Get the Pillow. That's what - well, I can't tell you who but she's a nurse - says they all say when they've got a particularly cantankerous patient on their wing. — Jill Conner Browne