Peevish Quotes & Sayings

A man that loves to be peevish and paramount, and to play the sovereign at every turn, does but blast the blessings of life, and swagger away his own enjoyments; and not to enlarge upon not folly, not to mention the injustice of such a behavior, it is always the sign of a little, unbenevolent temper. It is disease and discredit all over, and there is no more greatness in it, than in the swelling of a dropsy. — Jeremy Collier

The continuance and frequent fits of anger produce in the soul a propensity to be angry; which oftentimes ends in choler, bitterness, and moronity, when the mid becomes ulcerated, peevish, and querulous, and is wounded by the least occurrence. — Henry Ward Beecher

The Lord help us!' he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse: looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my unexpected advent. — Emily Bronte

See how a sleepy child will put off the inevitable departure for bed. The little creature's eyes blink and stare, and it needs constant jogging to prevent his nodding off into the slumber which nature craves. His waking is a pain; he is quite worn out, and peevish, and stupid, and yet he implores a respite, and deprecates repose, and vows he is not sleepy, even to the moment when his mother takes him in her arms, and carries him, in a sweet slumber, to the nursery. So it is with us old children of earth and the great sleep of death, and nature our kind mother. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

But hard bitten cynicism leaves one feeling peevish, and too much of it can do lasting damage to your heart. — Julie Powell

A peevish self-willed harlotry it is.

*She's a stubborn little brat.* — William Shakespeare

I notice a whiff of Swift in some of my notes. I too am a desponder in my nature, an uneasy, peevish, and suspicious man, although I have my moments of volatility and fou rire. — Vladimir Nabokov

On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit ... Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong. — Louis Kronenberger

Charley's consumption and indigestion had only become more lacerating; his eye sockets were as deep and dark as fistholes in the snow, his gums were strangely purple, he wore extravagant gold rings on every finger and a clove of garlic around his neck according to the guidance of a gypsy named Madame Africa. Bob was skinny, sallow, peevish, his complexion spoiled with so many pimples that some correspondents thought it was measles. — Ron Hansen

Beauty had just squatted under one of the chairs lining the hallway. A small trickle was creeping across the marble floor.
'She's too intelligent to pay mind to me,' Lady Sylvia said blandly. 'All three dogs are French, and they behave just like Frenchmen. Decorative but peevish. — Eloisa James

Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become unhappy and peevish because they don't find the consolation they want in spiritual things. Many never have enough of hearing counsels, or learning spiritual maxims, or keeping them and reading books about them. They spend more time in these than in striving after mortification and the perfection of the interior poverty to which they are obliged. — San Juan De La Cruz

Dowager grumbled a bit about that, using the same peevish — Julia Quinn

Yes." She sighed again, with even more drama, not that Gregory would have imagined it possible. "It is
all so romantic," she added. "The bride, the groom ... "
"Both are considered standard in the ceremony, I understand."
His mother shot him a peevish look. "How could I have raised a son who is so unromantic?"
Gregory decided there could not possibly be an answer to that. — Julia Quinn

Whenever a liberal begins a peevish complaint with a throat-clearing equivocation like, "Of course, we all agree," your antennae should go up. This is how liberals couch statements they assume all Americans would demand they make, but which they secretly chafe at. — Ann Coulter

Somewhere in the garden a nightingale was singing, and a little breeze touched her hair and stirred the leaves overhead. All the different bells of the city chimed, once each, this one high, that one low, some close by, others farther off, one cracked and peevish, another grave and sonorous, but agreeing in all their different voices on what the time was, even if some of them got to it a little more slowly than others. In that other Oxford where she and Will had kissed good-bye, the bells would be chiming, too, and a nightingale would be singing, and a little breeze would be stirring the leaves in the Botanic Garden ... — Philip Pullman

Linton did not appear to remember what she talked of and he had evidently great difficulty in sustaining any kind of conversation. His lack of interest in the subjects she started, and his equal incapacity to contribute to her entertainment, were so obvious that she could not conceal her disappointment. An indefinite alteration had come over his whole person and manner. The pettishness that might be caressed into fondness, had yielded to a listless apathy; there was less of the peevish temper of a child which frets and teases on purpose to be soothed, and more of the self-absorbed moroseness of a confirmed invalid, repelling consolation, and ready to regard the good-humoured mirth of others as an insult. Catherine perceived, as well as I did, that he held it rather a punishment, than a gratification, to endure our company. — Emily Bronte

He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways, out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese, consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by't! Out with't! within the year it will make itself two, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with 't! — William Shakespeare

His worst fault is, he's given to prayer; he is something peevish that way. — William Shakespeare

He considered old age and its mutilations and wondered what it would do for him: examples presented themselves to his mind, not only of mental decay, physical weakness, gout, stone and rheumatism, but of boastful mendacious garrulity, intense and peevish selfishness; timidity if not cowardice, dirt, concupiscence, avarice. — Patrick O'Brian

What sun is there within us that shoots his rays with so sudden a vigor? To see the soul flash in the face at this rate one would think would convert an atheist. By the way, we may observe that smiles are much more becoming than frowns. This seems a natural encouragement to good-humor; as much as to say, if people have a mind to be handsome, they must not be peevish and untoward. — Jeremy Collier

Davis was weak and vascillating, timid, petulant, peevish, obstinate, but not firm. — Alexander H. Stephens

For when a man's spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offenses, but never resentful of great ones. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Between waking and being awake there is a moment full of doubt and dream, when you struggle to remember what the place and when the time and whether you really are.
A peevish moment of wonderment as to where the real world lies. — Keri Hulme

Each day adds a bead
to the ever peevish episodes of frailty,
I try running at an unkempt speed,
returning back like waves into a cruel sea; — Ashfaq Saraf

And I too change perpetually - now this, now that - now disappointed and peevish because all is not exactly as I had pictured it, and now suddenly discovering that the reality is far more beautiful than I had imagined it. — Elizabeth Gaskell

There was less of the peevish temper of a child which frets and teases on purpose to be soothed, and more of the self-absorbed moroseness of a confirmed invalid, repelling consolation, and ready to regard the good-humoured mirth of others, as an insult. — Emily Bronte

Her life, he saw, was without meaning. To what purpose was her diplomacy, her insincerity, her continued repression of vigour? Did they make any one better or happier? Did they even bring happiness to herself? Harriet with her gloomy peevish creed, Lilia with her clutches after pleasure, were after all more divine than this well-ordered, active, useless machine. — E. M. Forster

I don't know if there is actually more rain here in England, or if it was just that the rain seemed to be so deliberately annoying. Every drop hit the window with a peevish Am I bothering you? Does this make you cold and wet? Oh, sorry. — Maureen Johnson

A patient, humble temper gathers blessings that are marred by the peevish and overlooked by the aspiring. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Somehow the events set the seal on the day. It became a broken crockery day, a day of people getting under each other's feet and being peevish. Esk's mother dropped a jug that had belonged to her grandmother — Terry Pratchett

I think that the insane desire one has sometimes to bang and kick grumblers and peevish persons is a Divine instinct. — Robert Hugh Benson

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another. — Desiderius Erasmus

He who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation. — Samuel Johnson

For the law is not jurisprudence, not a weighty tome full of articles, not philosophical treatises, not peevish nonsense about justice, not hackneyed platitudes about morality and ethics. The law means safe paths and highways. It means backstreets one can walk along even after sundown. It means inns and taverns one can leave to visit the privy, leaving one's purse on the table and one's wife beside it. The law is the sleep of people certain they'll be woken by the crowing of the rooster and not the crashing of burning roof timbers! And for those who break the law; the noose, the axe, the stake and the red-hot iron! Punishments which deter others. — Andrzej Sapkowski

A man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff of the candle; and this, I say, is considerable, and not a little matter, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish conclusion to the contrary from our own superannuated desires or forgetful indifference is about as reasonable as to say, a man never was young because he has grown old, or never lived because he is now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judged of from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two - not our exit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think while there - that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it. — William Hazlitt

Junior was eleven. The statement is significant. There are a few peevish people in the world who believe that all eleven-year-old boys ought to be hung. Others, less irritable, think that gently chloroforming them would seem more humane. A great many good-natured folks contend that incarceration for a couple of years would prove the best way to dispose of them. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

His screaming disquieted the buzzards and further disgruntled the Poet, who was feeling peevish anyhow. He was a very dispirited Poet. He had never expected the world to act in a courteous, seemly, or even sensible manner, and the world had seldom done so; often he had taken heart in the consistency of its rudeness and stupidity. But never before had the world shot the Poet in the abdomen with a musket. This he found not heartening at all. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

Idleness makes people feeble and peevish. Work makes them stalwart and prone to anger. — Mason Cooley

My mother plants her hands on her hips, peevish. "Is that the best welcome you can come up with? Why don't you come over here and give your father a hug?" Hug him? Touch him? How can she even suggest it? — Laura Wiess

Quite a number of writers comment on the decidedly human character of the fairies, but it must be obvious that practically all supernaturals partake of human traits, more usually unpleasant ones, being as they are the projections of man's fear and imagination and created by him, psychologically, in his own image. Fairies are frequently described as being peevish, irritable, and revengeful to a degree. Grant Stewart says rather unmercifully of the Scottish fairies that their appetites are as keen as their inclinations are corrupt and wicked. — Lewis Spence

Body and soul, like peevish man and wife, United jar, and yet are loth to part. — Edward Young

Yet complicated people were getting wet - not only the shepherds. For instance, the piano-tuner was sopping. So was the vicar's wife. So were the lieutenant and the peevish damsels in his Battlesden car. Gallantry, charity, and art pursued their various missions, perspiring and muddy, while out on the slopes beyond them stood the eternal man and the eternal dog, guarding eternal sheep until the world is vegetarian. — E. M. Forster

When I first met Tony Blair in 1996, he was open and idealistic, keen to bring a breath of fresh air to government. But something happened - was it just the arrogance of power? - that narrowed Labour's vision from purposeful reform and investment, to peevish and petulant pragmatism. — Rory Bremner

The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows. They are polluted off'rings, more abhorred! Than spotted livers in the sacrifice. — William Shakespeare

To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
the breathing in unison.
Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech,
And babble the same speech without need of meaning ...
No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only
But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public. — T. S. Eliot

This is Deirdre," said Addison. "She's an emu-raffe, which is a bit like a donkey and a giraffe put together, only with fewer legs and a peevish temper. She's a terrible sore loser at cards," he added in a whisper. "Never play an emu-raffe at cards. Say hello, Deirdre! — Ransom Riggs