Quotes & Sayings About Petulance

I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc., don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep picking ourselves up each time ... The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give up. — C.S. Lewis

Always meet petulance with gentleness and perverseness with kindness. A gentle hand can lead even en elephant by a hair. Reply to thine enemy with gentleness. — Zoroaster

The specialist serves as a striking concrete example of the species, making clear to us the radical nature of the novelty. For, previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned , for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he is "a scientist," and "knows" very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with an the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line. — Ortega Y Gasset

But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of goodwill which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He — Jane Austen

Stand still, close your eyes and listen; in the silence you can hear the cries of pain and low moans of anguish of animals waiting to die ... do everything you can even if today it is just one small thing. There are no excuses for inaction, despair, egotism, or petulance that matter to the animals. — Ashley Montagu

One hundred years of age doesn't mean you have to bury your inner child. You age better if you hold onto a little petulance and let it out now and again. — R.R. Virdi

Scurrility has no object in view but incivility; if it is uttered from feelings of petulance, it is mere abuse; if it is spoken in a joking manner, it may be considered raillery. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

She climbed on the kitchen table and when he declined to join her she stamped out a pouting solo piece containing equal parts of petulance and release. — Salman Rushdie

Have charity; have patience; have mercy. Never bring a human being, however silly, ignorant, or weak
above all, any little child
to shame and confusion of face. Never by petulance, by suspicion, by ridicule, even by selfish and silly haste
never, above all, by indulging in the devilish pleasure of a sneer
crush what is finest and rouse up what is coarsest in the heart of any fellow-creature. — Charles Kingsley

It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. — Jane Austen

The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns;
The low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown,
And sullen sadness, that o'ershade, distort,
And mar the face of beauty, when no cause
For such immeasurable woe appears;
These Flora banishes, and gives the fair
Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own. — William Cowper

Bucky," Lester said. "The other night I started to explain to someone your philosophy on Southern accents, but all I could remember was that it defied logic." "Southern accents are hillbilly," Bucky said with petulance. "Anyone with a proper education, I don't care if he's never stepped foot out of the South, doesn't go around sounding like Jubilation T. Cornpone. If he does, it's a put-on. And please, I'm in no mood to rehash the obvious. — Maria Semple

The petulance that relatives show towards each other is in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated mood. — Thomas Hardy

Great allowances ought to be made for the petulance of persons laboring under ill-health. — Samuel Richardson

Happy shall we be if we preach believingly, always expecting the Lord to bless his own word. This will give us a quiet confidence which will forbid petulance, rashness, and weariness. If we ourselves doubt the power of the gospel, how can we preach it with authority? Feel that you are a favored man in being allowed to proclaim the good news, and rejoice that your mission is fraught with eternal benefit to those before you. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Lincoln, considering a Cabinet nominee: He is a Radical without the petulance and fretfulness of many radicals. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

But the king was frowning. "I expected you a month ago."
Aedion actually had the nerve to shrug. "Apologies. The Staghorns were slammed with a final winter storm. I left when I could."
Every person in the hall held their breath. — Sarah J. Maas

So you aren't going to tell me what just happened?" I deduced. The fact was clearly readable across his face.
He looked me over again and sighed. "Just be careful in the future," he said.
"How can I be careful when I have no idea why this just happened? Water grabbed me!" I cried, gesturing with my hands toward the side of the bridge where I once lay. "How is that possible?"
When he didn't respond to my questions, I probed him further, trying to get him to answer me. "What about you, with the mud and the rock and the crazy out-of-thin-air thing? What was that?" I demanded to know.
"It was saving your life," he said, a hint of petulance creeping into his tone. "Be careful in the future, Ramsey."
Then he took off running, and after a few seconds, he was gone from my sight ... — Markelle Grabo

Why do we have to go to Summerwind Abbey tonight? Why couldn't we have waited until I at least combed the sand out of my hair? She heard the whine in her voice and realized she'd been reduced to petulance. With any luck at all, she'd become a nag and make Jermyn a dreadful wife. — Christina Dodd

With the unreasonable petulance of mankind I rang the bell and gave a curt intimation that I was ready. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Men: their petulance, their sexual deviance, the way they resorted to violence when they wanted to control — Robert Bryndza

Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio - empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how - has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. Here at home - within the family, so to speak - our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others. — Daniel J. Boorstin

Ronaldo is a disgrace to the game. His petulance, temperament, throwing himself on the ground. It was a disgrace to professional football. This fella Ronaldo is a cod. — Eamon Dunphy

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations of petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An authour cannot obtrude his advice unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent. — Samuel Johnson

It appears to be among the laws of nature, that the mighty of intellect should be pursued and carped by the little, as the solitary flight of one great bird is followed by the twittering petulance of many smaller. — Walter Savage Landor

The great accomplishment of Jobs's life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies - his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness - in the service of perfection. — Malcolm Gladwell

Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. — Samuel Johnson

Deprecation always waits to be disputed, and, if the disputation does not come, becomes petulance. — Eleanor Catton