Sentence Examples:
Their voices were maudlin, and they were wrangling with one another in a somewhat petulant and childish manner.
Both knew about politics as revealed in the wrangling of churches or religious sects, and the strife of factions intriguing and fighting for power to govern or to misgovern.
They had been having a fearful week of it, wrangling about their recent Libyan war and the cost of it, and their nerves were in rather a jagged state.
Let us look into the books of controversy of any kind, there we shall see that the effect of obscure, unsteady, or equivocal terms is nothing but noise and wrangling about sounds, without convincing or bettering a man's understanding.
From whence commonly proceeds noise, and wrangling, without improvement or information; whilst men take words to be the constant regular marks of agreed notions, which in truth are no more but the voluntary and unsteady signs of their own ideas.
Around the fire were stretched fifteen Arabs, who quarrelled with a government official, whom they were compelled to entertain, about their taxes, until they exhausted themselves, and then they exchanged their discordant wrangling for no less discordant snoring.
In nearly every colony, the assembly, in the course of two-thirds of a century of incessant petty conflict, of incessant wrangling and bargaining, of incessant encroachments on the nominal legal powers of the governor, had made itself master of the administration.
I have not introduced into my preceding pages any expressions indicative of political or religious preferences, and I think that the "wrangle" may be submitted to the perusal of all parties or sects without offending their feelings or exciting their prejudices.
They carried placards in their hands among the crowd to influence voters, distributed handbills and tickets, entered into familiar conversation with total strangers, many of them persons of infamous character, and pleaded and wrangled with them to secure their votes.
There would be no wrangling of opposing interests; it would be possible to find out whether the permitted limit were overstepped or not with an exactitude similar to that with which the weight or the chemical constitution of a trade commodity is examined.
There are people who are incapable of holding an argument, and yet malicious enough to take delight in hearing others wrangle; and though they never concern themselves in the controversy, would think a company insipid where they could not have that diversion.
Italian natures are hot, and Italian women are jealous, besides being coquettes too, in their way, with often prudent or mercenary considerations, so that wrangles come and altercations; but they make it up again most times, and do not seem to break their hearts.
On the opposite corner was a group of children struggling for the possession of two lively kittens: wrangling, coaxing, defying, yielding, and pouting, gave animation to a scene, in which a pretty, saucy girl, and a lazy, lordly lad were the principal actors.
We jotted them down at express speed, with changes of tongue so abrupt that our heads were soon reeling, and in the place where our minds should have been sounded only a confused chaotic uproar like a wrangling within the covers of a polyglot dictionary.
Nothing to listen to but the twittering of the canary downstairs, and the distant wrangling of children in the nursery: no one to speak to but the harassed housewife, wanted in a dozen places at once, and the pert housemaid, whose noisiness is distracting.
The mental equality of the sexes is now as unquestioned, as universally admitted, as any other well-established fact in science or history; and the sooner you men gracefully concede us our rights, the sooner we shall cease wrangling, and settle back into our traditional amiability.
Stragglers fell in and closed up under his passing glance; a hopeless, inextricable wrangle around an overturned caisson, at a turn of the road, resolved itself into an orderly, quiet, deliberate clearing away of the impediment before the significant waiting of that dark, silent horseman.
There we had at last two specific instances of Oriental nations working out their own salvation against tremendous odds: Japan threatened by the Russian Goliath, and Turkey a prey to the wrangling and the selfish machinations of all Europe, of all lying Christendom.
When no customers are about, these women are content to wrangle among themselves as to the comparative merits of rival heaps of fruit; from commercial squabbles of this description it is easy for the conversation to descend to the level of vulgar personalities and strong abuse.
It was an overwhelming sensation to find the spaces that separate the sites so much vaster than I had expected, and to have, at every step, the conviction driven home that after all the modern wrangling and disputing the old tradition stands immovable.
It was the United States and not Georgia that actually won and held the land in dispute; and it was a discredit to Georgia's patriotism that she so long wrangled about it, and ultimately drove so hard a bargain concerning it with the National Government.
On the better streets the houses were tight shut to keep out the heat; but the doors and windows of the tenements were open, and Rosie could see the inside of untidy rooms where lackadaisical women lounged about and dirty, whiny children played and wrangled.
His arms crossed upon his chest, a cocked, and loaded pistol grasped in each hand, with hawk-like, piercing eyes and a sardonic smile he watched his men growling, wrangling, and cursing over the portion of loot meted out to them by the one-eyed, scar-faced boatswain.
The poor preacher looked sadly disconcerted; but when the pretended mewing and wrangling were continued, the sense of the ludicrous seemed to prevail in the crowd over everything else, and there was one general outburst of laughter, in which no one joined more heartily than Walter.
The little children were playing about, unconscious that they were going to sea, and running a great risk of tumbling down the hatchways, while several of the men were arguing and wrangling as if the welfare of the nation depended on the result of their discussions.
Wrangling, calling each other reactionaries, authoritarians, and rascals, incapable of coming to an understanding on any serious measure, dragged into discussions about trifles, producing nothing better than bombastic proclamations; all giving themselves an awful importance while the real strength of the movement is in the streets.
Regardless of the sufferings of the patient, they wrangled over his symptoms, and behaved as if they were engaged in a pugilistic encounter, each man far more anxious to exhibit his parts and display his dialectical skill than to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunate client.
Politicians may wrangle and fritter away our money at Ottawa, and cause us to many times feel well-nigh disgusted at them; still, so long as they do not resort to direct taxation at Ottawa our country people will stand an almost untold amount of fraud without much complaint.
No one who has wrangled with a minor Turkish official, and experienced the impassive resistance he is able to interpose to anything he doesn't want to do, will underestimate what this quality might become, translated into the rugged physique and impassivity of the common soldier.
The parties may break each other's heads as much as they like, and the people don't care one way or another so long as they don't trample the crops in their wrangling: if that happens then they lose their tempers, and smash the parties indiscriminately.
This perpetual wrangling and litigation is ruinous, for every man is farming down his land and letting it deteriorate as fast as he can; and there is a most marked difference in the county between those who have bought their land and those who are tenants.
The wrangle could not but be ignominious, but at least more dignity pertained to the disputant who remained at his post and strove to repair the blunder that had been committed than to the disputant that threw down his responsibilities and went home in a pet.
At the dinners what wrangling and tumult must have arisen through squabbles for place, and the thousand mishaps that always attend an endeavor to entertain five hundred gentlemen at a dinner, in a room barely capacious enough for the proper accommodation of a hundred and fifty persons.
These gangs are hired without reference to character or conduct; consequently, when the first deep snow of the winter occurs, it brings together many opposite feuds and factions, who take this opportunity of settling, either by stiletto or by words and wrangling, all existing differences.
These absurd pretensions were at first treated with indifference, but finally brought him into a wrangle with the Duke, over whom he also claimed a similar right, from the fact of being in the papal service, waiving it only out of consideration for his sovereign rank.
It is impossible to say how far this unseemly women's wrangle contributed to the humiliation which Judge Willis was subsequently compelled to endure, but it is pretty clear that from that time forward Sir Peregrine was bent upon getting his adversary removed from his position.
According to some "thinkers," they consist of the invention of ingenious devices to prevent caucus frauds and the purchase of votes, to check the passage of special laws as well as too many laws, and to infuse into decent people an ardent desire to participate in the wrangles of politics.
There, as one sat reading over the fire, these delightful animals, within a foot of you, would carry on their family wrangles and in their excitement give evidence of their own nature; but happily the offense was generally a very mild one and evidently not maliciously intended.
As the day wore, and full details came to hand, the list of mishaps would be doubled, while scientific observers would begin a nine days' wrangle in the effort to determine the precise reason why the electrical disturbance should have been wholly confined to the metropolitan area.
Whether the nation gains or loses by such a state of things is a question for political economists to wrangle over; but that the artist, the seeker of the picturesque, the romantic roamer, and the sentimental lover of old custom gain by it can hardly be denied.
His bright face was in gloom for a few moments, and Robert, quick in perception, had a sudden feeling that this brilliant Quebec, enveloped in so much color and glamour, might not be so sound within as the English towns to the south, despite their wrangling.
From these cardinal tendencies there proceeded truculence of temper, wrangling, obstinacy, rudeness of carriage, anger, and an inordinate desire, or rather a headstrong passion, for revenge in respect to any wrong done to me; so that this inclination, which is censured by many, became to me a delight.
Even Reginald's good temper was tried to the utmost, and he and Raymond began a fierce wrangle about the cab and omnibus fare; while Stevens, wet and tired and miserable, sat down on one of her big boxes, and seemed as if all exertion were over for her.
While counsel wrangled and pleaded, while this little group of men rounded up by the police to stand sponsors for Anarchy and expiate its horrid creed, so that good citizens might sleep peacefully nights, faced death, the three girls sat and stared at the spectacle.
And now came the time for these small choristers to take up the "wondrous tale"; for the big horns had ceased to wrangle, and the crushing and rushing of the crowd woke up infancy to a sense of its wrongs and a consciousness of the necessity for action.
If either of the gravel sifters or stone breakers found anything, he was obliged to conceal it immediately, or one of the old bone collectors would be sure to appropriate it first and deny the theft afterwards, and the consequent wrangling and disputes were as endless as they were wearisome.
He was at any time perfectly willing to fight, either for the sake of the exercise or to punish an offender, but he shied at a fracas, a domestic wrangle or the remote possibility of placing himself in a position of being surrounded by many people all talking at the same time.
A regular wrangle now took place between the two agents, amidst the laughter of the bystanders, whose merriment was increased by Furlong's vehement assurances he did not mean to vote as Murphy wanted to make it appear he had; but the more he protested, the more the people laughed.
And who could guess whether terrible danger, the nearness of the precipice and destruction, might not put an end to broils, internal dissensions, private grievances, rivalries of magnates, wrangling, the babbling of the Diets, the license of the nobility, and the weakness of the king?
The endless wrangles among older children must be arbitrated in some way or other, if only by cuffing the ears of both contestants; and the equally endless complaints stilled by threats, promises, whatever lies a harassed mother could invent to quiet the fretful clamor of discontented childhood.
Congress wrangled, our gay world ate and danced, and the tardy war fell to such slackness that it was plain to all a peace must soon come, although we were yet to see another winter pass before the obstinate Dutchman on the English throne gave up a lost game.
Notice the shameless effrontery, the baseness and infamy of the creature, and you will be forced to form conclusions which, far from justifying the expectation of peace and happiness in the family circle, the true sphere of woman, will suggest only wrangling, discord, and hell upon earth.
There was never hearty cooperation between him and the all-powerful Cardinal Winchester; the Duke of Gloucester was wrangling with Winchester, and had not long ago seriously offended Bedford's most important ally, Philippe de Bourgogne, by marrying Jacqueline of Flanders and espousing her cause against the Burgundians.
In a town house, if the fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, scold and wrangle, if the husband be a bear or the wife a shrew, there is always the refuge of the outer circle of acquaintances wherein cheer and comfort, or, at least, variety and relief, may be found.
The spectacle of the mere word-grabbing game played by the soft determinists has perhaps driven me too violently the other way; and, rather than be found wrangling with them for the good words, I am willing to take the first bad one which comes along, provided it be unequivocal.
Then every nymph and goddess present, and even every woman, put in her claim, until from claiming and disputing it grew to arguing and wrangling and downright quarreling: insults flew about, until the merriment grew into an angry din, the like of which had never been heard.
In every corner, and in every vacant space, might be seen men eagerly discussing the premium of a new company, the rate of a new loan, the rumored profit of some lucky speculator, the rumored failure of some great financier, or wrangling with savage eagerness over the fate of a shilling.
It is strange indeed what a web of dreams the past weaves about its heroes, however recent their careers; but when the hand of time leads us back to the remote events of centuries gone by, we are hopelessly bewildered by the discordant wrangling between the real and the improbable.
Besides, it was unbecoming the dignity of a legislator to be wrangling about trifles, and he, to whom was confided the great affairs of a state, ought to attach the utmost importance to a grave exterior, which commonly was of more account with his constituents than any other quality.
Here the gentle birds may be seen at all times tripping daintily over the moss or in and out among the tufts of grass, conversing with each other in low, pleasant, twittering notes, and never showing any sign of the wrangling so frequent with their kind at this season.
The file of the mechanic may still gnaw angrily at the iron crown of the aristocracy; interests of classes may still jar, parties wrangle, and the eternal warfare between those who climb, and those who stand upon the topmost round of the ladder, may still be waged.
As a board of magistrates, formed on this principle, think but very little, they are the less likely to differ and wrangle about favorite opinions; and, as they generally transact business upon a hearty dinner, they are naturally disposed to be lenient and indulgent in the administration of their duties.
I need hardly add that, the game over, the players fell to quarrelling, and that in the dispute our friend joined, though so artfully as to let every one see that, in spite of the fact that he was wrangling, he was doing so only in the most amicable fashion possible.
Here she sat, nothing to eat at home, her love-husband changed to a brute beast and lying in jail, her arms and heart empty of the babe that would have been there if only the stupid ones had not made a shambles of her front yard in their wrangling over jobs.
It was conducted under the Scotch law with a blessed indifference to collusion: the direct means taken to effect it were, if report may be trusted, scandalous; and the parties met during the whole time, and placidly wrangled over money matters, with a callousness which is ineffably disgusting.
Only now and then, in the burning days of summer, a lion of the wilderness, flying from before the sultry heat, may, perchance, come there to devour his captured prey, and then, when he is well gorged, pursue his way, wrangling as he goes with the echo of his own roar.
Then he rode off to the town, soon became intoxicated, began quarrelling, at length began wrangling with his son-in-law, who tried to hold him back, and drew his knife on him; the latter defended himself, and Warden ran on his knife, and was carried home in a dying state.
At seven years of age, instead of wrangling with bad boys, you would pace soberly along the street saying over your catechism; and all the poor people you came across you insisted on bringing home with you to relieve their needs, till I was forced to whip you to break you of the habit.
She knew how he hated wrangling, and, as a matter of fact, they hardly ever did wrangle; but, if such a thing as a little quarrel did occur, he would be miserable for three days, speak in a woebegone, injured tone, and had to be coaxed back to good temper like a child.
In the sincerity and the rectitude of the intentions, which animate his Majesty, as well as his allies, he cannot conceal the apprehension he is in, with regard to the continuation of the war, from whence may arise vexatious incidents, capable of exciting all sorts of wrangles and most disagreeable disputes.
He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the sweat and grime from his face, listened a moment to the wrangling, swearing, strange Chinese chatter, songs in various languages, then turned and went in, hardly able to see at first from the glitter of the sun that had drenched him.
After a good deal of wrangling and angry debate, in which, however, the Queen's name was studiously respected, she and the Prince had the mortification to learn that the country, by its representatives, had refused the usual allowance, and voted only thirty thousand a year to the Queen's husband.
When that result was announced, we expressed our entire disapprobation; and yet trusting to the representations of the government that matters were concluded satisfactorily, we had to decide whether it were wise, if the great result was obtained, to wrangle upon points however important, such as those to which I have referred.
For a few moments Fan did not know what to do to save herself; then all at once the memory of some old violent wrangle came to her aid, and springing forward she blew out the candle and softly retreated to a corner of the room, where she remained silent and expectant.
The author of one of the most recent and in many respects admirable books on the care of babies, is almost contemptuous in her disdain for those who think otherwise: "Science wrangles over the rival importance of heredity and environment, but we women know what effects prenatal influence works on children."
The surmise, that men and women in a communistic state, would put off all selfishness, envy, hate, jealousy, wrangling and desire to rule is just as reasonable as the supposition, that a man can sleep one hundred and thirteen years and rise thereafter as young and fresh as he went to bed.
If the voice of wrangling reached, soon after, the mother's ears, and pained her to the very soul, it lessened not the pressure on her feelings to think that a little self-denial on her part, a little forgetfulness of her own feelings, and a thoughtfulness for them, would have prevented unhappy discord.
Insensibility seems, however, in all ages to be an affectation of the higher classes; and here, while the plebeians wrangle, and laugh, and chatter, and gesticulate, the patricians are apparently bent on proving that amusement is for them a simple impossibility, and suffering or slaughter matters of the most profound indifference.
No other sounds were heard save the voices of the menials who stripped the galleries of their cushions and tapestry, in order to put them in safety for the night, and wrangled among themselves for half-used bottles of wine and relics of the refreshments which had been served round to the spectators.
And so for a few minutes we wrangled, but seeing that the canal was very narrow, and that there was no room for two gondolas to be moored in front of the chosen spot, mine being already tied up exactly opposite, I asked him if he would not come and work in my gondola.
The reader might be ready to assert, after reading this connubial wrangle, that the fault was not all on one side, but that Nancy's sharp tongue was in some measure responsible for Tom's drinking; that, in fact, if she had not been such a termagant he might, at least, have been an average husband.
Maitland roared for my help: and at that moment, I, poor wretch, in far worse plight than he, stood shivering in ague: for suddenly one of those wrangles of the voices of my destiny was filling my bosom with loud commotion, one urging me to fly to Maitland's aid, one passionately commanding me be still.
In the discussion on these documents the court and the prisoner fell to actual wrangling; in the buzz of voices it was hard to tell what was said, until a certain impression was at last made by Coke, who screamed out that Raleigh 'had a Spanish heart and was a spider of hell.'
In the morning, however, the steadiness with which he adhered to his story obtained him some degree of credence; the immediate consequence of which was that the two brothers, after wrangling a long time on the knotty question, which of them should try his fortune first, drew their swords and began fighting.
A blind beggar crouching at the other side of the gate was reciting passages of the Koran, and two Arabs close at his elbow were wrangling over a game at drafts which they were playing by the light of a flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the procession passed under the arch.
There was the eternal wrangling between the passengers and the officials over articles liable to duty, and it was somewhat amusing to me, even with war beating the air, to follow the frantic and useless efforts of old and experienced travelers to smuggle this, that, or something else through the fiscal barrier.
In the course of the year he asked the men each to write some word of suggestion, if he were so inclined, for improvement in the method with which the course was conducted; and, if I remember rightly, there were not a few respectful suggestions that too much time was allowed to the few wrangling disputants.
The philosophers themselves, after wrangling for the honor of having discovered truth, and making themselves miserable in the pursuit of happiness, died; and man was left unsatisfied and unhappy, philosophy having shed only sufficient light upon his mind to disclose more fully the guilty and wretched state of his heart.
No other sounds were heard save the voices of the menials who stripped the galleries of their cushions and tapestry, in order to put them in safety for the night, and wrangled among themselves for the half-used bottles of wine and relics of the refreshment which had been served round to the spectators.
How greatly you should guard against rousing suspicion in the masses by theoretical wrangling, and thereby finally taking from them what is an inexhaustible source of consolation and comfort to them; which in their hard lot they need very much more than we do: for this reason alone, religion ought not to be attacked.
These are caravans that cross the hot and weary sands of life, and while there may be wrangling and undesirable administration at times within them, yet, after all, the pilgrim that undertakes alone is but a speck in the wide desert, too often blown away, and withering like the leaf before the wind.
A wrangle with the governor ensued, and the matter had to be referred to the king, who must sometimes have wondered whether the colonial game was worth the candles consumed in reading the colonial despatches; for his Majesty, no less than his minister, had often to prolong the work far into the night.
He said to me often that nothing was so distasteful to him as wrangles over business affairs, as if nothing in the world was so important as the possession of money, and that he allowed himself to be robbed rather than dispute and quarrel, which knowledge I am afraid his customers often used to their own advantage.
It must be settled one way or the other, in spite of all the wrangling of professional politicians, and I can only hope that it will not be settled by force of arms, because that could only be such a one-sided affair, could only be settled in the least desirable way by all English-speaking people.
He had a rapidity of expression, and a tolerable quickness of comprehension: but he was very warm, and indeed rather too choleric and irascible; so that he often wrangled not only with his antagonist, but (what appears very strange) with the judge himself, whom it was rather his business to sooth and gratify.
This I think, that, bating those places, which brought the Peripatetic Philosophy into their schools, where it continued many ages, without teaching the world anything but the art of wrangling, these maxims were nowhere thought the foundations on which the sciences were built, nor the great helps to the advancement of knowledge.
The inquisitor, with endless iteration, was empowered and instructed to proceed summarily, to disregard forms, to permit no impediments arising from judicial rules or the wrangling of advocates, to shorten the proceedings as much as possible by depriving the accused of the ordinary facilities of defense, and by rejecting all appeals and dilatory exceptions.
Its approach meant that the waking hours of dismal tasks and constant frets and cares would soon be over, that the whines and wails and wrangles, the scraping of chairs, the tramping of muddy shoes, the whole meaningless turmoil would come to an end, and for a little while there would be peace.
The martyr at the stake, triumphant in his faith, may be happier than the man of fashion dying of ennui and gout; the savage, wandering through forest and over plain in pursuit of game, or huddled in his hut with wives and children, may be happier than the care-laden speculator or the wrangling politician.
That ambition which at any time induces woman to step beyond her sphere, to take upon her shoulders masculine responsibilities, to take part in political struggles and sectional wrangles, to usurp the places and duties of those who were created and destined to cherish and protect her, it is, for her own sake, to be regretted.