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1 " ... 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 , The House of the Seven Gables
2 " 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 , Table-Talk, Essays on Men and Manners
3 " 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. "
― John of the Cross , Dark Night of the Soul
4 " 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. "
5 " He specialized in a particular kind of friendship with that eight-limbed, inscrutable, treacherous creature, the happily married coupe, adapting himself closely and lightly to the composite personality.A peevish dead woman...it's absurd...ho much less humiliating for them both it would have been if she had taken a lover. "
6 " He specialized in a particular kind of friendship with that eight-limbed, inscrutable, treacherous creature, the happily married coupe, adapting himself closely and lightly to the composite personality.A peevish dead woman...it's absurd...how much less humiliating for them both it would have been if she had taken a lover. "
7 " A peevish self-willed harlotry it is.*She’s a stubborn little brat.* "
― William Shakespeare , Romeo and Juliet
8 " Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another. "